Published in NZ Fishing World, March 2025

Shane Jones, Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, only has himself to blame for any political downside coming his Coalition’s way after releasing the latest set of radical proposals to privatise New Zealand’s fisheries. A LegaSea campaign pushing back against the proposals is underway now and requires strong opposition from the public before it’s too late. Submission deadline is 28 March.

We only have 32 working days to trawl through the current 71-page proposal document. Currently, our expert fisheries team at the New Zealand Sport Fishing Council is working through the document while LegaSea is managing the public awareness aspects. Together, we will be responding in a fulsome way as there’s no way we will stand by and watch as existing environmental protections are dismantled in favour of fast-track changes to allow for more fish to be caught and exported.

Fisheries New Zealand has spent the last six months working alongside commercial interests to develop a set of changes that transfers public property rights to our fish, into the hands of wealthy investors in quota shares. This transaction requires legislative change. If there is insufficient public opposition to the proposals, the next step is a government Bill and Select Committee process, where commercial interests have historically held greater sway.

What’s more, the Minister is proposing to hand over the steering wheel to commercial interests, so they can decide when and how much fish they catch or how many they might save for later. Public consultation as we know it will also be gone. We may get an opportunity to submit once every five years, but that may be too late to save a fish stock from collapsing. As usual, the downside risk is carried by the public.

The strict guardrails of sustainability, mandatory taking into account the effects of fishing, and full fish population assessments will be relegated to the background. The recent Court judgments directing the Minister to act in a precautionary manner will be dismissed, as investment in research is pared back and management instead relies on self-reported commercial catch records.

In its place will be a more ‘responsive’ system that relies on commercial rights holders leaving enough fish in the water to satisfy our environmental, social, cultural and sustenance needs. Yeah right!

Without using the term, this is privatisation of our fish resources. Privatisation means the Minister is no longer required to set aside an allowance to provide for our interests, before he allocates any remainder to commercial interests. Instead, he can allocate a strict quota that we all have to share. At that stage we become part of the Quota Management System (QMS).

That means having to wrestle with quota owners for a proportional share of the total allowable catch. Reporting our daily catches and licensing is inevitable.

This is the first tranche of amendments to the Fisheries Act that signal significant changes to our fishing future. All cloaked in weasel speak.

Do not sit on your hands on this issue. Make your submission before 28 March. Have your say here.

‘In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends’. Martin Luther King 1965