May 15, 2013
Foreign flagged fishing changes scaled back
The Government is scaling back new rules for foreign charter fishing vessels.
A bill being considered by the primary production select committee would have required all vessels fishing in New Zealand waters to fly a New Zealand flag, making them subject to this country's labour, health and safety laws.
Critics say the bill goes much further than the recommendations of a ministerial review that found evidence of low wages and bad conditions on some vessels.
Iwi also warn that the proposed changes will increase the cost of catching high volume, low value species, which would reduce the value of the Māori fisheries settlement.
Today Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy told the Māori Fisheries Conference in Auckland that not all vessels will need to be reflagged.
"The reflagging is going to apply to those vessels that have a foreign chartered crew on them. It was going to capture a lot of inshore guys, so there has been a review of that through the select committee process and the focus is going to be on the foreign chartered crews," he says.
Plans to increase the powers of the director general of fisheries will also be dropped, because the current powers are sufficient to do the job.
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