Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has pushed through sweeping reforms which significantly favour commercial fishing interests over environmental protection and public transparency. At the same time, over $100,000 in contributions from the fishing industry have flowed to Jones and NZ First. Is it just a coincidence, or is there something fishy going on? By Bryce Edwards.
Jones insists there’s no quid pro quo. But his actions tell another story. This Integrity Briefing examines how Jones’ extensive financial and professional ties to the fishing industry align with policies that the industry has long wanted. The evidence reveals a classic case of regulatory capture, in which a sector’s money and lobbying have seemingly “hooked” the regulator. From industry donations and cosy dinners to an overhaul of laws that benefits those donors, the pattern is, well, very fishy.
FOLLOWING THE MONEY: FISHING INDUSTRY DONATIONS TO JONES AND NZ FIRST
The money trail connecting Shane Jones to the fishing industry is extensive and spans multiple election cycles. The largest benefactor is the Talley’s seafood empire. Talley’s Group and its billionaire boss Sir Peter Talley have together poured at least $66,900 into Jones’ political campaigns and NZ First’s funds over recent years. Much of this was channelled subtly: between 2017 and 2019, Talley’s and Sir Peter donated $26,950 to the clandestine NZ First Foundation, splitting the sum into four parts just under the public disclosure threshold. For example, Peter Talley chipped in $15,000 – exactly one cent below the level that would trigger public disclosure. By structuring contributions in small amounts, Talley’s effectively kept these transactions hidden until investigative journalists uncovered them.
Talley’s largesse didn’t stop there. In the 2017 election, the company also donated $10,000 directly to Shane Jones’ campaign, plus another $2,000 to NZ First colleague Fletcher Tabuteau. And in 2020, Talley’s gave Jones an additional $5,000 for his run. All of these were declared publicly, underscoring the pattern: across multiple elections, Jones and NZ First have been bankrolled by one of the country’s biggest fishing firms. As a result, Talley’s stands out as perhaps the most influential fishing-industry donor in recent New Zealand politics.
Other fishing magnates joined in ahead of the 2023 election. Westfleet Seafoods and Aimex Ltd – both controlled by West Coast fishing baron Craig Boote – together donated $7,000 to Shane Jones’ 2023 campaign (Westfleet gave $5,000; Aimex $2,000). Boote, who owns half of Westfleet (the other half is owned by Sealord, a company Jones once chaired), later confirmed he had actually funnelled a total of $10,000 to Jones by splitting it between his companies. Not hedging his bets, Boote also admitted giving $10,000 to National’s West Coast candidate (Maureen Pugh) and $10,000 to the Act Party, covering all three parties that formed the current coalition government.
This was no ordinary supporter spreading goodwill – Boote soon met Jones at an exclusive “wine and oysters” dinner in Nelson to press the Minister on loosening fishing regulations, especially the use of cameras on boats. It’s a textbook example of money buying access: Boote’s donations bought him face time with the new minister to push for policy changes that would save his companies money.
The donations kept coming. Longtime fishing investor Sir Peter Vela provided the single largest known contribution to NZ First’s 2023 campaign – $50,000. (Vela, notably, gave an equal amount to the Act Party that year as well.) Seafood giant Sanford Ltd chipped in $12,000 to NZ First during 2024, at the very time it was seeking government approvals for new salmon farms. Smaller industry players joined the fray too – e.g. United Fisheries gave $2,000 to a NZ First candidate in 2023.
All told, well over six figures of fishing industry money has lined the war chests of Shane Jones and NZ First in recent years. This generosity was often strategically timed and targeted. Donations surged when Jones returned to Parliament with NZ First in 2017, again ahead of the 2020 campaign, and once more in 2023 as NZ First re-entered government.
The pattern is hard to ignore: the fishing industry has bankrolled Jones and his party through multiple elections, coinciding with Jones attaining power over fisheries policy. As we will see, those same donors now appear to be reaping the rewards of their investment.
A 'FISHY' CONFLICT OF INTEREST
With such a clear money trail from fishing companies to Jones, it’s little wonder that many see a conflict of interest in his role as Fisheries Minister. Barry Weeber, co-chair of the Environment and Conservation Organisations of NZ, put it bluntly: a politician funded by the fishing industry “should not be in charge of fisheries” – the conflict is “clearly” apparent.
