{"id":923001,"date":"2026-10-10T11:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T11:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/923001\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T11:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T11:50:10","slug":"opponents-label-nationals-fishing-policy-desperate-and-a-flip-flop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/923001\/","title":{"rendered":"Opponents label National’s fishing policy ‘desperate’ and a ‘flip-flop’"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Zealand First says National’s fishing policy is desperate and unresearched, and would have huge impacts on employment and the costs of fish.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, environmental groups and parties to National’s left say National cannot be trusted on the issue, given the party’s track record this term.<\/p>\n

After a spearfishing trip departing from Auckland’s Takapuna Beach on Saturday, National leader Christopher Luxon announced the policy to ban ring-net fishing in the Hauraki Gulf<\/a>, establish a new Waiheke Island marine reserve, ban commercial sales of marlin, and review bottom trawling on sea mounts with a view to reducing use of the technique over time.<\/p>\n

‘Desperate and unresearched’ – Peters<\/p>\n

NZ First’s Shane Jones has been championing the fishing industry this term of government, so the policy would appear to be a shot across his bow – and Luxon said he did not care what Jones might think of it.<\/p>\n

NZ First leader Winston Peters, after what he said was a “wall to wall” public meeting in Invercargill, suggested the consequences had not been thought through.<\/p>\n

“It’s rather desperate and it’s rather unresearched as to the consequences of what they propose to do, both with respect to the workers and the fishermen and fisherwomen, and everybody’s involved in the market, but also the customers and the cost of fish going forward,” Peters said.<\/p>\n

“I don’t understand why he’s actually making that announcement because there’s been a lot of work and a lot of research going into the total consequences of such decisions, and it’s premature to arrive at that because the work in its totality hasn’t been done.”<\/p>\n

However, he would not commit to opposing the policy in coalition negotiations.<\/p>\n

“Look, we just heard about it today so we’re not going to rush to judgement on it, but … when you’re forced to check out what you’ve just heard – to its authenticity and its veracity, and its utility and its workability – it’s not going to survive that test.<\/p>\n

“We’d be opposed to it but we need the time to work on that – but I was actually quite surprised that they would make such a premature announcement.”<\/p>\n

He said the policy went against what the government had been trying to do over the past term.<\/p>\n

“We’ve tried to keep in mind two things: there are thousands of workers involved, and there are also hundreds of thousands of customers involved – and within a cost of living crisis like we have, those sorts of costs are significant.”<\/p>\n

‘Really disappointing’ – Forest and Bird<\/p>\n

Forest and Bird spokesperson Bianca Ranson said Labour and the Greens had offered support to National on a ring-net ban for Hauraki, so there was “no need to compromise those high protection areas by allowing fishing in them”.<\/p>\n

She said the Waiheke Marine Reserve proposal had been “sitting on their desk” for nearly two years, and the decision could have been made already.<\/p>\n

“It’s great to see some energy around protection for the gulf, but it is very much a case of why did they not act on it this term?”<\/p>\n

National seemed to be using the issue’s popularity to score points, she said.<\/p>\n

“It’s very clear that bottom trawling on the Hauraki Gulf is an election issue, we’ve been campaigning hard on it. There’s overwhelming social licence; people want to see action in the gulf … what has been announced today could have been done this term. It feels quite unfair to hear they’re announcing these things when they’ve literally had the power to be able to enact them.”<\/p>\n

National can’t be trusted on oceans policy – Labour, Greens<\/p>\n

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said National’s time in government suggested it would do the opposite of what it campaigned on, and the party could not be trusted.<\/p>\n

“When we announced protections around the Hauraki Gulf when we were in government, the National Party said that they didn’t go far enough and they supported them, and then in government, undid much of the work that we were doing.”<\/p>\n

Hipkins said Labour was committed to banning bottom trawling in the Hauraki Gulf<\/a>, but in terms of scaling up a ban in New Zealand’s EEZ, there was more work to do.<\/p>\n

“It can’t be done immediately. There’s a need for us still to fish. There’s jobs associated with that. As new technology emerges, and we’ve invested as a country in quite a lot of research and development in this area, we need to do more of that so that we can work out how to do fishing more sustainably and with less environmental impact.”<\/p>\n

Greens co-leader Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick also said the policy showed National could not be trusted on oceans policy.<\/p>\n

“When we were going through the amendment to the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act … we ended up with a proposal for these high protection areas, and then at the 11th hour ministers of this government had a backroom meeting and decided to create carve-outs in those so-called high protection areas to allow ring-net commercial fishers to continue fishing.<\/p>\n

“Now they’re turning around, understanding how deeply unpopular this is and saying they’re going to campaign on undoing it. You cannot trust the National Party when it comes to conservation.”<\/p>\n

Opportunity Party welcomes shift<\/p>\n

The Opportunity Party also noted much of the policy could have been progressed in the last three years, but welcomed the new approach.<\/p>\n

Oceans and fisheries spokesperson Kayla Kingdon-Bebb said National did not need to rely on New Zealand First in the first place to get the legislation that created the high protection areas – including the exemptions – over the line.<\/p>\n

“Parties on the other side of the House would have supported it. There was absolutely no need to exempt commercial fishing from those two areas in the first place. So I think it’s pretty interesting to see that National’s now campaigning on reversing a decision it didn’t actually have to make in the last term.”<\/p>\n

One of Opportunity’s five bottom lines is an immediate end to bottom trawling in inshore areas such as the Hauraki Gulf, followed by a complete phase-out.<\/p>\n

Leader Qiulae Wong said National had “clearly been led astray by some of their coalition partners” this term and wanted to see the party go further.<\/p>\n

“What would it have been if they’d had a strong environmental voice at the table the last couple of years? We would have seen less flip-flopping on this kind of policy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand First says National’s fishing policy is desperate and unresearched, and would have huge impacts on employment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-923001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}