FOCUS ON ACHIEVING OUTCOMES

2004/05 saw us begin the approach to measuring our performance by the outcomes we help achieve rather than outputs.

Improving environmnetal performance

The Ministry is giving greater priority to fulfilling the environmental requirements of the Fisheries Act 1996. We are working with industry and across government to help protect the marine environment.

This year, we completed our Strategy to Manage the Environmental Effects of Fishing (SMEEF), which we will implement from 2005/06 onwards. The strategy will see environmental performance standards developed that can be used to clarify obligations with respect to the marine environment. This will provide greater certainty on the limits of acceptable environmental effects of fishing. Stakeholders will be able to focus on taking part in the standards-setting process rather than all aspects of the management process for specific fisheries.

We have also progressed the Government’s Marine Protected Areas policy. This is a joint initiative with the Department of Conservation under the New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy. It aims to protect marine biodiversity by establishing a network of protected areas. This is a contentious issue as it involves restricting a wide range of activities. For this reason there needs to be a consistent, coordinated basis for planning and establishing marine protected areas. The policy is to use available science to classify the marine environment and identify discrete habitats or ecosystems. A range of management tools can then be used to address threats to biodiversity to meet a defined protection standard. Our plan to achieve this was released for consultation in November 2004 and a revised plan was delivered to Ministers at the end of the financial year.

Improved research information

Our sciences group has an important part to play in achieving the environmental performance outcome by providing robust and defensible information on which to base decisions. For example, this year we included a section on environmental effects in the stock assessment report for hoki. This will go further in future years with the inclusion of commentary on other factors affecting stock levels. We have also commissioned a new series of environmental reports – the New Zealand Aquatic and Biodiversity Reports. The first two of these – an identification guide for benthic deep-sea invertebrates and one for offshore crabs – can be obtained on CD ROM from the Ministry. Other publications will follow.

ENHANCING THE VALUE OBTAINED BY TANGATA WHENUA AND STAKEHOLDERS

 A combination of high fuel costs, the high dollar and stable commodity prices has made this a tough year for commercial fishers. This makes it even more important that the Ministry acts to help maximise value. One of the ways the Ministry is doing this is by participating in the Government’s Growth and Innovation Framework to help improve the economic performance of the New Zealand fisheries and aquaculture sector.

Under the Fisheries Act 1996, the Crown recovers a proportion of its total costs from the commercial fishing industry. Cost recovery is more than a mechanism by which the public costs of managing fisheries are reduced. It is integral to the overall management framework, forming a key element of the incentive structure that underpins New Zealand fisheries management. The Ministry works hard to ensure the gross amount charged to the commercial seafood sector does not increase without justification and, over the last five years, the amounts planned to be cost recovered from industry have remained relatively even at $33 to $34 million, with actual costs levied being lower, despite there being an increase in total funding provided by Parliament to the Ministry.