{"id":483175,"date":"2026-06-18T06:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T06:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/483175\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T06:21:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T06:21:11","slug":"controversial-fisheries-amendment-bill-delayed-after-shane-jones-request","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/483175\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversial fisheries amendment Bill delayed after Shane Jones request"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fisheries Minister is delaying controversial legislation that had already seen a major U-turn<\/a> on one aspect of the Bill.<\/p>\n

Shane Jones says the Fisheries Amendment Bill could use some more “panel beating”, and acknowledges there hadn’t been a lot of harmony across Parliament or the industry about it.<\/p>\n

He’s suggesting the committee considering the Bill extend its deadline for when it was due to report to Parliament, “and take some time to pluck the fruits of democracy”.<\/p>\n

It would delay progressing the legislation until after the election.<\/p>\n

Jones had labelled critics of his bill as “noisy voices” in March, before the coalition announced days later they had listened to public feedback and would no longer scrap most minimum size limits for commercial fishers.<\/p>\n

National, ACT and New Zealand First all claimed credit for the change.<\/p>\n

However, other contentious aspects including limits on judicial review timeframes and a ban of on-board camera footage being shared<\/a> – including under the Official Information Act – remained.<\/p>\n

Speaking during the scrutiny week hearing for the Fisheries portfolio on Thursday, Jones said despite his desire to “charge on ahead”, he acknowledged there was disharmony within the industry about the Bill, and across Parliament.<\/p>\n

He said he was the author and had to take responsibility for it.<\/p>\n

“If it can be improved by some more panel beating, then I’m up for that.”<\/p>\n

Asked if he’d taken instruction from the New Zealand First leader or from the prime minister that it was becoming “challenging,” Jones said there hadn’t been.<\/p>\n

“I’m very well aware that there was a host of opinions tossed about several months ago…from some of the back benches that they were upset that I’d taken too much of a hard line against opponents of the bill, so I accept that those individuals were concerned.<\/p>\n

“But I don’t take instructions in the way that you’ve described it, only from my leader, Winston Peters.”<\/p>\n

He said it would be better for the sector if more time was taken, “it’s a highly contested space”.<\/p>\n

Asked by ACT’s Cameron Luxton how Jones engaged with the recreational fishing sector, saying he himself was one and could discuss the issue with him.<\/p>\n

Jones said he thought Luxton misrepresented recreational fishers, “you belong to a property rights party, but you seem to have declared war on property rights”.<\/p>\n

Luxton responded saying that was a “discourteous mischaracterisation” of his position.<\/p>\n

Bill should be scrapped – Labour<\/p>\n

Labour Oceans and Fisheries spokespeson Rachel Boyack welcomed the delay, saying the bill should be scrapped altogether.<\/p>\n

“There’s so much opposition to the bill that we think it needs to be completely pulled, and if anything, if there’s to be any reform in this area, it needs to start again from scratch.”<\/p>\n

\"Rachel<\/p>\n

Labour’s Oceans and Fisheries spokespeson Rachel Boyack.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone<\/p>\n

She said about 18 requests for on-board camera footage had been made under the Official Information Act so far.<\/p>\n

“All of those were declined; there have been a number that then went to the Ombudsman, the ombudsman has upheld most of those decisions by MPI.<\/p>\n

“It shows that the system is working, that by having cameras on boats, this type of reporting can occur – but we don’t agree with Shane Jones and New Zealand First that we should be further limiting the public’s access to cameras on boats.”<\/p>\n

Boyack said it should be up to officials to decide whether it was sufficiently in the public’s interests to release camera footage.<\/p>\n

The Greens’ Steve Abel suggested the delay could make it an election issue, asking whether Jones would campaign on the “harder line” regarding commercial values.<\/p>\n

Jones said it would depend on what his party agreed to.<\/p>\n

‘Lost in the noise’<\/p>\n

Seafood NZ chief executive Lisa Futschek said she was disappointed by the decision not to progress the legislation.<\/p>\n

“This Bill is about bringing fisheries management into the modern era,” she said. “The intention is to move away from a one-size-fits-all process that can be slow and blunt, and towards a legislative framework that is more responsive and better matched to the realities of the job.”<\/p>\n

She said the Bill contained sensible reforms that would improve efficiency, reduce compliance costs and enable better use of technology.<\/p>\n

“Some genuinely worthwhile reforms have been lost in the noise. It was very clear those who lobbied against were more taken with slogans than what could actually have been achieved.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Fisheries Minister is delaying controversial legislation that had already seen a major U-turn on one aspect of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-483175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483175","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=483175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}