That's correct. I'm a businessman. I was a logger. I was a miner. I did a lot of work. I've never worked as a fisherman—that's about the only thing I could've worked in that I didn't.
As a businessman, I understand that you have to be able to pay for your costs, and that the costs have to be held as low as possible, in the interest of providing an economical end product. I do not stand in the way of any practical, viable method of growing food. I believe in certain instances we have to do that, with chicken, pigs, and other farm animals.
In the case of fish, the natural environment here should make it possible for us to produce fish at less cost than they'd be produced in a land-based containment system, and honest numbers will soon prove that. In the meantime, I don't think we should be shutting off the expansion of the water-based fish farming. I believe we should be encouraging it.
Your committee, with its influence, will be able to encourage the fisheries to be more optimistic and more helpful in developing new sites. In fact, the ultimate test of your whole work, and my little bit of a contribution, will be if we see any new sites at all. I'm not optimistic about it, but I'm an optimist generally about the north island, the coast, and the people who live here.
I'd love to see it happen. I'd love to see lots of employment, with advertisements for transportation jobs, processing jobs, and jobs in the management of the fish farms in the ocean. I'd love to see that, but I'm also practical. If someone can prove to me that there's a cheaper way of doing it without free dollars being introduced, then great. I'd support it either on land or off land.