ELI challenges government inaction on levy collection from fishing industry

ELI has filed legal proceedings against the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries and the Director General of MPI, challenging decisions related to the amount of levies collected from the fishing industry.

Under the Fisheries Act and the Cost Recovery Rules, Fisheries New Zealand can levy the fishing industry to recover some of the costs of key fisheries and conservation services. These include conducting stock assessments, researching the effects of fishing on protected species and the marine environment more generally, and placing independent observers on fishing vessels. 

ELI alleges that Fisheries New Zealand has been under-levying the fishing industry, in effect giving industry a significant (and unlawful) discount on research costs, with the government picking up the difference. In the 2023/24 fishing year, the total cost of the misallocated projects was just over $2.5 million.  

ELI also alleges that Fisheries New Zealand has attempted to keep a lid on the costs levied on the fishing industry by unlawfully under-allocating fisheries observers (including to high priority fisheries) on commercial fishing vessels. 

In 2021, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor report, The Future of Commercial Fishing in Aotearoa New Zealand, made it clear that there are large data and knowledge gaps relating to commercial fish stocks and the marine ecosystems that support them. These gaps include a lack of knowledge on target species and the impacts of commercial fishing. 

This approach has the effect of further eroding our knowledge of the marine environment and the effects of commercial fishing.  This comes at a time when Fisheries New Zealand has been consulting on plans to even further reduce the investment into the critical information required to administer New Zealand’s fisheries.