Corrupt, criminal secrecy

Fishing is a criminal industry. Fishers routinely lie about catch sizes, illegally dump bycatch, and cover up the murder of protected species. After a long campaign by NGOs in the 2010s, the Ardern government was finally dragged (kicking and screaming, against the wishes of two corrupt fisheries ministers) into putting cameras on boats to ensure criminal behaviour could be monitored and deterred. The fishing industry felt that this was unjust, and immediately began lobbying and bribing to have the footage declared a state secret, so it could never be used by NGOs to hold them to account. And they've got what they wanted. The new Fisheries Amendment Bill, introduced today, includes one of the most draconian secrecy clauses I have ever seen, with protections exceeding those given to classified security information.

First up, all fisheries camera recordings are declared exempt from the Official Information Act. But that's not enough for the fishing industry. There is also a clause that they cannot be disclosed outside the ministry, except to certain agencies or for certain purposes. Any other disclosure, or disclosure by anyone it has been lawfully passed on to, is a criminal offence, with a penalty of a $50,000 fine. And naturally, there's no whistleblower exemption (so if a recording exposes serious wrongdoing, and the ministry refuses to act on it, reporting it to appropriate whistleblower authorities is a crime. Which is one way of the criminal industry preventing anyone bypassing its captive regulator...)

This information isn't a threat to national security. It doesn't endanger the maintenance of the law, or any any person's safety. Its not even commercially sensitive. If it was any of these things, the law wouldn't be necessary. Instead, its potential exposure - and the potential for the exposure of their crimes, and for oversight of MPI to ensure they enforce the law properly - hurts the poor widdle fee-fees of the fishing industry. And that, to this regime, is "an important public purpose", proportionate to the consequent destruction of our BORA-affirmed right to free expression (which includes the right to receive information), and the least infringement on that right, and so a measure which can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

That is simply bullshit. Protecting a corrupt criminal industry and its captive regulator from public scrutiny is not an important public purpose. It is the very opposite of a public purpose. But its what happens when you put a man who has taken tens of thousands of dollars from that industry in the position of regulator.

This bill is simply an affront to democracy. It is an abuse of our human rights, an insult to transparency, and the product of corruption. It should not be allowed to pass.

Secrecy to protect criminals

Fishing is a criminal industry, with fishers routinely violating quotas, under-reporting bycatch, and engaging in fraud to profit from pillaging the ocean. To stop this criminality, the government has finally been dragged into putting cameras on fishing boats, so they can monitor what is caught and ensure fishers obey the law. But fisheries minister Shame Jones is a bought-and-paid-for tool of the fishing industry, so he's decided that the resulting footage will be exempted from the Official Information Act:

An overhaul of fisheries rules will allow greater catch limits when fish are abundant and stop on-board camera footage being made public.

[...]

The move to exclude footage from the OIA was supported by Seafood New Zealand.

Chief executive Lisa Futschek said while it supported cameras on fishing vessels, they were a tool for "verification, not vilification".

"We accept that the regulator should have access to footage to ensure that we are doing what we say we do, but to enable members of the general public to see this footage is unfair," she said.

Which is exactly what burglars would say about security cameras, or police child-pornographers would say about their computer-use being audited. As for "vilification", if the fishing industry doesn't want to be vilified, they should not behave like villains. Simple.

As for the policy, there's a strong legal argument against it - OIA exemptions violate the BORA-affirmed right to freedom of expression, so must be demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society. But "protecting fishers poor little fee-fees" isn't an "important public purpose", and that's before we even get to questions of proportionality. But beyond that, the reason we have cameras is because MPI (and its predecessor Fisheries NZ) were completely captured by the industry they were supposed to be regulating, and was ignoring its serious crimes, until their enforcement reports were leaked and OIA'd, creating public pressure for them to do their job properly. The lesson here is that transparency is vital to keep the regulator honest and prevent capture. All secrecy does is protect criminals. But then, that's precisely why the fishing industry and their $10,000 mouthpiece Jones support it.

Another attack on the rule of law

Over the past few years New Zealand fisheries ministers have been repeatedly found to have acted illegally in their quota decisions, ignoring the Fisheries Act's environmental and information principles and setting quota at unlawfully high levels to pander to the fishing industry. But current fisheries minister Shame Jones has a solution: ban court cases:

But a “frustrated” Jones is signalling a dramatic response: he’s considering changing the law to limit such court action altogether.

