Quota not for sale— Sealord

Press, 24 September 1988, Page 3

Quota not for sale— Sealord

PA Wellington Compulsory acquisition of fishing quotas under the Maori Fisheries Bill — introduced to Parliament yesterday — is totally unacceptable to the industry, the chief executive of Australasia’s biggest fish-processing company says. “The Government now appears to be legislating to actually take quota off us, in the event that they can’t buy it on the open market,” the chief executive of Nelson-based Sealord Products, Dr Brian Rhoades, said. The apparent intention to compulsorily acquire quotas, if necessary to give 2.5 per cent of the resource licences to Maori each year cut across all recent assurances given to fishermen by the Government. “They have consistently said that our rights will be protected,” he said. “We have no quota to sell to the Crown for use by Maori because we need it all to support the jobs of our 750 staff, to service the $6O million of assets we have built up in plant and fishing vessels over the years, and to continue to earn up to $lOO million a year in overseas earnings for this country,” he said.

Dr Rhoades also said Maori fishery owners would need a sophisticated and expensive organisation to successfully use the fishing quotas to be made available to them by the Government,