Smith Nick: Maori Commercial Aquaculture Claims Settlement (Regional Agreements) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Smith Nick: Maori Commercial Aquaculture Claims Settlement (Regional Agreements) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:661;Page:9696] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 Firstly I join with the Prime Minister and members of the House who have made their tributes to the passing of Lady Raiha Mahuta. I want to acknowledge working with her in my role as the Minister for the Environment particularly on the issue of the Waikato River. I know she was a person who will be deeply missed but also one who has made a huge contribution not just to Waikato-Tainui but also to New Zealand. 
The Maori Commercial Aquaculture Claims Settlement (Regional Agreements) Amendment Bill puts into effect a settlement for an issue that has been quite divisive in my own community of Nelson: the whole issue of the foreshore and seabed. Aquaculture is very much a new industry. In my view if we reflect on the Parliament and the big debates that occurred in the early years of this Parliament about land law or more recently on debates on fishing we see that this is the latest of those resource issues which we need to work through in a considered way. I think most of us would regret the way in which the gold rush for marine space got away a bit in areas like the Marlborough Sounds and the Tasman Bay which gave rise to a huge sense of grievance from Maoridom that led to the very divisive issue of the foreshore and seabed. I hope that in considering this bill we can lay some of the foundation for the more contentious way this Parliament will have to find a way through the more difficult challenge of the foreshore and seabed. 
It is worth noting also that although we went through that sort of gold-rush era in the 1980s and 1990s around the development of aquaculture we then went to the opposite end with the moratorium. This bill comes about because of the failure of policies in the last decade to provide for aquaculture space. When the agreement was reached with Maoridom that 20 percent of aquaculture space would be made available it was intended that Maori would get that space from new areas that were being created. What actually happened was that the 2005 aquaculture legislation did not live up to its promise. It did not get the incentives right. So the essence of this bill is to provide an alternative mechanism effectively through the payment of cash by the Crown to iwi in areas that have a particularly high development of aquaculture. 
So although I support this bill and see it as a pragmatic response to and a way through a problem the more critical debate that this Parliament will have to deal with will be to reconfigure those aquaculture laws so that we can grow the wealth of that industry overall. I welcome the fact that this bill has very broad support in the House. It is important for those communities particularly in the top of the South Island—whom I am privileged to represent—and also in the Coromandel. But it is very much a stopgap measure to deal with the issue of the aquacultural space that was previously provided and to get some money into the hands of iwi so that they can invest and be part of the industry. However if this bill is really to deliver on the expectations of Maoridom it is beholden on this Parliament to sort out aquaculture laws so that aquaculture is an industry that can grow and grow without the sort of gold rush that we had in the 1990s. That will be a difficult balance for this Parliament to address but one that we must urgently do if we are to move from cleaning up the mess to looking forward on the future of aquaculture and particularly Maori involvement in that important industry.