In an interview with The Post, Jones said he had asked officials to review the Fisheries Act to determine whether it had become “weaponised” by environmental groups.

[...]

“The frequency of this litigious activity has caused me to explore with the officials as to whether or not the law is fit for purpose,” he said.

“We cannot have a situation where we’re outsourcing to litigants and the judiciary the statutory role of resource management on behalf of the citizens of New Zealand.”

But of course that wouldn't be happening if ministers were obeying the law in the first place. The problem here is not the courts - it is consistently unlawful behaviour by ministers, who seem to regard the whims of their fishing industry donors as being more important than the law.

More generally, interpreting the law and ensuring that the government actually follows it are key duties of the courts. When you remove that, you don't have legal government in any real sense. Instead you have the arbitrary whims of a dictator. That may suit Jones very well - he's made no secret of his authoritarian and autocratic inclinations. But I don't think it suits kiwis at all. But if Jones goes ahead and pushes this through in his narrowing time window before the election, it will simply be another piece of bad law to be nuked in the next government's Omnibus Repeal Bill.

The dishonest crown

The High Court has just ruled that the government has been violating one of the oldest Treaty settlements, the Sealord deal:

The High Court has found the Crown has breached one of New Zealand's oldest Treaty Settlements by appropriating Māori fishing quota without compensation.

It relates to the 1992 Fisheries Settlement, commonly known as the Sealord Deal, which funded the purchase of a 50 percent stake in Sealord and protected Māori fishing rights and interests in perpetuity.

The court found the Crown had breached the 1992 settlement and by extension the Treaty of Waitangi.

The full ruling is here. The breach is due to the technical details of the government's quota management system, but it basically meant that Māori quota was stolen by the crown and reallocated to other fishing companies to pay off its debts. Its been going on for decades, so the amount of quota - and therefore money - involved is substantial.

But while the court has found a breach, it hasn't ordered any relief, so the obvious question is what the government will do next: enter good-faith negotiations to make good its breach and compensate for the wrong? Or pass "fuck you" legislation because they don't really think Treaty settlements are binding on them? And if the latter, what do they think it will do to all the other settlements - and their claims of being "full and final" - that they have passed?

Cleaning up the fishing industry

The government is finally cleaning up the fishing industry, with cameras on boats and an end to high-grading, with an easier penalties regime to enforce it. Good. Because as we've seen over the years, the fishing industry is pervasively criminal, routinely violating the law on discarding fish and reporting bycatch. We've known the solution for years - actual enforcement and monitoring - but the government has been too chicken to do it. Now that has finally changed, and we should all be glad of it. Though there is the obvious question of why they're not doing it faster, rather than allowing some fishers to continue their criminal habits for years to come.

Let it die

The fishing industry is complaining in the Herald about their "labour shortage" and lamenting the fact that Young People These Days for some reason don't want to work for six weeks at a time doing hard, dangerous work on a boat in the middle of nowhere, and never seeing their loved ones (or acquiring any). Funny that. People expect more from their work and more from their lives now, and industries which don't support and enable that are obviously going to have trouble attracting workers. They can counteract that to a certain extent with money, but even then they're only going to get temporary staff, not people who want to make a career of it.

In which case, maybe we should just accept the reality. People don't want to do these jobs anymore. So maybe the industry should shrink to match the available workforce, rather than whining piteously for more people to exploit and abuse.

We should not subsidise a criminal industry

Fishing is a criminal and environmentally destructive industry which ignores the law while corrupting our democracy. Last year, their addiction to foreign slave-labour saw them bring Covid into the country. So naturally, they're expecting us to pay for an advertising campaign to recruit more people:

Taxpayers are being asked to stump up for half the cost of a TV ad campaign to attract more people to the fishing sector.

The details are revealed in correspondence between Sealord and the Ministry for Primary Industries on steps taken to encourage New Zealanders into the industry.

It was all part of an agreement the sector signed with the government in return for being allowed to bring in 570 fishers from Russia and Ukraine, signed by Sealord, Independent, Aurora, Sanford and Maruha.

What next? Government-funded ads to recruit people to a career as tax-cheats and money launderers?

