I am very pleased to welcome you here today to celebrate the launch of the new Fiordland (Te Moana o Atawhenua) marine management regime.

I would especially like to welcome members of the original Guardians of Fiordland’s Fisheries and Marine Environment group and the many other Southlanders here who have worked so hard to make this dream of the Fiordland community a reality. This launch is a tribute to your dedication.
I would also like to mention the involvement and encouragement of my colleague Pete Hodgson in getting the strategy implemented. I'm sorry he can't be with us tonight because of prior commitments but he sends his best wishes.

Today we are celebrating the establishment of a unique local management regime for the special environment of the fiords.
The new regime will enhance the sustainable development and protection of this significant area.
Before I talk about where we are going, I’d like to look back at what has led to this important day.

Since 1995 the “Guardians of Fiordland” have worked extraordinarily hard towards making their vision for the Fiordland marine environment a reality.

Very early in that process, and not without significant discussion, they developed and adopted a common vision – "that the quality of Fiordland's marine environment and fisheries, including the wider fishery experience, be maintained or improved for future generations to use and enjoy''. This vision has endured all that was to follow and has provided a very clear guiding light.

The Guardians of Fiordland are now and have always been a very diverse group – they started life as a fisheries liaison committee consisting of representatives from the commercial and recreational fishing sectors, environmentalists, charter boat and tourism operators, scientists, and tangata whenua. They did however, have some very important things in common:
·they had a strong commitment to Fiordland;
·they shared a concern about the increasing pressures from growing human use of the area;
·they wanted better and more integrated management of the area and its resources, and last, but by no means least;
·they wanted the local Fiordland community be more involved in the management of Fiordland's marine environment.

In October 2002 the group published its draft Fiordland Marine Conservation Strategy. This was no small feat – it was courageous, and laid down a clear challenge to the way we had always managed marine environments and resources. But, they had the support of Environment Southland, DoC, Ministry of Fisheries and Ministry for the Environment.

To make their coherent statement on the issues and their proposed solutions the Guardians had to gain stakeholders' agreement. Generally, this involved each stakeholder group relinquishing some of their benefits or opportunities in the overall interests of a better Fiordland. The Guardians referred to this process as the "gifts and gains''. This had been a torrid and time-consuming process – one Guardian, who shall remain nameless, once confided that over the years, he had probably worn out a car travelling to and from meetings all over Southland.

One notable proposal in the draft Strategy was the identification of small, discrete areas containing items of special significance. These areas have become known as ``china shops'' – places where it would be best to keep “the bulls” out of!

After a year of talking (and discussing and renegotiating and rewriting) the final version of the Strategy was complete. The Guardians issued their formal challenge to Government, and I was proud to be asked to receive it. I have fond memories of that trip to Te Anau that Pete Hodgson and I made, in September 2003, to receive the final version and to pledge our support to making it happen.

One of the things I remember most vividly about that meeting was the look of shock on the faces of the various government officials when Pete Hodgson, then Minister of Fisheries, said that we would implement the Strategy within two years (by September 2005).

Well, we made that with time to spare. It just goes to show – when we all work together, we can move mountains!

For almost a year an Investigative Group made up of officials, Guardians and local government considered how best to make it work. In September 2004 the Government accepted their recommendations and agreed to develop special legislation to give effect to many of those recommendations. We also agreed to amend fisheries regulations for non-commercial harvesting, to exclude commercial fishing from large areas of the internal waters of Fiordland, and to implement a range of other non-legislative measures.

Both the process and the resulting new management measures have been great achievements.
I would now like to take a few minutes to review those achievements and talk about what has actually changed.
(A large map of the Fiords will be available to illustrate points.)
First and foremost, we have a new Act of Parliament, the Fiordland (Te Moana o Atawhenua) Marine Management Act. This says, in law and in plain English, that Fiordland is important, it contains a wide range of marine environments that are of local, national and international importance, and that we are going to do things differently from now on.

The area covered by the new measures is huge (nearly 900,000 ha), extending from Sand Hill Point in the south to Awarua Point in the north. This area offers unique opportunities for all users, including those who use the area for recreation, commercial or cultural purposes.

The area includes eight new marine reserves which cover most of Fiordland’s marine ecosystem and habitat types – establishing these eight areas, where protection is the priority, is a significant gain to the conservation of marine biodiversity and represents a generous gift from Ngai Tahu and the recreational and commercial fishing communities.

There are also now 37,000 hectares of the inner sounds and fiords where recreational fishing takes priority and commercial fishing is banned. This too is a significant gift from the commercial fishing sector. Within the fiords the focus of the new fisheries management rules and bag limits is on fishing “for a feed” and rebuilding stocks, so that the current restrictions can be reviewed in the future.

The new measures have also made some changes to the Southland Coastal Plan, with the full support of Environment Southland. These changes support the council’s intentions to keep Fiordland free of marine pollution and invasive species.

However, the hard work is far from over. The various management agencies, in conjunction with the new Fiordland Marine Guardians, have a raft of programmes to develop and implement over the next year or so. The government has allocated $3.4 million to this work over the next four years, with around $760,000 available this coming year. Most of this will be shared by the Department of Conservation and the Ministry of Fisheries.

We need to ensure that people know about the changes and what they mean -both for them and the Fiordland marine environment … so a communications programme, including educational material, will be high on the list of future projects.

Learning more about the marine life in the area and how it changes over time, both as a consequence of the marine protection measures and the increasing human use of the area, will require a scientific monitoring programme. Not four programmes; not one each for conservation, fisheries, coastal management or biosecurity reasons; but one, integrated and co-ordinated across all the needs.

And finally, there will be a need to ensure that everyone who visits the area knows about and follows the new rules, so a comprehensive compliance and enforcement plan is also planned – again co-ordinated across all the management agencies.

Hopefully, that little list won’t have put off the most significant people involved from now on. The establishment of the new Fiordland Marine Guardians advisory committee (all of whom are here today) heralds a new spirit of community involvement in local marine management.

I am sure that many you know who the Fiordland Marine Guardians are, but I think it is important to briefly introduce them:
Alan Key (a man with more than a passing interest in recreational fishing)
Alan Mark (an outstanding scientist with a long-standing interest in conservation)
Ian Buick (a leading local businessman and helicopter pilot, who regularly takes the birds-eye view of Fiordland and its issues)
John Steffens (a man who has shown significant leadership within many facets of your community, including the Guardians of Fiordland’s Fisheries and Marine Environment, since its inception)
Ken Grange (a marine scientist of international standing who has probably forgotten more about black coral than most of us ever knew)
Laurel Teirney (a woman with vision and a facilitator with an almost limitless capacity to herd cats and Guardians!)
Malcolm Lawson (another businessman with a significant interest in ensuring the good and sustainable management of all Fiordland’s resources)
and
Stewart Bull (a man of few words, but a true kaumatua to the Fiordland kaupapa).
Congratulations to all of you on your appointment to this important group and I wish you well for the job ahead.
I would also like to make special mention of the way the community, local government, Ministers, and officials have worked together to achieve an excellent result. We have here today representatives from all the agencies involved including Environment Southland, Ngâi Tahu, Department of Conservation, Biosecurity New Zealand, Ministry of Fisheries and Ministry for the Environment. Thank you to you all.

This is a very important and, I believe, very proud day for New Zealand, and Southland and Fiordland in particular.

So . . . finally, let me congratulate everyone involved in making the new management measures happen – we are at the beginning of a new era for Fiordland (Te Moana o Atawhenua). Well done to everyone and thank you all very much.