![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/RCP_panel_hearing_changes_East_C.webp.jpeg\")
The solid green area would be closed to bottom trawling, dredging and Danish seine fishing under the council\u2019s proposed plan. Photo: Supplied<\/p>\nThe bill set to replace the Resource Management Act opens the door to repeats of the Waikato Regional Council\u2019s massive Coromandel trawl ban, the fishing industry says.<\/p>\n
The Waikato Regional Council\u2019s coastal management plan, notified towards the end of last year, restricts bottom fishing, such as trawling, Danish seine and dredging only along select benthic access areas \u2013 mirroring those in the Hauraki Gulf trawl corridor shelved by the Government.<\/p>\n
The Environmental Defence Society, which pushed for the Coromandel restrictions, reckons the fishing industry is being disingenuous and \u201cdramatically overstates\u201d the impact it will have.<\/p>\n
The Waikato Regional Council\u2019s restrictions squeaked in before a change was made to the soon-to-be-replaced Resource Management Act \u201cto clarify and constrain the extent to which regional councils can make rules to\u202fcontrol fishing for biodiversity and marine protection purposes\u201d.<\/p>\n
That includes a requirement for any such rule to be in place before the plan goes out for submissions and a decision-making role for the director-general of primary industries to prevent those rules from being notified if they would have an undue adverse effect on fishing.<\/p>\n
This essentially allows the Ministry of Primary Industries to veto any changes being made by local government.<\/p>\n
As the Resource Management Act currently stands, there is a legal test that the ministry cannot agree to a plan\u2019s fishing rule if it would have an undue impact on fisheries interests.<\/p>\n
That isn\u2019t in the new bills, but there is still a requirement for the ministry to approve the changes based on an assessment of the impact of any rules impacting fishing.<\/p>\n
According to a submission from Seafood New Zealand on the Planning Bill (one of two pieces of legislation replacing the RMA), the law as drafted opens the door for more of this type of intervention, rather than prohibiting it.<\/p>\n
The organisation, which represents commercial fishing interests, believes all controls on fishing, including marine reserves, can and should be managed through the Fisheries Act, and that use of planning laws creates duplicated responsibilities.<\/p>\n
Other fishing groups, including the Leigh Commercial Fishermen\u2019s Association, made similar points, and it is a view shared by the current oceans and fisheries minister.<\/p>\n
Seafood New Zealand\u2019s submission says that, as proposed, the law weakens recognition of fishing rights, increases regulatory risk and cost, and embeds inefficient duplication between the resource management system and the Fisheries Act.<\/p>\n
The organisation\u2019s inshore general manager Tiff Bock tells Newsroom that unlike the Resource Management Act, there is no requirement to assess the effects on fishing.<\/p>\n
\u201cEssentially, if there was a significant adverse effect, if you\u2019re going to put the whole industry out of business, it\u2019s kind of irrelevant.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not forced to consider it in the making of the rule, which, as you can understand, it\u2019s not something we really want.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says this goes against the Planning Bill\u2019s stated aim of supporting and recognising property rights, \u201cWe\u2019ve kind of gone backwards in the fishing space.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bock acknowledges there is a view that while all the tools are available through the Fisheries Act, they aren\u2019t being used as effectively as they could be. Some would argue many of these tools aren\u2019t being used at all.<\/p>\n
The solid green area would be closed to bottom trawling, dredging and Danish seine fishing under the council\u2019s proposed plan. Photo: Supplied<\/p>\n
She says this lack of trust in the tools provided for in the act leads people to pursue other avenues<\/p>\n
The Coromandel Trawl ban is a good example of this \u2013 the trawl corridors it uses are lifted directly from a wider Hauraki Gulf plan that was intended to be enacted under fisheries law but was shelved by the current administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat they proposed was literally lifted out of a Fisheries New Zealand proposal, which hasn\u2019t been implemented, it doesn\u2019t mean it can\u2019t be, doesn\u2019t mean it won\u2019t be. It just hasn\u2019t been.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really are trying to manage fishing through an act that was not designed for it,\u201d Bock says.<\/p>\n
She says it would be better to use the Fisheries Act to its fullest extent rather than use a series of different laws.<\/p>\n
The issue of the Fisheries Act being equipped to deal with such changes was raised during the hearing for the Coromandel ban.<\/p>\n
At the time, Environmental Defence Society chief operating officer Shay Schlaepfer made the point that the tools weren\u2019t being used and hadn\u2019t been for a very long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most recent iteration of the potential for that to occur was this consultation, which has sat idle, so really, it is a consequence of inaction, and it has got to the point now that the evidence is just so blatantly obvious that someone has to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking to Newsroom, Environmental Defence Society reform director Greg Severinsen says the industry submissions \u201cdramatically overstate the potential impact\u201d the bill would have on fishing property rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key takeaway is that the bills are pretty much unchanged from settings that we\u2019ve got at the moment from the RMA as amended recently.\u201d<\/p>\n
This means it preserves the idea that fishing can be dealt with through local government planning processes, \u201cThat seems to be the big complaint from Seafood NZ and others. Really just an opportunity to complain about the RMA rather than these bills saying they\u2019re protecting property rights and then doing the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n
He acknowledges the removal of a specific legal test for the Ministry of Primary Industry\u2019s veto power in making an assessment of whether a plan impacts on fishing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is an accurate complaint. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a good complaint, but I think the reason for that is they\u2019re just wanting to cut down the sheer size of the primary legislation and wanting to put some of that stuff in secondary regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot has been read into the absence of that test. I mean, the concurrence role is still there. That\u2019s gatekeeping what can go into regional plans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The bill set to replace the Resource Management Act opens the door to repeats of the Waikato Regional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[138,273,111,43,7439,139,69,53667,147],"class_list":["post-389396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-business","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newsroom-pro","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-primary-industries","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389396","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=389396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}