Inquiry into fishing industry needed

The Mari­time Uni­on says inform­a­tion revealed in a New Zea­l­and doc­u­ment­ary on the fish­ing industry must be fol­lowed up by a Gov­ern­ment inquiry.

The doc­u­ment­ary The Great New Zea­l­and Fish­ing Scan­dal by invest­ig­at­ive journ­al­ist Guy Hende­r­son screened on Sky last night and today, and covered devel­op­ments in the industry since the 1990s.

Mari­time Uni­on Gen­er­al Sec­ret­ary Tre­vor Han­son says the doc­u­ment­ary was accur­ate and he believes there is much more to be uncovered.

He says fish­ing industry bosses are driv­en by “uncon­strained greed” and Gov­ern­ment had kow­towed to power­ful private interests.

“His­tory will judge the actions of some of these people and the industry as a whole.”

He says the treat­ment of over­seas crew on for­eign and joint ven­ture “flag of con­veni­ence” ves­sels had been appalling and was an ongo­ing prob­lem.

Mr Han­son says the sys­tem is being used to drive New Zea­l­and work­ers out of the industry.

He says he is dis­turbed at how some quota hold­ers, includ­ing Maori quota hold­ers, were using over­seas crews and refus­ing to train young New Zea­l­and work­ers in this industry espe­cially at a time of increas­ing unem­ploy­ment.

There were strong con­nec­tions glob­ally between illeg­al fish­ing, exploit­a­tion and abuse of work­ers, and the destruc­tion of the mar­ine envir­on­ment and fish stocks.

He says the cost of loc­al fish was a con­cern as over­seas demand priced it out of the reach of ordin­ary New Zeal­anders, and prices of up to $39 per kilo­gram needed explan­a­tion.

He was con­cerned about the import­a­tion of low qual­ity cat­fish from China and Viet­nam to New Zea­l­and, as well as the pro­cessing of New Zea­l­and fish over­seas.

The quota sys­tem was not provid­ing enough pro­tec­tion for spe­cies such as orange roughy.

Mr Han­son says it is stand­ard prac­tice for ship own­ers to crew ves­sels with officers and crew of dif­fer­ent nation­al­it­ies, with crew mem­bers picked up by cor­rupt labour hire agen­cies in devel­op­ing coun­tries.

For­eign sea­farers were often so des­per­ate for work they signed up on oppress­ive terms and con­di­tions, often went unpaid and were away from their home and fam­il­ies for some­times years.

There had been numer­ous doc­u­mented cases of crew mem­bers not being paid, being under­paid, hav­ing their wages eaten up by agency fees, and being verbally and phys­ic­ally abused.

Mr Han­son noted the case of 33-year old Korean fish­er­man Vo Minh Que, who was drowned in Janu­ary 2004 in waters 70 kilo­metres south of Stew­art Island.

The vic­tim was flipped over­board from the ‘Tas­nui’ by a trawl wire after equip­ment fail­ure and had bobbed in the ocean nearby to the ves­sel while a “series of hideously inad­equate and half-pie” res­cue attempts were made, accord­ing to the South­land Times (2 Octo­ber 2004), whose edit­or­i­al com­ment described the incid­ent as a “dis­grace” and a “squal­id tragedy.”

The Mari­time New Zea­l­and report on the drown­ing of Mr Vo noted how the poor con­di­tion of the ves­sel and the lack of safety gear or pro­ced­ures con­trib­uted to the fatal­ity — prob­lems that had pre­vi­ously been repor­ted by Mari­time New Zea­l­and but not acted upon.

“The Mari­time Uni­on has done what it can to assist in the incid­ents that we have come across, this is done entirely on a solid­ar­ity basis simply because these crew mem­bers have no one else to look after their interests.”

He says the industry is incap­able of poli­cing itself and the Gov­ern­ment and bur­eau­cracy saw prob­lems with crews as an embar­rass­ment which it was not motiv­ated to do any­thing about.

Mr Han­son says the Mari­time Uni­on had lob­bied the Gov­ern­ment hard for stronger pro­tec­tions for work­ers in the industry and this had res­ul­ted in some improved reg­u­la­tions around pay and con­di­tions.

But he says that he is con­cerned about the enforce­ment of these rules because prob­lems con­tin­ued to crop up on a reg­u­lar basis.

Mr Han­son says if New Zeal­anders want to see the real­ity of free trade pro­moted by the Gov­ern­ment, they should look no fur­ther than the fish­ing industry a few miles off their own coast.

“We don’t have to go to the Third World to see Third World con­di­tions – the Third World con­di­tions have come to us.”

“The fish­ing industry and its treat­ment of over­seas crews is a graph­ic demon­stra­tion of the race to the bot­tom in work­ing con­di­tions. Add this to the dam­age to fish­ing stocks and we really have a social and envir­on­ment­al trav­esty out of sight, out of mind.”

He says the Mari­time Uni­on will con­tin­ue to cam­paign on the issue which was also the focus of a cam­paign by the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion, com­prised of 654 uni­ons rep­res­ent­ing 4,500,000 trans­port work­ers in 148 coun­tries.