Shane Jones calls on fishing industry to stand up against its detractors
Tuesday, 26 May 2026
The $5 billion fishing industry must stand up for itself and make its case against those who would destroy it, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones told the sector’s annual conference in Wellington on Tuesday.
“Sadly, the fishing industry is under enormous stress from groups who continually manipulate expressions like social licence,” Jones said.
He urged the industry to defend its rights. “Before you have social licence, you have rights, and if you don't stand up and defend your rights, they will slowly but surely erode and be taken away from you.”
While many young people believed commercial fishing was destroying vast areas of oceanscape, fishing trawlers harvested fish from just 1.5% of New Zealand sovereign zone, he said.
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“You need to get your act together, folks. You need to challenge your leaders, and your peak body can no longer look to acquiesce. To acquiesce is to give in.” The sector had to stand up and settle on a strategy, he said.
“Stand up and fight your corner, because if you don't, then you will be driven out of existence,” he warned.
The Fisheries Bill going through the select committee process was being challenged by opponents such as recreational fishers concerned about commercial fishing catching too many undersized fish.
The quota management system, introduced in 1986, was a response to too many fishers chasing too few fish, he said.
High profile recreational fisher, Matt Watson, led a campaign against bottom trawling, which has been banned in many parts of the world.
“Somehow I was destroying the very fish that your industry depends upon by enabling undersized fish to be brought back to land, and then subtracted from the quota that you hold, and gives you the entitlement to extract fish from the ocean,” Jones said.
Watson's campaign led to the Government striking out a provision to allow undersized fish to be brought back to land in the proposed law.
It took a while for people to realise that as a result, next summer there was likely to be a “hell of a lot of undersized fish floating around from time to time in the Hauraki Gulf”, Jones said.
He said he would go back to ministers to argue the need for a better balance.
“It is not good for either the industry or indeed the broader stakeholders, where unavoidably your industry is catching fish that is not always of the size that is legal.”
But he said he would never agree that onboard camera footage be made public for opponents of the industry to turn into “DIY prosecutors”.
As part of the coalition agreement the Government would pass legislation that improved the regulatory burden on the industry to enhance outcomes and to unleash productivity, he said. “That's what you have in the legislation, which is wending its way through the select committee.”
Jones said he hoped to see the bill passed before the general election in November.