Jones said today that it was clear there was a \u201ctremendous amount of whitewash\u201d around the bill and encouraged the committee to extend its deadline for when it was set to report back to the House on the bill. <\/p>\n
The committee was expected to propose that extension, which Jones as minister would accept. <\/p>\n
He said it was evident there was a \u201clot of disharmony\u201d within the industry about the bill, \u201cdespite my desire to charge on ahead\u201d. <\/p>\n
Jones acknowledged there was also not a lot of harmony across Parliament on the bill. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf it can be improved with some more panel-beating, I\u2019m up for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones said fishing reform was a \u201chighly contested space\u201d and noted the upcoming election could provide a forum for political parties to campaign on their desired reforms. <\/p>\n
Speaking after the committee appearance, Jones said the state of the bill would partially depend on the views of the select committee members. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is that it would be better to have a bill that has got a widespread level of buy-in and to do that, we need to spend more time on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones wouldn\u2019t be drawn on whether NZ First would propose a similar bill and demand it be agreed to in potential coalition negotiations after the election.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s just wait and see what we learn through the electioneering period.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho knows, some of the people that are nervous nellies about the bill, they may be casualties of the electioneering process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam Pearse is the Deputy Political Editor and part of the NZ Herald\u2019s Press Gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whang\u0101rei and the Herald in Auckland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jones said today that it was clear there was a \u201ctremendous amount of whitewash\u201d around the bill and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31389,74,682,16574,16423,10039,242539,5903,1888,54249,78,2176,6722,111,43,139,69,24637,16860,7228,698,80],"class_list":["post-482946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-abandoned","tag-after","tag-being","tag-bill","tag-cites","tag-controversial","tag-disharmony","tag-election","tag-first","tag-fisheries","tag-in","tag-jones","tag-minister","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-parliament","tag-reform","tag-shane","tag-until","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482946","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=482946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}