Ardern Shane: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 4) — Second Reading 
Ardern Shane: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 4) — Second Reading 
[Volume:618;Page:14492] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 I rise with some apprehension having not been on the Primary Production Committee but having listened to a huge amount of debate on this issue now over a long period of time in support of the Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 4). National supports the scampi fishery going into the quota management system by 1 October this year and there are a range of reasons why that is so which previous members have spoken about. 
During this debate I have been reminded of some comments made by none other than Albert Einstein himself. He said that some of the things we do count are not worth counting and some of the things we can count do not count. I think that that is absolutely so in the debate that has gone on around this legislation. We have here a situation where a very good select committee—of which I have been a member myself in the past—has grappled with difficult issues of incompetence and bad management. I could stand here as an Opposition member take a few shots at the Government and talk of bad Ministers poor Government and all the rest of it but the reality is that the incompetence that has gone on in this ministry for so long covers a number of different Governments. So it would not be a fair shot if I were to do that. 
The fact is that this has been a vexed difficult issue where there has been a huge amount of unfairness but at the end of the day this is the ultimate court of the land in terms of judging what is fair and what is not fair. We can talk about the detail of the law and clearly there have been some huge discussions about that—about how the historical catch has been achieved how the quota system has been established and how different fisheries have entered the quota management system—but at the end of the day someone has to make an arbitrary decision about what is fair and what is not fair. There has been a huge amount of unfairness in the history of this process. 
I thank those members of the select committee who have done an excellent job—many members have said so. I know they can because I have been in that select committee when other difficult issues have been debated and I congratulate the committee on coming back with a recommendation. I say to the Minister though that now the select committee has done that work in a non-political non-partisan way he should take notice of what the committee has said. He should certainly take notice of the history that has brought the select committee to the position it is at because what I fear and what we are seeing is a Minister and a ministry that once again through an arrogant approach are deciding that they might change various lines in the sand—or in the scampi fishery as it were—and create more unfairness. 
 My colleague Phil Heatley has given me a map that shows that area 3 of the quota management system off the South Island is likely to be changed—an arbitrary decision to change the line. We do not know what that means. We do not know whether there will be a number of undetermined applications affected. We do not know whether the science backing that up is robust. We do not know whether it should be changed back. The Minister needs to explain that to us. If he cannot and if his ministry cannot give a reasonable explanation then National cannot support it. It is that simple. The ball is in the Government’s court on that matter. 
The work that the select committee did also uncovered in my view a range of areas that could be described as being very close to the letter of the law but there was nothing in the inquiry suggesting that any laws had been broken. As I said when I started at the end of the day those decisions are always on-balance decisions. There is always a fine line between what is legal and what is not legal and there is always a fine line between what is fair and what is not fair. I think it has been overwhelmingly established over a long period of time that a certain amount of what went on certainly could never be described by any fair-minded person as fair. 
Having said that the reality is that we will be watching this bill through the process with great interest. Certainly there will be some debate on various clauses during the Committee stage and we will listen to that with great interest. We will be waiting for the Minister and his ministry which have demonstrated no competence in this matter thus far to come back and tell us what it is they are trying to achieve through their arbitrary change of lines. If we are not satisfied with that we will not support the bill going any further. That is about all that needs to be said by me.  
J MACKEY