Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise to speak this morning on the Fisheries Amendment Bill. I'm going to start just by speaking about how important fisheries are in my electorate of Southland. I'm lucky enough to have most of Fiordland in my electorate and this is an area that has the CRA8 fishery which is the largest mainland fishery geographically for crayfish. It extends from Long Point south to Stewart Island and the Snares the islands and coastline of Foveaux Strait which is Penny Simmonds' territory and then northwards along the Fiordland coastline to Bruce Bay about 50 kilometres north of Haast. While the overall area is large almost all fishing occurs within 8 kilometres of the shore. There are 146 CRA8 quota share owners and shares trade for more than $1.8 million per tonne equivalent. The CRA8 fleet operates in the most remote coastal area of the South Westland and Fiordland areas and the value of the landed catch is estimated to be some $122 million based on the average price paid to fishermen.I also have I'm glad to say Te Anau which has had a very challenging time over the last 2½ years with tourism. It's also home to the Fiordland Lobster Company and this is quite an exceptional company. It is Te Anau based; the headquarters are in Te Anau. It's a vertically integrated lobster company and it is New Zealand's largest exporter of high-quality lobster dedicated to the sustainable fishing and live export of wild-caught southern rock lobster. Sustainable fishing is an important point which this Fisheries Amendment Bill is endeavouring to address. I would just say that the Fiordland Lobster Company started back in 1988 when New Zealand introduced the world-leading quota management system ensuring sustainable fishing for generations to come. A year later in 1989 15 Fiordland fishers created the Fiordland Lobster Company. In 2010 it expanded its operations into Australia where it operates under brand South Australian Lobster Company. The head office is still in Te Anau nestled in the heart of Fiordland with lobster-receiving depots and export packing factories located throughout New Zealand and Australia. So it's quite an amazing success story.Now this bill is one that is endeavouring to make some changes to strengthen the effectiveness of New Zealand's fisheries management system. It also repeals the Fisheries Act 1983 which is no longer used. National supports legislation that enhances the protection of New Zealand's marine environment and encourages better fishing practices that enables our fishing sector to sustainably thrive. National believes that fish dumping and illegal activity happening under the current system must change in order to prevent lost future economic opportunity. We still however have some strong reservations about this bill following the select committee stage. National is deeply concerned about the potential for costs to outweigh the benefits once changes are enacted. And on that I should note that it is a particularly challenging time for the fishing industry. Just last month it was reported that fishing boats are tied up unable to feed a hungry world market. The price of fuel has increased over the last year by around 150 percent and what this means in real terms is that fuel is consuming up to three-quarters of the value of the catch. That leaves little to pay crew freight and other costs without factoring any return to the fisher. There are currently boats reported that have been tied up because it's simply not economic to go out and fish. So we need to keep that in mind as we look at this and that is why National is concerned for the potential costs to outweigh the benefits.Crucially the detail on how these amendments will be operationalised by species is left to regulations that are yet to be developed. The success of the regime depends largely on Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) pragmatism in developing these new rules for a transition period that ends in 2026. It's certainly my hope that MPI is pragmatic particularly taking into account the fact that it is an incredibly challenging time in the fishing industry with the costs in particular of fuel and that we do need to catch fish to feed the world. So the bill is not perfect and elements of the design will be criticised by many if not most stakeholders because if the rule changes are not flexible enough to meet our diverse industry in terms of species operator size regions and innovation many operators could be put out of business. That is the last thing we want to see. The sector wants a pre-set decision framework. It does understand the need to reduce bio-catch waste and accepts on-board camera implementation. They want the criteria to be applied fairly reflecting the realities of trawl fishing. They accept that a more adaptive and granular penalty regime is an improvement on the cliff-face model that exists currently. Although some changes were made to bill during the select committee process we are not satisfied that enough has been done to address stakeholder concerns. When National is in Government in 2023 and the transition process has begun we will closely monitor what parts of the bill are working which ones aren't and we'll seek to improve those parts.We have some concerns with the landings and discards sections in this bill. Currently discards back to the sea can occur within a very strict set of exceptions which may have a disproportionate impact on inshore fishers depending on how pragmatic or otherwise officials are when setting those regulations. The priority should be achieving a workable outcome that increasingly focuses on the benefits of cameras on board to assist with transparency of on-board performance rather than a strict interpretation of the primary legislation. As noted in the main committee report we remain concerned that the penalty regime has no consideration on the various value weightings of respective species. We believe that when setting fines regarding the discarding of fish referred to in new sections 252(3A) 252(5A) and 252(5)(ba) regard should be had in matter including the species and importantly value. The sector does need assurance that it won't be hit by the bill's proposed changes especially businesses still grappling with the economic downturn as a result of COVID-19 and now the impact of high fuel prices and high labour costs which is having a real impact. As I mentioned earlier it is resulting in boats being tied up and in fact it's having a disproportionate impact on smaller operators—the people that we want to see stay in business. So that is something to watch closely.This bill places emphasis on the potential for New Zealand to be a world leader in fisheries management as the result of changes proposed. That is something New Zealand has been very good at with the development of the quota management system many years ago. This is endeavouring to continue on that same trajectory. National however is less concerned in this instance about doing it first and as I said is primarily concerned about making sure it's done right. So this is a bill that we will be supporting but we will be watching closely to see the impact and hopefully see the pragmatism from MPI in the way that it is applied to ensure that we can continue to have sustainable fisheries and people can remain in work and continue to feed the world from New Zealand's fantastic waters. So with that I will conclude my remarks.