Save Fish & Game From Proposed Changes

Hi All,

Many thanks for your kind donation towards stopping the review of Fish and Game from happening. We believe the threat of legal action was not welcome by the department or the Minister and we believe it helped slow the process to the point where they ran out of time.

After a series of letters between myself and the Minister as well as DOC it became obvious that time was going to be a factor in getting legislation into parliament before the F&G elections of next November. Fortunately for us the Ministers department did follow up on OIA requests I had made that included advice from the Department to the minister which allowed us to focus more clearly on the minister herself and question the Departments advice. The May 2021 OIA's to DOC which initially they said could not be released finally were at the end of July again exposing their advice as totally biased and influenced by outside groups.

The good news is that the minister has now written informing that there is no parliamentary timetable to bring in the legislative changes required and that the Minister will not be pursuing this course. She is allowing to continue some of the opportunities to internally restructure and strengthen governance practices which I think many of us felt were justifiable.

On the position of reducing the number of regions the Minister is of the opinion there is widespread support from the regions however this needs more consultation.

So effectively there will be no government appointed boards / chairman's or councils and the November erections will go ahead as planned with Councillors appointed for three years. Effectively calling a halt to the draconian parts of the review that we mostly objected to.

This has been a major win for those license holders who stood up and I want to thank every one of you for your generous support which allowed us to have an important influence on the final outcome.

Many thanks.

Alan Simmons.