Fitzsimons Jeanette: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12388] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Greens will not be voting for this bill at this stage. I hope that that may still change if the select committee process and any changes that may be made there satisfies us that the bill genuinely advances the purpose and the principles of the 1996 Act. At the moment it is hard to see how it does. 
I would like to draw the House’s attention to two sections in the 1996 Act. In our view they are central to what fisheries management must achieve. Section 8 states that the purpose is to ensure sustainability. That means “(a) Maintaining the potential of fisheries resources to meet the reasonably foreseeable needs of future generation; and (b) Avoiding remedying or mitigating any adverse effects of fishing on the aquatic environment”. Section 9 states that everyone under the Act must take into account the principle of associated or dependent species which “should be maintained above a level that ensures their long-term viability” that “Biological diversity of the aquatic environment should be maintained”; and that “Habitat of particular significance for fisheries management should be protected.” Those two sections of the Act are honoured much more in the breach than in the observance. 
The quota management system is often touted as a huge advance in ensuring the sustainability of fishing. The object of this amendment bill is to reinforce further the quota management system and to introduce new species under the quota management system. There is no doubt that in theory the ability to set a total allowable catch and then allocate rights to catch within that total allowable catch ought to be a big improvement for sustainability. However the system has so many holes at the moment that I do not think anyone could argue that New Zealand fisheries were being fished sustainably. 
I shall spend a minute or two looking at the holes in the quota management system at the moment and the background as to why we are concerned at the idea of further entrenching this system in New Zealand law. The quota management system does make some attempt to sustain individual target species—the ones we want to catch. However it is hopeless at sustaining the ecosystems of which those fish are part. That is despite the sections in the Act that state that that must be an overriding concern for those exercising powers under the Act. There are no mechanisms to sustain the ecosystems of which the fisheries are part and there is virtually no science and no dollars allocated to science to really understand the relationships between the target species and the other species that they depend on or that depend on them. Of course if a marine ecosystem is not sustained then the fishery itself will eventually collapse. It may just take a little longer. 
We have good data on recruitment abundance and mortality of only 15 percent of the fish stocks that we currently catch. We do not have the information we need to start to manage them sustainably. Half of those for which we have information are currently below the biomass that would maintain the maximum sustainable yield. We know even less about the ecosystem relationships than we do about the fish resources themselves. 
The quota management system has already failed spectacularly to sustain several orange roughy stocks that before the fishery was closed sank to 3 percent of their original biomass. There are also inadequate mechanisms—admittedly there are some and they are improving—to deal with the by-catch in fisheries: by-catch of endangered species like albatross sea lions fur seals and Hector’s dolphin. We cannot call a fishery sustainable while it continues to wipe out other species on the scale that goes on at present. 
We do have overfishing under the quota management system but it is in particular areas—namely the inshore fishery. So a species may be sustainable across the whole huge quota management area but it may be wiped out in particular locations that are the most accessible ones close to the coast that also tend to be the locations where customary fishing and recreational fishing are most important. 
 Destruction of habitat by fishing methods is not really dealt with in the 1996 Act and it is not really dealt with by the ministry. We know that scallop dredging has a devastating effect on the benthic organisms where the scallops live and that bottom trawling wipes out many other species. Bottom trawling has been described by international fisheries scientists as like felling a forest in order to catch the deer in that forest. 
We know that there is illegal fishing and that that is outside the total allowable catch. Even when we set a sustainability limit it is exceeded and we do not have adequate enforcement measures to deal with that. 
The system also gives rights in perpetuity to fishers. We believe that that is a privatisation of a public resource for far too long and would prefer that there were limits on the length of time that individual transferable quotas can be held. We have also in the past strongly opposed the idea that these individual transferable quotas were given to fishers on the basis that one could say those who had plundered the most in the past got the greatest rights to continue plundering. That grandfathering of the fisheries rights sold the public short because it is a public resource. 
One thing in this bill that we are pleased to see is the replacement of individual catch entitlements for entry into the quota system with a tendering process that at least gives everybody a chance. 
Looking more precisely at what the bill does it brings scampi into the quota system. We have just had a select committee inquiry into certain aspects of the scampi fishery as some other members have pointed out. The select committee did say that scampi should be brought into the quota system but it also found that it was not appropriate to legislate to do this. So why is it that we are legislating to do it? 
An inquiry is still going on. The State Services Commission is also looking into the behaviour of the Ministry of Fisheries in relation to scampi and it does not report until the end of this month. It is possible the commission may come to a different conclusion from the select committee as to whether there was any wrongdoing. This bill sets in concrete the ministry’s decisions in relation to scampi yet they are still disputed. Those are the same decisions that the courts found were unfair and unlawful. 
The bill also changes the quota management areas for scampi. It is not at all clear in the bill why that is or even what it is. I am advised that those area changes will favour Simunovich still further. The select committee needs to study very carefully any evidence that fishers bring about the effect of those changes in quota area boundaries. 
The bill lifts the moratorium on issuing new permits for fisheries not in the quota management system. I cannot find any evidence in the bill of any sustainability provisions to cover the issuing of those permits. I have no confidence that a sustainability framework will be in place and I look forward very much to learning I am wrong in the course of the select committee process. 
The intention to join the international effort to keep the catch both fair and sustainable for highly migratory species is of course commendable but industry has real fears that the effects of this on the tuna fishery will be to wipe out the small firms with one boat in favour of the large firms. I think the committee should listen carefully to submissions on that. 
The tripartite agreement on the southern bluefin tuna fishery with Australia Japan and New Zealand has often been breached in the past. I will be interested in evidence on just how good the international enforcement will be. 
Finally I am concerned that the bill proposes to issue quota for species that are so endangered that they are subject to the convention on endangered species such as basking shark whale shark and sea horse. I wonder just what kind of conservation message it sends to the international community that New Zealand is bringing endangered species within its commercial fishery.