Heatley Phil: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
Heatley Phil: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14552] 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the title debate and to support my colleague David Carter in putting forward the proposal to change the name of the bill to the “Scampi Bill”. Clearly Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 4) tells no one except those seared by the pain of the scampi inquiry what the bill is about. But before I do that I would like to address Janet Mackey’s suggestion of “Chocolate Fish Bill”. I know that Ministry of Fisheries’ officials are very keen to put every fish species they can find into the quota management system. They want to put in highly migratory species tuna mussel spat—anything that moves. I bet that a working-party will be produced to look at Janet Mackey’s suggestion of “Chocolate Fish Bill”. I put it to the officials that they should slow down and hold their horses as they will not get any support on this side of the House for that suggestion. 
I refer to Brian Connell’s question about this legislation being the No. 4 bill and what in the world were the No. 1 No. 2 and No. 3 bills. I shall address those titles briefly. The No. 1 bill was passed well before I was a member of Parliament taking an interest in fisheries but I can tell members that the No. 2 bill was about the conservation levies paid indirectly to the Ministry of Fisheries and to the Department of Conservation which were overcharged during a 4 or 5-year period. The Labour Government had to give back $16 million or $17 million to the fishing industry because of that overcharging and that bill was sorted out before the committee. 
The No. 3 bill relates to highly migratory species and tuna going into the quota management system which everyone is up in arms about including the member Ian Ewen-Street. He is concerned about that too. He is not just up in arms because of line dancing; he is up in arms genuinely because of highly migratory species going into the quota management system. The No. 3 bill is also about mussel spat going into the quota management system and of course about a whole lot of species going in without catch history being recognised through the allocation of quota. 
However the No 4 bill is clearly about scampi. I support David Carter’s change of the bill’s name to “Scampi Bill”. If he wanted to be more technical he could call it the “ 
Metanephrops 
Challengeri 
Scampi Bill” the reason being that that is the Latin name for scampi. Interestingly the French call it langoustine Italy also calls it scampi but Spain calls it cigala. They smoke scampi in Spain. They call it cigala. I understand that the Greens also smoke scampi although that has not been confirmed. So that is the “Scampi Bill”. 
This bill is strictly about scampi. Clearly the title should include scampi in its name. Members of the public constantly come to me when they discover that I am the National Party spokesperson on fisheries and they say two things. Firstly they ask: “What’s the story about scampi because that’s all we hear about when it comes to fisheries and I think it’s hurting the industry.” The second thing they say is: “My you’re a jolly good spokesperson. Are you the one the officials go to for advice?”. That is what they say to me. 
I put it to the Committee that there is tremendous interest in what David Carter and I call the “scampi” legislation. Unfortunately the whole seafood and commercial fishing industry has been tarnished because of what has happened in the fishing industry over the years and that is hugely disappointing. We as a National Party team are keen to put all those problems behind us and resolve them through the passing of this legislation.