WAATEA NEWS COLUMN: Fishing scandal a stink on us all
The bewildering revelations by Newshub of the massive overfishing of our precious sea food and the apparent collusion with the Ministry of Primary Industries have dumped the stench of rotten fish upon us all.
Recreational fishermen and local Maori are forced to jump through hoops for their catch, yet here we have huge companies committing grotesque wastage for almost 50 years and the Ministry supposed to police it actually enabling it!
Where is the accountability and punishment handed out to these companies for what they have been doing? How can those doing the least damage to our fisheries be the ones who bear the full focus of punishment?
The response from the industry has been immature, belittling and childish. The Seafood NZ chief executive has called the report ‘highly politicised’, written by ‘activist academics’ and ‘green imperialists’. Such juvenile comments do nothing whatsoever to ease concerns that the industry has been causing massive damage to our fishery stocks and that the Ministry has allowed them to do it.
We are facing traumatic environmental change from global warming, our natural resources need a sustainable hand currently missing from the fishing industry and those charged with policing it.
Bloody good show last night Martyn!
First class panel also, and we owe our hero Dr Glenn Simmons for his truly herculean exposure of this corrupt Government department and minister.
This minister needs to be fired and banned ever from serving as a minister ever again!!!!
It was so shameful of him to collude to cover up the dumping of fish for their size and type even when they were legally caught!!!!
This Minister over saw a large radio advertising jiggle “Every fish caught” drive to limit all recreation fishing practices hard.
We know of cases where they came down very heavy on any over fishing of recreational fishing folks it found with anything carried out illegally such as taking of their equipment and heavy fines.
While this same regulatory regime were leaving commercial fishery companies illegally dumping over quote fish stock because they were not pre-ordered by the customer alone to carry these practices out in broad daylight!!!!
So we heard that they dump fish also on the Asian markets for less than $2 a kg which is below break point of making money???
This industry needs a complete overhaul now and return to the mandatory fish and take all quota system to stop over fishing practices and waste and bar the Minister from ever again in future from retaining a parliamentary position.
Summing it up nicely Cleangreen!