Dean Jacqui; Parker DavidFISHERIES AMENDMENT BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Substantive provisionsCHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members we come now to the Fisheries Amendment Bill. We come first to Part 1 this is the debate on clauses 4 to 26 Substantive provisions". The question is that Part 1 stand part.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): The background—no; I should start with what the main points of this bill are. This legislation provides a framework for the introduction of new technologies that weren't available when the quota management system was developed namely the use of cameras on boats to monitor fishing practice when you don't have a physical fisheries observer on board. It's obviously less costly to have automated technologies doing that surveillance or checking if you like than it is to have real people as observers.But I want to just spend a little bit of time on why this has come about. Back in 2016 there was a furore about some reports that had been held by the fisheries division of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) for a number of years and had never been released. Those reports were titled Operation Achilles and Operation Hippocamp. Those reports had video footage and/or other evidence of some concerning practices as sea where fishers were discarding significant quantities of fish. Some of that is called high-grading where the fishers know that the best return they can get on a fish sold is of a particular size and a fish that might be smaller or a fish that might be bigger is less valuable. Given that they wanted to maximise their returns and minimise their quota costs there was high-grading going on where quantities of fish were being discarded.There were also complicated rules for different species of fish which were complex for fishers to comply with with different rules relating to whether fish could be legally returned to sea applying to some species and different rules to others and different minimum sizes for different fish.Prior to the time of the release of these two reports which were first released by third parties who had somehow obtained copies of them there was also a study that had been conducted—led by the University of British Columbia in cooperation with the University of Auckland and academics from elsewhere—which had reconstructed the theoretical population of our fisheries based on fish returns. That report concluded that the return of fish was irreconcilable with the distribution of a fish population in terms of size. So there was already a controversy amongst some of the academics in this area that suggested that there was substantial under-reporting of actual fish caught in New Zealand much of which was being discarded through high-grading or illegal forms of throwing fish back generally dead and illegal forms of discard the quantity of which were not well known.The Government of the day which was the National Government were surprised as we in Opposition were at the time as to the scale of what was being suggested was occurring. The scale of it is still disputed. The fishing industry say that the study by the University of Auckland and others was exaggerated and that the level of discards was not as high as that asserts. There is a contrary viewpoint where those people say that the science backs their view of what they said was occurring. Notwithstanding that controversy as to the amount there was a general agreement that something untoward was happening. As a consequence of controversies—and there was a lot of media coverage about it at the time—the Hon Nathan Guy as the then Minister of Fisheries asked for an inquiry by the former Solicitor-General Mike Heron—now KC; then QC. He conducted an inquiry into these events. He found that there had been some mistakes made within the fisheries division of MPI and that they were wrong to have gathered this information but not used it for enforcement reasons. Such was the heat around the issue that the then National Government said "Look we've got to clean this up. It's not good for our international reputation. 'Brand New Zealand' underpins the value that we get for the goods that we sell across the primary sector." and they proposed the adoption of cameras on boats so that we could have some real scrutiny as to what has been happening at sea.That essentially is the reason behind the core of this bill which is to enable cameras on boats and the companion rule that says that with some exceptions you shouldn't be able to discard fish; you should try to avoid catching the fish that are not valuable and if you start catching lots of little fish you should move on to where you're catching the bigger fish or you should use a fishing technique that prevents the catching of those little fish. So the rules have been changed to require all fish that are caught to be counted against quota with some limited exceptions which will be specified in regulation. All fish that are caught are to be landed. In response to both the better scrutiny that we have through those two measures we can then move to a more moderate penalties regime—the current penalties regime being designed to heavily discourage illegal practice because it was so hard to find and when it was found on those rare occasions the law came down very heavily.As a consequence of these better techniques that we will now have we can introduce an infringement regime and also a demerit-points scheme which is much less Draconian and reflects can be used by fisheries officers using their prosecutorial discretion to use an appropriate remedy rather than having to take people to court for prosecutions that could have disproportionate response.I know the issue of within-year adjustments to take will come up and I'm not dodging that issue. I'm sure it will be the focus of the debate and I'm happy to engage in that debate as to why the pre-set decision rule is not proceeding at this stage and why we'll put that out again for another round of consultation if we do proceed with it.But those are the main reasons for this amendment bill."