A pawn of the fishing industry

Deep-sea trawling is an environmentally destructive practice which devastates vulnerable marine ecosystems for the private profit of a few fishing companies. The New Zealand government has been worried about this for a long time, and so they've been working through the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation to regulate it in our region. But now, they've suddenly shitcanned that plan:

The Government pulled plans to put major restrictions on deep sea trawling after the fishing industry threatened legal action.

Officials and scientists from New Zealand and Australia had been working on the joint proposal since 2012 and it was finally due to go in front of an inter-governmental body in Peru in late January.

It was designed to protect the stocks of orange roughy in the high seas and prevent the destruction of delicate seabed life like coral and sponges.

But just weeks before the meeting, the High Seas Fisheries lobby group – which includes Talleys and Sealord – wrote to the Government threatening legal action.

In a story which sounds awfully familiar, Winston Peters got involved, and suddenly six years of careful work and consultation were overturned so the fishing industry could keep on pillaging. Combine it with his push for a "marine sanctuary" in which fishing is permitted, and its beginning to look like the Minister for Foreign Affairs is simply a pawn of the fishing industry.