But I guess this is just another example of the corrupt relationship between the fishing industry and this government. Even after the departure of Shane Jones and Winston Peters, it is still getting what it pays for.

Good riddance

The border closure and resulting lack of foreign slave-workers is driving the fishing industry out of business:

One fishing company is effectively out of business while others are bracing for large financial hits as the deepwater New Zealand industry, unable to get skilled foreign workers into the country, have begun tying up vessels.

At least three New Zealand-flagged big autonomous trawler reefer (BATM) deepwater vessels associated with Canterbury-based Independent fisheries have been tied up at Lyttleton as it repatriated its Russian and Ukranian crew following the end of their visa periods.

Nelson-based fishing company Sealord is likely to follow suit by October 1 with its Ukrainian and Russian crews of Meridian and Profesor Aleksandrov heading home after working in New Zealand since November.

Good riddance: fishing is a criminal and environmentally destructive industry which ignores the law while corrupting our democracy. Its reliant on foreign workers because (like farming) it is an industry no-one wants to be a part of, with low pay and appalling conditions - basicly, you don't get to have a life, or a family, and the wages come nowhere near compensating for that. We shouldn't shed a single tear over it, and if we're lucky, these troubles will kill off some of the current players and allow them to be replaced by more ethical and sustainable competitors.

Why we need cameras on boats

In case anyone needed further convincing, there's another example today of why we need cameras on fishing boats: reported seabird bycatch doubled during a camera trial:

Commercial fishers operating off Auckland's coast around vulnerable seabirds are twice as likely to report accidentally capturing them when cameras are on board.

That's according to a trial where bottom-longline fishers voluntarily carried cameras on their boats to see how practices affected the nationally vulnerable black petrel - the species most at risk from commercial fisheries in New Zealand.

A Fisheries NZ report on the trial, over 2016/2017, found seabird captures on the pilot fleet, operating in the Hauraki Gulf and Bay of Plenty, was around twice as high when the vessels had cameras on board than when they were without cameras.

It is highly unlikely that these boats were accidentally catching seabirds twice as often only when cameras were on board. Instead, it seems more likely that they were always catching this many, and simply not reporting it. Which is a crime, and something we should be trying to prosecute them for.

More bullshit half-measures

After dragging its feet for three years, the government has finally announced a plan to put cameras on fishing boats. Unfortunately, its a little underwhelming:

Minister of Fisheries Stuart Nash has announced a large cash investment from the Government to roll out cameras on commercial fishing vessels.

Nash made the announcement on TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning, saying between $40 million and $60 million will used to pay for the cameras. The funding will be rolled out by the end of 2021.

[...]

Nash said by the end of 2024 there will be 345 cameras installed - about 84 per cent of the inshore fleet.

According to Greenpeace, there are ~1500 registered fishing boats. So we're actually looking at cameras on 20% of the fleet, a mere 11 years after trials began. And when you consider the pervasive criminality of the fishing industry - how widespread high-grading, under-reporting, and dumping is, it just looks like more bullshit half measures, a PR solution designed to look like the government is doing something, rather than real action. But then, that's what you get from Labour on everything.

What would real regulation look like? Cameras and observers on every boat to stop fishers from cheating. Cuts to quota to ensure fisheries are truly sustainable. And actual prosecutions, with jail time and boat seizures and post-conviction profit forfeiture, to drive those who will not obey the law out of the industry permanently. Because "business as usual" for fishers is actually a serious crime, and the government should treat it as such.

This is how you deal with criminal fishers

In October 2018, Sealord's fishing boat Ocean Dawn repeatedly bottom-trawled in a Benthic Protection Area on the Chatham Rise. It was a crime which devastated a pristine marine environment. And today, they've been properly punished for it:

Sealord has today been ordered to forfeit a $24 million fishing vessel for bottom trawling in a protected area.

The company was also ordered to pay a $24,000 fine in Nelson District Court for trawling in a Benthic Protected Area.

[...]

In addition to the vessel Ocean Dawn being forfeit, the proceeds from the sale of the entire catch taken in the five offending trawls is also forfeit which amounts to $1,12294.13.

The captain and first mate were also convicted and fined. Hopefully it means they won't work in the industry again.

