The Government is congratulating itself for a tactical backdown on commercial harvesting of baby fish, but this is a strategic retreat that leaves the The Fisheries Amendment Bill’s most dangerous flaws intact. We are looking at a future where the health of our moana is locked inside an automated “black box” of industry-aligned rules and corporate secrecy.
Poor management let industry destroy our kuku / green-lipped mussel beds, our tipa / scallop beds and our rocky reefs, leaving the public to foot the bill for restoration. Clause 12A now creates “legal blindness,” allowing the Minister to ignore environmental disasters if they were “allowed for” when a rule was first made. Meanwhile, Clause 14 provides a legal “exit ramp” to dump dead bycatch—including sharks and rays—back into the sea to clear the industrial fishing vessel’s record of destruction.
This Bill creates a “transparency black hole” by shielding critical environmental data from the public:
- OIA exemptions: Camera footage of bycatch risks being treated as proprietary commercial information.
- Silencing the public: Clause 8 removes the requirement for the Minister to consult when applying these pre-set rules.
- Crazy rules: The Bill fails to fix the “legislative quirk” where endangered native whitebait have fewer protections than introduced trout.
We need a system that prioritises native biodiversity over commercial convenience. The Government must stop managing the decline and move towards Ecosystem Based Management.
My full submission on the The Fisheries Amendment Bill here