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29
April 2001
Minister of Fisheries
Pete Hodgson
Parliament Building
Wellington
Dear Minister,
Thank you for your letter dated 12 April 2001.
Your letter
states that you are "seeking some honest feedback by
knowledgeable individuals about the issues at hand,"
you have also mentioned directly the need to build trust and
capacity between us, that is what this letter is all about.
The option4
management team have considered your letter and have serious
concerns arising from it. We note that you consider the Rights
Working Group have provided a detailed and robust report.
It appears from your letter that the Rights Working Group
report will form a basis upon which the Ministry of Fisheries
policy unit will select a preferred option for reform. Following
that, the Ministerial Advisory Group will provide a sounding
board for the final policy development phase of the Ministry's
chosen option.
Option4
on the other hand considers that the Rights Working Group
report is seriously flawed, and unsuitable in its present
form, to provide a secure foundation on which to build the
future of recreational fishing upon. We feel the report totally
misrepresents the outcome of the Soundings public consultation
process. We feel it would be a grave error to use the Rights
Working Group report as a foundation on which to build any
reform, without addressing our concerns. We have mentioned
these issues both at our last meeting with you, and in our
last letter to you.
Both the
government and option4 are keen to move forward on the issue
of recreational fishing in New Zealand. For option4 there
is a clear differentiation between reforms and "leaving
the rights as they are, "as stated in your last letter
to us. To us they are separate issues altogether requiring
the clearly defined right before the reforms can be debated.
Option4's
most urgent concerns are centered on the questionnaire, and
the weighting given to it in subsequent analysis in the independent
reviewers report. This flawed report also forms the basis
of the Rights Working Group report, error built upon error.
The independent
reviewers report gives a full statistical analysis of the
submissions entered on the prepared questionnaire. However,
only 1% of all submissions received were on these forms, unquestionably
an insufficient percentage to claim, "a detailed and
robust report that provides a great deal of information and
background to the public's views on recreational fishing."
The option4 submission, representative of over 98% of all
submissions, received only minimal analysis by the reviewer.
Both the
Rights Working Group and independent reviewers reports only
include the four principles of option4 in the analysis section
and make only cursory mention that option4 wishes to define
the recreational right before dealing with the management
and funding issues. All option4 submissions make it explicitly
clear, their submission is the same as option4's, this means
all option4 submissions must be reflected to express those
views in both reports, everywhere and in every instance that
the questionnaire asks a question which is covered in the
option4 full submission. When this is done it will be seen
that the true results from the public consultation are in
fact very different than both reports would have you believe.
Minister
we must confront the truth if we are to move forward on these
important issues. A failure to resolve these fundamental issues
will, in our opinion, cause the process to lose all credibility
with both option4 and the public at large.
We are
also concerned that you consider legal advice should be unnecessary
for the Ministerial Advisory Group. Does this mean that defining
the right of the public to harvest from the marine environment
is off the agenda? Or if debated, will that debate be constrained
to following a pre-determined agenda that will not require
legal advice?
We draw
your attention to High Court Judge Mc Gechan's principles
of consultation. We believe there has not been genuine consultation.
We believe the Rights Working Group has not listened to, and
truly represented the content of all the submissions. Nor
has it taken account of them and incorporated them into the
report on which the new policy will be based.
We have
a more extensive list of lesser concerns regarding the integrity
of the consultation process and outcome as reported by both
the independent reviewer and Rights Working Group. However
the above issues are critical and must be dealt with before
the process moves forward.
Can you
assure option4 that the proposed Ministerial Advisory Group
will address our concerns regarding both the independent review
and the Rights Working Group report?
Can you
assure option4 that if this raises the need for expert legal
advice that this advice will be made directly available to
the Ministerial Advisory Group without them having to go through
the Ministry?
Can you
assure option4 that the "true" outcome of the Soundings
consultation process will form the foundation on which the
Ministry of Fisheries policy unit will form the draft policy,
which the Ministerial Advisory Group will consider?
Can you
assure otion4 that it is the Ministries intention to establish
a recreational right in law and not to simply cap the recreational
take in order to secure the commercial harvest right?
If you
cannot give the assurances requested above, then we formally
request under the Official Information Act the following information
-
- The
terms of reference, or contract deliverables of the independent
reviewer.
- Correspondence
between the Ministry and independent reviewer.
- Correspondence
between the Rights Working Group and independent reviewer.
- Minutes
of meetings between the Ministry and independent reviewer.
- Minutes
of meetings of the Rights Working Group concerning the independent
review.
- The
draft independent reviewer report.
- Instructions
given by the Rights Working Group to the reviewer concerning
the draft report.
- Minutes
of the Rights Working Group concerning the agreed wording
of the questionnaire.
We look forward to your response and hopefully, achieving
a position where we can all move forward on the real issues
together.
Yours truly
Paul Barnes
Project Leader
option4
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