There will no doubt be appeals, but hopefully this penalty will stick. And its absolutely appropriate for a company which repeatedly violated a reserve. Hopefully it means that the fishing industry will get the message that this sort of criminality is not acceptable. And hopefully they'll start handing down similar penalties for catch fraud as well.

Even the fishing industry wants cameras

Over the past two years the government has repeatedly delayed a scheme to put cameras on boats to monitor Mew Zealand's pervasively criminal fishing industry. But it turns out that the industry actually wants cameras:

Three of the country's biggest seafood companies have broken ranks with the rest of the sector and declared their support for cameras on fishing boats.

[...]

Now Moana, Sanford and Sealord, accounting for 40 percent of this country's fishing quota, have said cameras would provide increased transparency and so should be installed.

Sanford chief executive Volker Kuntzsch said his company would be willing to pay for them if Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) was willing to cover the cost of analysing the footage.

So what's the hold up? Talleys, the other big player, doesn't want them. And Talleys donates heavily to New Zealand First, who then jerk Labour's chain. So Talleys gets space to engage in serious criminal activity, while those who want a clean fishing industry risk getting out-competed by criminals.

This is not a satisfactory situation. Fortunately we have a chance to correct it in three months, by voting the corrupt influence out of Parliament.

Nash lied

When the government refused to put cameras on fishing boats to ensure fishers obeyed the law, Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash claimed that coalition partner NZ First (which has received large donations from the fishing industry) was not responsible for the decision. He has repeated that claim repeatedly since then. But he was lying to us:

Newshub has obtained an explosive audio recording of Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash talking about NZ First MPs Winston Peters and Shane Jones.

The recording was from February 2018, around the time the Government first delayed the rollout of cameras on nearly 1000 fishing boats - since then it's been delayed again until at least October next year.

In it, Nash points the finger of blame squarely at them for delaying plans to put cameras on commercial fishing boats to make sure they don't break the law.

[...]

"I've got to play the political game in a way that allows me to make these changes. Now, Winston Peters and Shane Jones have made it very clear they do not want cameras on boats," Nash can be heard saying in a recording.

Nash has deliberately and repeatedly lied to the public in order to shield his coalition partner's corruption. That is dishonest and despicable, and he should resign. But this also confirms everything we feared about NZ First and corruption, and shows why they can never be trusted in government.

Getting what they paid for again

It looks like the fishing industry is still getting what they pay for:

The Government has again bowed to fishing industry pressure and refused to extend a marine reserve around Campbell Island, a subantarctic sanctuary recognised for its value in conserving and maintaining unique creatures.

Campbell Island/Motu Ihupuku is uninhabited and is New Zealand's southern-most island. It is accepted as one of the most pristine places on earth and an important breeding ground for seabirds and marine mammals.

The move has exposed a split between the Green Party and its Government partner Labour over protection of the oceans.

Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage says she backed enlarging the sanctuary. But she was overruled by Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash, who sided with industrial fishing interests.

There's no actual fishing down there, but the fishing industry opposes sanctuaries for ideological reasons: they hate the idea that there might be anywhere they are not allowed to pillage. They're not interested in sustainable management, they're not "stewards" ensuring a viable future for their industry, they're purely about environmental destruction. As for how to stop it, a first step is to vote out the politicians they've bought, and elect ones they can't buy.

Why we need cameras on fishing boats

Via Newsroom, the argument for why we need cameras on fishing boats in one graph:


It is pretty obvious what is going on here: a pervasively criminal industry under-reporting to avoid having to clean up its act. Rather than coddle them and drag their feet with endless delays, the government should enforce the law and police them properly.

Still getting what they paid for

Last year, in the face of public pressure to better regulate New Zealand's pervasively criminal fishing industry, the government finally anounced a bullshit trial scheme for cameras on boats. The trial would apply only to a limited number of boats fishing in Māui's dolphin habitat. But all fishing boats would eventually be required to have cameras, from 1 July this year.

The government has just quietly delayed that, until 1 October 2021 - a 15 month extension. There's no press release, and no explanation, so they were clearly hoping no-one would notice. And in the absence of any proper explanation, the only one we have is the history of large donations from the fishing industry to a key government Minister. I guess his donors are still getting what they paid for.

