THE PRESS MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1987. The price of fish

Press, 30 November 1987, Page 16

THE PRESS MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1987. The price of fish

The Government’s decision to defer replacement of the fisheries research vessel James Cook is short-sighted penny-pinching. Only a matter of weeks ago the Cabinet approved an $18.5 million replacement for the ageing James Cook. The money was to have been made available through the Supplementary Estimates that will be submitted to Parliament for approval in a couple of weeks time. The acting Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Mr Butcher, has confirmed that the item now has been cut from the estimates, presumably as part of some tough cost-cutting by a Government trying to achieve the Budget surplus it promised. When the Cabinet’s development and marketing committee approved plans for a specialised deep-water research ship to replace the James Cook, the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Mr Moyle, said that the Government was making millions of dollars from selling quotas and fish resource licences, and that the Government was returning some of these funds to the benefit of the fishing industry. If anything, Mr Moyle understated the case. Nonetheless, the perfectly valid arguments of a few months ago have been rejected by the Treasury and the Minister of Finance, Mr Douglas. Since April, this year, a fisheries fund was established for the management of and research into New Zealand’s fisheries. As a result, all expenditure and revenue relating to fisheries is excluded from the Ministry’s Vote and the activity is operated entirely separately as a self-contained revolving fund. The total cost in the present financial year of the fisheries programme, known as MAFFish, is $29.3 million. The Government will cream more than $62 million this year from fisheries, almost $56.5 million from direct receipts and a further $5.6 million from GST. Thus the fund is budgeted to provide a credit of more than $32:7 million this year — almost enough to buy two new vessels.

Beyond the Budget estimates is a fuller picture that is even more revealing. Last year the Government netted some $76 million not budgeted for from the sale of extra hoki and orange roughy quotas. Exports of wetfish alone — that is not counting crayfish, oysters, or squid — earn New Zealand some $250 million a year. When this is set against the Government’s already frugal commitment to fisheries research, it is obvious that the taxpayers are getting value for money, Jeopardising the resource simply so a greater credit remains in the MAFFish fund at balance date to offset the Government’s overdraft somewhere else makes no sense. Few sea-girt countries in the developed world pay as little regard to the study of the surrounding ocean as does New Zealand. The Exclusive Economic Zone entrusted to New Zealand covers 3.1 million square kilometres, one of the largest E.E.ZS in the world. The fish in the waters off our coasts attract the world’s most efficient fleets, yet knowledge of the stocks and level of safe harvesting is vague. The whole premise of the Government’s fisheries management policy presupposes an accurate reassessment each year of commercial fish stocks. And what has this to do with the price of fish in New Zealand shops? Just about everything, since the Government’s policies not only determine the size and health of the domestic fishing industry but also the amount of fish that can be taken each year, controlling the supply side of the supply-and-demand equation. If the sums are wrong, or based on inadequate or inaccurate data, the future of the resource is thrown into doubt and with it the supply of reasonably priced fish on local markets. The Government can well afford to plough a little of its bountiful income from fishing back into the industry; the industry can ill-afford an unnecessary' delay in the replacement of an essential management tool just to make the figures look better for Mr Douglas.