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MPI betray Hawkes Bay fishers
Dave Turner
How does it feel to be completely betrayed by the MPI who are tasked with the management of our inshore fishery around the New Zealand coastline? These people in MPI don’t appear to be account-
able to anyone as they get away scot free botch up after botch up. They are no better than the predators and rats that the ‘pfnz’ plan to eradicate from our forests as they continue to deny there is an is-
sue with the fishery and blatantly ignore pleas for help from the recreational fishing groups in the Hawkes Bay area and nationally. Our social media is full of recreational fishers who are sick and tired of being ignored but the MPI and government appear to take no notice. Boat ramp surveys by the Hawkes Bay fishing clubs have proven a severe decline yet Turner refuses to acknowledge and deal with the issues, all the time allowing commercial fishing to continue unabated, even while a commercial fishing company is under investigation for 350 fishing crimes. This company should have been closed down, boats confiscated and sackings, yet the MPI has failed to address the rebuild of the stock, in favour of employment and the export contracts. Promise after promise has come to nothing and now the Hawkes Bay Council with the local MP have got involved. But nothing has come of this either. Are the MPI completely out of control and deliberately refusing to act? The answer has to be yes. Nathan Guy MUST BE made and HELD accountable for his complete and utter refusal to assist local fishers. He has turned his back on Hawkes
Bay recreational fishers and shown his absolute support for commercial overfishing, so with the 2017 elections looming Nathan Guy and his Kapiti electorate must be made aware of his complete disregard. In fact he has done nothing for his own electorate fishers either, as commercial fishing vessels are frequently observed fishing through the Kapiti reserve. Even some of the commercial fishers, those that have a conscience, acknowledge a decline in the inshore fishing. Species like Gurnard, snapper, kahawai, terakihi, trevally, and hapuka have all declined in both numbers and size. The commercial fishers will continue to fish close inshore purely to save fuel costs until there are so few fish left it will not be financially viable for them to do so and will be forced to go further out. It’s time we learnt from overseas fisheries and from other people’s mistakes. Ten days before the total collapse of the Canadian cod fishery their Minister of Fisheries was spouting off on how healthy the fishery was. He did that because he wanted to extend the deal with South Korea. That caused an uprising that caused 1700 commercial fishing boats
to be tied up and his resignation. However the Canadians did not have a Treaty of Waitangi to deal with so could implement the closure straight away. We do not have that luxury. If you don’t pay iwi you will be in breach of the law under the Treaties Settlement Act. I will never agree with this but it is what it is and that needs to happen here urgently. The minster has the power under section 16(1)b the minister has emergency measures for a depleted fish stock to stop or restrict commercial fishing but he doesn’t have the ‘gonads’ to go against those companies that make huge donations to the national party. If ever there was a need to ban inshore trawling from within 12 nautical miles around New Zealand to better allow for recreational fishing then the time is now, especially for the Hawkes Bay and Bay of Plenty. The only fish left in many of these areas are where our reefs protect them or where there is clean sandy or muddy ground. MPI are still hell bent on the double the value of the export by 2025. This economic policy should never have been applied to the wild fish stock of NZ. Many fish stocks in NZ will be destroyed because
of this stupidity by the government when the only realistic way to achieve this goal is Aquaculture. The Fishing and Outdoors newspaper is now focusing our complete attention on exposing the corruption and deceit in the MPI and on generating widespread public support to have commercial fishing completely banned from the inshore fishery. We ask recreational fishers to start making their neighbours, friends and family aware of the MPI’s refusal to help and for the public to recall what our politicians have refused to do when they go to the polling booths next year. If we don’t do this then we deserve the worst. Iwi will not move outside any chart line around New Zealand without compensation. Trying to achieve this without financial compensation is a waste of time and effort. This would only result in more wasted time and costly court actions Recreational fishers have to get their heads around this and get over it. We say write out a big cheque and get rid of the scumbags as without a good sized cheque they won’t move an inch. The sooner we buy back the water forever that was given as compensation to iwi, the cheaper the purchase will be.
Compensation must be paid Compensation for commercial fishers is a real road block for Legasea. Right or wrong let’s look at this road block to negotiations on banning all commercial vessels from fishing inside the 12 nautical mile chart line. Should we pay commercial fishers tax payer money for the loss of water space when they don’t have a quota cut? Really that’s it in a nutshell. If we look at the facts we may get some head way. Firstly if you take away the right of the commercial fisher to fish close into the shore line, it will cost more for them in fuel and engine hours to fish further outside the 12nm line. Secondly, it will cost more fishing days as well, as there will be times that not having the option of close water sheltered fishing will mean no fishing. Not funny when this is your living. Then really the big fly in the ointment is Iwi. Their fishing quota was given to them as compensation for loss of rights and or breaches of the Waitangi Treaty. If you give compensation to a group of people that own a 1 billion dollar asset and then say sorry, but you can’t fish in 10% of it or its going to cost you 10% more to fish it, then you
have effectively eroded the compensation you have given them by 10%. These are the facts whether you agree with them or not. Legasea have taken the moral high ground on this. I agree that the commercial fishers should never have been given ownership of the commercial fishery, but they have. I agree that Iwi should never have been given their share of the fishery as compensation but they have, they should have been given cash. The fact is these stakeholders do own the fishery and the law says so. In a meeting with Winston Peters, Richard Prosser, NZ First, Rhys Smith, Graham Carter Fishing Outdoors newspaper, Scott Macindoe, and Richard Baker Legasea; Winston Peters told Scott Macindoe that legally, compensation would have to be paid and it is also cheaper than going to court and losing. He gave the example of what Bill Birch did in relation to a land deal he was involved in. Basically it came down to this, Bill Birch got bloody minded about paying compensation and in the end lost in court and this cost the tax payer more than twice the amount in the long run. The other side of the coin is that if
you give out a good compensation package many of the commercial fishers that are struggling will jump rather than having to be pushed. Especially when the Westpac Bank reports that the commercial fishing industry is in dire straights. Also if there is a good ‘straight up’ deal on the table, it could save years in meeting times and travel. There is a matter of emergency for places like the Hawkes Bay and the Bay of Plenty where the fish stock is still declining, in fish size and bio mas, while the commercial fishers are still allowed to continue fishing there. The sooner we can settle and have an ‘export free’ inshore fishery, the better it will be for the fish and the cheaper it will be for the taxpayer. The alternative really is a collapse of the fishery entirely, while we spend another two or three years talking about it. A lot of the compensation money will end up being spent in NZ so you could say a boost of say one billion$ to local communities, what is the cost of forever? Whatever the cost is, if the export industry is outside the inshore line forever it will be worth it.
‘The Call of the Crays’
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