Still a criminal industry

More evidence that the fishing industry suffers from pervasive criminality, with Forest & Bird highlighting some odd numbers in the annual statistics:

The Annual Review Report For Highly Migratory Species Fisheries 2018/19 (Pg 4, Table 4) showed only 4% of commercial long lining trips for tuna and swordfish reported non-fish bycatch such as seabirds when there was no observer, but this jumped to 37% when there were Government observers on board.

“It’s simply unbelievable that a commercial fishing trip is nine times more likely to catch seabirds when there’s an observer on board,”says Mr Keey.

“The only reasonable conclusion is that on trips without observers fishers are breaching their legal obligation to honestly and accurately report bycatch,” says Mr Keey. It is not an offence to kill seabirds while fishing but it is an offence to fail to report catching them.

And this isn't a trivial offence. Submitting a false report is punishable by up to 5 years in jail and a $250,000 fine. As for what to do about it, the solution is obvious: a government observer on every boat, and make this criminal industry pay for it.

Another industry no-one wants to be a part of

We see regular stories from farmers and orchards complaining that no-one wants to work long hours in terrible conditions for poor pay in their shitty industry. And now, its fishers. But in the process, they neatly explain why:

"It's a hard existence. There is a reasonable amount of risk, they're away from home on a small vessel, living conditions aren't necessarily fantastic, and their ability to enjoy some of the other things in life, like play rugby, tends to become quite difficult.

"I just don't think younger people are prepared to make that commitment."

Or, to put it another way: if you are crew on a fishing boat, you don't get to have a life, or friends, or a partner. There's just a job, which pays the princely sum of $50,000 a year. Which you can get on land, without the danger or the long hours or the shit working conditions which stop you from having a life.

So yeah, its not surprising at all that no-one wants to work for them. And that's without considering the industry's reputation for being full of criminals and using slave labour. Like farming, its an industry that no-one who is not already part of their cult would ever want to be a part of.

Getting what they paid for again

Our fishing industry is pervasively criminal, with widespread under-reporting, dumping, and other illegal behaviour. The most effective way of stopping this crime is to put cameras on fishing boats to watch catches as they are brought aboard, enabling under-reporting, dumping nad high-grading to be detected, punished, and deterred. But thanks to a corrupt Minister who has been openly bought by the fishing industry, we're not getting that. Instead, we're getting another bullshit trial scheme:

Commercial fishing vessels deemed at risk of encountering endangered Māui dolphins will be required to operate with on-board cameras, the prime minister has announced.

Jacinda Ardern said just over $17 million had been set aside in the Budget for the purchase, installation and maintenance of the cameras, which will be required from November 1.

The new camera requirement will affect a small fraction of the more than 1000 commercial fishing boats in the country.

...all of which already carry human observers. So, we'll be watching the people who are already watched, while the huge hive of criminal activity elsewhere goes unmonitored and unpunished. And we'll be paying for it, rather than the criminal fishers.

This is bullshit. And its another example of the fishing industry getting what it paid for: a PR stunt rather than real action to clean them up.

Two-faced criminals

Last year, in a desperate attempt to regain social licence, the fishing industry ran an expensive series of TV ads assuring us that they had nothing to hide. Meanwhile, they were furiously lobbying the Minister to oppose video monitoring of fishing boats:

At the same time as the seafood industry was placing adverts on television last year proclaiming it had "nothing to hide", it was writing to the minister, Stuart Nash, expressing its "overwhelming opposition" to the idea of cameras on board its boats to monitor what they were up to.

The letter, released under the Official Information Act, said its purpose was to "dismiss any suggestion that the 'New Zealand Seafood industry' supports the current proposal".

For the removal of any doubt the words "do not support" were underlined.

Some of the signatories were redacted but amongst those still visible are managers at Talley's, Sealord, the Federation of Commercial Fishermen and Te Ohu Kai Moana, representing Māori fishing interests.

Forest and Bird spokesperson Karen Baird said it was a case of them saying one thing publicly while working towards a quite different outcome behind the scenes.

So I guess they do have something to hide after all. But what could it be? The illegal dumping of less-valuable fish? The criminal doctoring of records to understate catches? Or maybe the failure to report catching and killing endangered species? The problem here is that the fishing industry is pervasively criminal. They need to be treated as such, and monitored and prosecuted until they change their behaviour. Instead, our government - bought and paid for by Talley's - is doing the exact opposite.