Choudhary Ashraf: Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Choudhary Ashraf: Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 16 August 2011. Volume:675;Page:20937. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr ASHRAF CHOUDHARY (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to speak on the Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3) which Labour supports. This legislation was really started by the Labour Government.  
This whole issue of aquaculture has in a way bothered me because although this country has done very well with animal farming—with dairy farming sheep farming and all that—we have not so far done as well in the aquaculture area. We have been saying that aquaculture is a billion-dollar industry and that we are hoping to achieve a billion-dollar export industry by 2025 but still despite a lot of work going on in legislative terms the industry has not really achieved the status that I would have liked to see it achieve years ago. Successive Governments have tried to improve aquaculture but there have been difficulties not only with the legislation but also on the ground. We established aquaculture management areas but they have not really worked. This bill will remove the requirement for aquaculture management areas and I think that is a good move but having said that there are a number of issues.  
As we go through the Committee stage we will note there are concerns for the industry. Clearly one of those concerns is about the undue adverse effects test. My colleague Damien O’Connor has put forward an amendment to ensure that that part of the bill is improved. The industry has not been very happy with the process if you like and proposes that the legislation should require a collective action process for negotiating aquaculture agreements and should provide flexibility. That is one of the areas that really has not worked in the aquaculture area as well as it has done in the meat and dairy cooperatives. The aquaculture industry has not come around to working together and I hope that with this bill the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture will have achieved some balance. I commend him for achieving that balance and I think he has done well in trying to get more flexibility going forward.  
Of course there are other issues which will come up later in terms of the power of the Minister. I think that some industry players some recreational fishers and some other people are saying that the bill gives the Minister a dictatorial power but overall I think this bill will allow and we are hoping it will allow for additional aquaculture farming which this country definitely needs going forward. We have not done well compared with Australia for example. The Primary Production Committee went to South Australia a while ago and we looked at what the industry is doing there. It appears that at least in South Australia the industry does very well but New Zealand has still not really made major strides in promoting aquaculture. I would call this bill a work in progress and going forward we need to continuously work on this area. I hope that with the passing of the bill we will have a much-improved aquaculture industry in New Zealand.  
With those few words on Part 1 I think it is important for us to realise once again that the Minister has overall done a good job in bringing this bill to the House. We did quite a bit of work in the select committee obviously in terms of improving the bill. I thank the chair of the select committee too. Thank you. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: We have some amendments. The question will be that the Minister’s amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 277 to the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 264 and Supplementary Order Paper 265 be agreed to.