That may be. But as Jean-Jacques Rousseau<\/a> once said, Shane is born free but everywhere is in chains. Despite the matua\u2019s claim to only have one guiding light, dozens, hundreds, perhaps even millions of non-Winston-Peters-shaped entities are claiming credit for making him U-turn on the most controversial proposal in his bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n Which one was it that made him execute his backward political manoeuvre? Though the suspect list is long, it starts with the prime minister. Luxon\u2019s statement<\/a>, put out at 1.32pm on Wednesday, drew a direct link between a meeting with Jones and the small fish backflip. \u201cThis morning I spoke to New Zealand First minister Shane Jones and he agreed to take out the sections of the Fisheries Amendment Bill that remove the minimum size limits,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n But did another part of the coalition actually save the sprats? \u201cI gotta tell you, we\u2019re not happy about this bill,\u201d Act leader David Seymour told people tuning in to a live Q&A on his Facebook<\/a> page on Tuesday night. When the exemption was dropped the following day, his conservation spokesman Cameron Luxton put it down to Act\u2019s concern-sharing abilities<\/a>. \u201cFishers spoke up, Act listened and shared those concerns, and now we\u2019re seeing a better outcome,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The opposition also credited the reversal to its own efforts to channel the raw power of concern. Green co-leader Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick may have the most convincing claim. \u201cThe Greens ardently oppose this complete nonsense and will be doing everything in our power to ensure that it does not pass,\u201d she said in a video posted to Facebook at 1.07pm on Wednesday. The Greens may be more powerful than we thought, because within 20 minutes of that video being posted, Jones backed down.<\/p>\n Several of these politicians said \u201cpeople power<\/a>\u201d had ultimately driven the government to rethink its position on offing baby snapper. The most powerful may have been Ultimate Fishing TV host Matt Watson. He ran a campaign against Jones\u2019 bill, saying the minister was just serving his \u201cfriends in the commercial fishing industry\u201d<\/a>. \u201cThere is no other logical explanation. You just have to look where the donations are coming from. How outspoken he\u2019s been. He is paying the piper.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones responded with a series of increasingly enigmatic insults. \u201cWell look, there is the saga of the small tail fish, reflective of the biology of the person you\u2019re referring to,\u201d said Jones, when asked about Watson in one media conference, before walking off stage. \u201cMake of that what you will, I\u2019m not sure the minister of oceans and fisheries was making a lot of sense there,\u201d responded a confused Samantha Hayes on Three News. In another interview, he accused Watson and others of mixing their messages, or in his words, \u201ctalking out of different orifices<\/a>\u201c.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the end, the small fish with at least two orifices claimed victory. It was backed by an army of recreational fishers and everyday New Zealanders, who spent weeks tipping angry comments into politicians\u2019 social media channels like chum over the side of a commercial fishing vessel.\u00a0<\/p>\n But what would fishers be without fishes? They\u2019ve spent the last few decades being systematically annihilated by bottom trawling and other unsustainable practices which have left New Zealand\u2019s stocks severely depleted. Surely the voice of baby tarakihi, snapper and indeed trevally spoke loudly.<\/p>\n By the time Jones actually carried out his backdown, most New Zealanders on both land and sea had issued some kind of denunciation of him. The only ones not under suspicion were Jones himself, the fishing industry and large fish. \u201cSanta Claus seemed to be the only person not claiming to have put a stop to this controversial change yesterday, that\u2019s how insane it all got,\u201d said RNZ political editor Jo Moir on Thursday morning. Santa Claus couldn\u2019t be reached for comment. But the Santa Claus guppy is a small pet fish, available locally for $16, and it would surely be against Jones\u2019 legislation. Just like everyone else, it deserves some credit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At this point, the only ones not claiming credit for Jones\u2019 fish size backdown are Jones himself, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[186277,3087,111,43,139,69,2114,135,12243],"class_list":["post-351633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-fish-dumping","tag-fishing","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opinion","tag-politics","tag-shane-jones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A phrase seldom heard before.<\/p>\n