An end to bottom trawling can’t happen 'overnight' - Opportunity MP

A full phase-out of bottom trawling would take longer than five years, says senior Opportunity Party MP-elect Kayla Kingdon-Bebb, who hopes that if necessary NZ First can accept the bottom line she calls "quite reasonable".

She also continued to press NZ First to take further action against Michael Laws after he made crude and vulgar comments about her, suggesting he was "relatively unrepentant".

Kingdon-Bebb, the former WWF NZ chief executive elected at number four on her party list, told Q+A this morning Opportunity wanted to bring in a phased-approach.

"New Zealand can make really tangible gains in terms of protecting the most important parts of our environment by dealing to critically damaged inshore areas like the Hauraki Gulf immediately, excluding fishing effort from seamounts subsequently, and protecting in isolated areas, those most critical areas," she said of the party "bottom line".

"And then over time, phasing out the bottom trawling," Kingdon-Bebb said, "we’re not talking about flipping a switch and ending things overnight — or even in five years."

Kingdon-Bebb has been the party’s fisheries spokesperson.

Whether Opportunity is the kingmaker for either the left or right blocs in the incoming Parliament rests on official results being declared later this month.

Bottom trawlers tow weighted nets across the seabed, and the method lands most of the country’s hoki and orange roughy. Environmental groups argue the practice is destructive and heavily threaten coral reef ecosystems.

Beyond the Hauraki Gulf, Kingdon-Bebb named the foraging range of the hoiho, or yellow-eyed penguin, off Otago Peninsula as “of quite grave concern”, and said the Marlborough Sounds could also be looked at.

“We’ll be guided by the evidence on that,” she said.

Figures from Caretaker Fisheries Minister Shane Jones’ office, put to her during the interview, estimate 70% of commercially caught fish comes from bottom trawl fisheries, in an industry worth about $1.5 billion in exports and employing 9000 people.

"A long-term transition from bottom trawling is not about job loss. So, a lot of our fish that's being caught inshore can be done with surface long lining or potting," responded the Opportunity MP-elect.

"There are real questions in the deep water where we're primarily bottom trawling for ling and hoki and orange roughy about what you do there, but it bears noting that 70% of those fish are caught and 80 to 90% of them are exported ... it is completely divorced from what ordinary Kiwis see at the supermarket when they’re trying to buy a fillet."

Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong told reporters at Parliament on Monday that the party had set its bottom lines to find common ground with other parties.

“Those bottom lines are very reasonable for Labour or National, in particular, to agree to, and if they can’t, then that’s something that they will have to explain to the New Zealand public,” Wong said.

She said the bottom lines were “minimum non-negotiables”, but the party would “have to compromise on some things” across the rest of its policy.

Meanwhile, Kingdon-Bebb said supporting a government with NZ First’s Jones as fisheries minister “would be very challenging, but Opportunity has not ruled it out”. She said she had met Jones “a number of times”, as a senior official and at WWF.

“In a small group of people, Mr Jones has a good policy brain. He can be reasonable,” the new MP said. “I have found him reasonable to deal with in small groups.”

When asked, Kingdon-Bebb said she was “not rapt” about working alongside NZ First MP-elect Michael Laws — whose fate remains in the hands of his party’s board after he made crude and vulgar comments about her only weeks ago.

“Honestly, I find Michael Laws to be pretty seedy and creepy,” she said.

"I'll make it my business not to be in a room alone with him, despite sending me an apology which read something to the effect of 'I'm sorry I offended you', which in my mind is not actually an apology."

On his Platform show in the lead-up to the election, Laws described Kingdon-Bebb as “severe” and “disapproving”, adding that, "it must be hell dating people like that.”

He asked: “Can you imagine what it’s like post-sex? Did I say that out loud? Yes I did.”

Kingdon-Bebb said the comments had not offended her personally, but “it’s fairly clear to me that the man is relatively unrepentant”.

“I am appalled that NZ First is allowing a senior candidate to make misogynist, debasing comments… to allow that to stand,” she said.

“And so I sincerely hope that Mr Peters, as their leader, deals to that.”

Days before the election, Peters said the language was “not acceptable” and that Laws would be “told off”. Laws then apologised, saying that his “judgement was poor”, but only hours after telling his listeners the remarks were “not sexist" before he was told off.

Kingdon-Bebb was unmoved by Laws’ text apology sent directly to her, and expressed so, saying "you need to apologise for behaving like a creepy misogynist.”

According to The Spinoff, Laws wrote back: “Sorry, so the only way I can atone in your view, despite having no attempt to offend and trying to be wry and puckish and offering my apology, is never to hold any public office again, including the one I currently hold?”

The exchange was read out by The Platform owner Sean Plunket, The Spinoff reports.

On the eve of the election, Peters told reporters: “I’ve said all I’ve got to say about Michael Laws. In the timing I’ve got available, logistically we can’t do anything else than that. We’ll deal with it straight after the election.”

He said meeting as a NZ First board, logistically, days out from the vote was "impossible".

Kingdon-Bebb’s past could also prove a stark parting point with NZ First.

She co-authored He Puapua, the 2019 report to the then Labour-led government on how Aotearoa could give effect to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

While it happened during a coalition which included NZ First, Peters' party has subsequently disowned it and claimed it was kept out of the loop about its development.

NZ First had a commitment written into its 2023 coalition agreement with National to stop all remaining work towards the report.

"I was engaged in that report as a senior official and a subject matter expert. So I was just doing my job,” Kingdon-Bebb said.

"A lot of the sort of screeching about co-governance is being done by people who haven’t actually read the report.”

Asked if she stood by the report’s findings and suggestions, Kingdon-Bebb said the working group had prepared a deliberately broad “suite of options” in response to ideas such as a Māori Parliament or binding Waitangi Tribunal recommendations.

"[He Puapua's] only overarching recommendation, really, is that the government should engage all New Zealanders in an open ended and inclusive conversation about what declaration compliance might look like," the Opportunity MP said.

“It’s been, frankly, quite badly misrepresented by some politicians for political purposes.”

Asked where she stood on the options, Kingdon-Bebb said New Zealand should have “a constitutional conversation”, done “in a really measured, considered and inclusive way”.

“All of those options can be on the table. I don’t have a particularly fixed view from an academic perspective, and nor does Opportunity either from a party perspective, on what the right option is,” she said.

“Even in New Zealand, we have co-governance arrangements with respect to, like, the Waikato River Authority. We have instances of delegated services agreements.

"There’s not really one size fits all.”

She said the options were not “particularly revolutionary” by global standards.

“There’s been a Sámi parliament in Sweden for many years. Canada’s had modern self-government arrangements under modern treaties for the better part of 25 years now.

"The US has always had a degree of autonomy for indigenous nations dating back to court cases from the 1800s,” Kingdon-Bebb said.

She added: "The circumstances of its release were really unhelpful. It was partially released under the [Official Information Act] instead of just being stuck up on a website saying "not government policy – the report of an independent working group.

"And I think if that had been done, you know, people would have felt a lot less suspicious or unclear about what was actually being done in that report."

For the full interview, watch the video above

Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air