America’s Cup winner and double Olympic gold medallist Blair Tuke has told a parliamentary select committee that the government should abandon its Fisheries Amendment Bill outright, joining a long line of environmental groups, regional councillors and iwi who say the proposed changes weaken protection for New Zealand’s ocean in return for short term commercial gain.
Tuke fronted the Primary Production select committee on Monday with ultramarathon ocean swimmer Jono Ridler on behalf of the Live Ocean Foundation, the charity Tuke runs with fellow Olympic sailor Peter Burling. The pair said the bill, which adjusts catch limits, extends ministerial discretion and changes the way on board camera footage is handled, would entrench bottom trawling on habitats that take centuries to recover.
“For a country surrounded by the moana [ocean], when it comes to ocean stewardship we are not leading,” Tuke told the committee, according to RNZ. “In fact, if it was sport, I would say we don’t even rank.”
New Zealand controls the fourth largest exclusive economic zone in the world. Ridler told MPs the proposed amendments were not openly written to favour bottom trawling but their cumulative effect was to push the system toward bulk extraction and away from any wider read of ecosystem health.
“It prioritises economic gain and bulk harvesting, including bottom trawling, while reducing safeguards to protect the environment,” Ridler said. “This increases the pressure on at risk species and vulnerable habitats.”
The bill is being championed by Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones as a modernisation of legislation that has not been substantially overhauled since the Quota Management System was introduced in 1986. The Beehive material framing it emphasises export growth, faster decision making and a clearer rule book for industry. Critics told the committee the same provisions amount to a quiet rollback of environmental scrutiny.
Greenpeace Aotearoa’s Ellie Hooper told MPs the bill was “rotten and must be rejected in its entirety”. She singled out a proposed five year cycle for setting Total Allowable Catch, a shorter 20 day window for judicial review and a clause that would exempt fishing boat camera footage from the Official Information Act. “Locking up that footage from public view is not going to rebuild trust in the commercial sector’s activities,” she said.
The OIA carve out drew particularly sharp comment from Hooper. “Having a fine that could potentially be five times higher for somebody releasing evidence of environmental damage versus someone who actually did that damage in the first place, we think is pretty egregious,” she said.
Local government has also taken sides. Genevieve Robinson, a Canterbury Regional Council councillor who fronted the council’s submission, said Canterbury has the largest coastal marine area of any region in the country and more than 40 percent of its jurisdiction sits below the high tide mark.
“Several aspects of this bill move fisheries management away from ecosystem based management,” Robinson said. “In particular, the council is concerned about the narrowing of the total allowable catch considerations, the reduced transparency around the onboard cameras, and the increased flexibility around annual catch entitlement carrying forward.”
Robinson argued catch limits should be set on an ecosystem wide basis and that camera footage should remain publicly accessible, not least so regional councils can keep meeting their own biodiversity obligations under the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement.
Iwi opposition was sharper still. Keryn Goldsmith, speaking for the Whangaokena ki Onepoto Takutai Kaitiaki Trust, told the committee Ngati Porou hapu had not been consulted before the bill was introduced, despite a deed of agreement with the Crown that requires engagement on any fisheries change affecting their rohe moana, meaning their customary sea area.
“That consultation did not occur prior to the introduction of this bill,” Goldsmith said. “This is not merely a procedural irregularity, it is a breach of statutory and deed-based obligations owed to Ngāti Porou hapū. The Crown cannot meet those obligations by treating hapū as one voice among many in a generic public submission process.”
Goldsmith was careful to say the trust was not opposed to fisheries reform in principle, but the consultation failure was something Parliament could not paper over with a public submission round.
Industry submitters told a very different story. Solander Group managing director Paul Hufflett said much of the criticism was “a lot of noise” that did not engage with what the bill actually does. “What we’re dealing with is effectively an update to a piece of legislation that has served New Zealand incredibly well for the better part of 30 years,” he said. Solander backed five year catch decisions, supported the OIA carve out for boat camera footage and opposed the 20 day judicial review clock.
The country’s largest Maori owned seafood company, Moana New Zealand, struck a middle position. General manager Mark Ngata said the firm had been using onboard cameras for eight years before they became mandatory and was open to an independent officer of Parliament reviewing the footage, but did not want it released publicly because of privacy concerns for crews. “We believe that having an organisation like the ministry out there that’s that watchdog, if you like, we think that’s more than sufficient,” Ngata said.
Marine educator Steve Hathaway of Young Ocean Explorers gave the committee a long memory test. He told MPs an older friend had once refused to drop a line at Ninety Mile Beach until the water turned pink with snapper because that was the signal there were enough fish for a feed. “These days are long gone,” Hathaway said. He said abundant crayfish and scallops, once treated as a birthright, had collapsed to the point where parts of Northland are now closed to recreational harvest.
The Primary Production select committee will hear further submissions in the coming weeks before reporting back to the House. The submissions made on Monday set the political problem for the government plainly. The bill has the backing of much of the commercial sector and is being sold as a productivity reform, but the public faces of opposition now include an Olympic gold medallist, the country’s second largest regional council and a Treaty settlement entity arguing the Crown has not kept its word.
With the next general election due later this year, every coastal seat will be paying attention to how the committee handles the camera footage clause and the consultation complaint. Use our voting tool to see where each party sits on environmental and fisheries policy before you cast your ballot.
What do you think, is the Fisheries Amendment Bill a sensible modernisation of a 40 year old quota system, or is it a rollback of the few environmental checks New Zealand had left? Leave a comment below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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