Green groups that are “anti-science, anti-business and anti-mankind” are leading New Zealanders to “an exaggerated view on environmental issues”, says Talley's Group managing director Peter Talley.
In a typically provocative speech to the Maui National Maori Fisheries Conference at the Trafalgar Centre yesterday, Talley said “professional activists” in some pressure groups appeared to pay little, if any note to the financial consequences inherent in their actions and policies.
New Zealand's fishing industry was sustainable and had a bright future. World fish prices were rising on a surge in demand.
When most other countries were struggling with the results of overfishing, New Zealand's Quota Management System was protecting stocks, and world population growth was speedily increasing the seafood market.
Fishing was the most environmentally friendly form of protein production and wild-caught fish were the only source of protein that was 100 per cent drug-free in an increasingly health-conscious market.
“To capitalise, the New Zealand seafood industry is going to have to defend our patch from the relentless attack by those many groups opposed to the commercial extraction and utilisation of our marine resources. If we want to retain our industry, we're going to have to fight for it.”
Many “greenies” enjoyed floating around the world's oceans in old tubs, funded by a guilty public, he said. But New Zealand was not rich enough to lock up valuable resources out of “fabricated concerns for snails and seals”.
“We need a new balanced approach to environmentalism, one that recognises sustainable extraction, and one that recognises a higher ranking of mankind, that should rightfully be placed well above the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees.
“I, for one, certainly did not fight my way to the top of the food chain to eat vegetables.”
Talley said New Zealand's past preoccupation with the good life was out of line with economic reality.
The only way to improve living standards was to increase exports, and with a huge shift in global domination from the West to the East, future links had to be with China, Asia and India.
“Our current immigration policy has effectively created a low-wage economy and flooded the job market, all to the detriment of our society. We need to move on from being just commodity producers to adding value to our exports.”
He said the entire education system needed an overhaul, with a shift towards learning for industry and a consolidation of tertiary institutions.
Our immediate educational needs are not lawyers, accountants, artists or environmental scientists,” Talley said.
“Rather, we need food scientists, students with better marketing skills, automation engineers, and students with meaningful language skills and more awareness and skill sets in the primary industries.”
The fact that about one-quarter of New Zealanders lived overseas was an indictment on New Zealand's policies, way of life and economy.
“Most of all, it's ruining the expectations of our youth.”
Ngai Tahu kaumatua Sir Tipene O'Regan, a former Sealord chairman and a pivotal figure in the development of Maori commercial fishing, said New Zealand was the most remote economy on earth and its seafood production, combined with Australia's, accounted for just 3.7 per cent of world whitefish consumption. A change in thinking was required and Maori needed to be a part of that.
Maori influence was growing to the point where “we are in a political and economic position such as we have not known since the wars started in the 1860s”, Sir Tipene said.
“Our politics have got to be better, bigger, more fixed on the horizon and visionary than the rest of these turkeys who inhabit the New Zealand political system. We have to learn to soar like eagles.”
Global economic transition required visionary adjustment.
“We've got this minuscule little crop of resource and we've got to take it to the world's markets – and we're competing with each other for market share.”
Europe's aggregated market was treating the world's producer nations like peasants.
To counter that, the producers ought to band together and become price-setters “instead of a whole lot of peasant price-takers competing with each other like corner dairies. This whole vision of New Zealand triumphant – basically it's a small man playing with himself,” Sir Tipene said