Environmental groups have been raising red flags since the government was formed. They note that while industry “barons” gained the new minister’s ear over fine wine and seafood, conservationists and iwi groups struggled even to get a meeting. The optics are undeniably bad: donors got private dinners and a receptive audience, while other stakeholders were left out in the cold.
Jones’ early conduct as Minister in the current Government only deepened those concerns. Just weeks into the job, he convened a private dinner in Nelson with seafood CEOs and lobbyists – a who’s-who of industry heavyweights. In attendance were executives from Moana NZ, Sealord, Talley’s, Sanford, and Seafood NZ’s lobby – notably, companies and groups that have bankrolled NZ First or Jones personally. Over “wine and oysters,” these industry leaders had Jones’ full attention. They wasted no time lobbying for their wish-list: cut the red tape, slash regulatory costs, and roll back conservation measures that, in their view, could “terminate the existence of the fishing industry”.
Within days, Jones echoed their grievances publicly. He spoke of “trimming the sails of the state” in fisheries management and put the brakes on initiatives the industry opposed – such as expanding cameras on boats and creating new marine protected areas. It certainly looks like policymaking by donor demand. The Nelson dinner was essentially a strategy session for deregulation, and Jones emerged as the industry’s eager champion.
Unsurprisingly, critics cried foul. The environmental NGO Forest & Bird warned that Jones was effectively “captured” by fishing interests and could not be trusted to prioritise the oceans. Even the perception of undue influence, they note, can badly damage public trust in policy integrity. The Integrity Institute has repeatedly highlighted how policy capture – when special interests steer decisions – erodes democracy as much as outright corruption. In Jones’ case, the perception is backed by hard facts: the money trail and his own actions align too neatly.
To his credit, Jones has never hidden his industry affinities. He famously calls himself an “apostle of industry”, and argues that being “well known to the industry” – including having chaired a major fishing company – makes him “eminently suitable” to regulate fisheries. But as his tenure unfolds, that claim rings hollow. Every move he’s made appears to benefit those who bankrolled him, at the expense of environmental oversight.
THREE DECADES OF INDUSTRY TIES AND INFLUENCE
Jones’ cosy relationship with the fishing industry did not begin recently; it’s the culmination of a 30-year revolving door between industry and politics. His resume reads like that of an industry insider: he chaired Sealord Group (one of NZ’s largest fishing companies) from 2001 to 2005, and simultaneously chaired the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission (Te Ohu Kaimoana) from 2000 to 2004.
In those roles, Jones forged deep personal and professional relationships with fishing magnates – relationships that continue to pay political dividends. As Fisheries Commission chair, he was handsomely paid ($230,000/year) to oversee the allocation of nearly $1 billion in fisheries assets to iwi. As Sealord chairman, he presided over joint ventures (including a merger with Japanese seafood company Nissui) and staunchly defended industry practices – even dismissing Greenpeace critics as “economic vandals” at the time.
This revolving door between industry leadership and political power has become Jones’ hallmark. After leaving his fishing posts in 2005, he entered Parliament (with the Labour Party) and immediately continued receiving donations from the likes of Sealord and Talley’s. The industry kept backing him even during his hiatus from politics (2014–2017), anticipating his return. Indeed, when Jones re-emerged with NZ First in 2017, the first thing Jacinda Ardern did was keep him away from the fisheries portfolio – a tacit admission that his industry ties were too extensive for comfort.
Current PM Christopher Luxon, however, ignored those same warnings in 2023 by appointing Jones as Oceans and Fisheries Minister. The public’s misgivings were quickly reflected in opinion polls, and even within the government there were quiet concerns. It’s telling that 85% of New Zealanders polled believe Jones cannot be trusted to manage fisheries, given his loyalties. And 57% say MPs who accept fishing industry money have no business being the Fisheries Minister. Such distrust is unprecedented – but then, so is Jones’ situation: he is arguably the most conflicted Fisheries Minister in modern NZ history.
Jones himself acknowledges that he stays in close touch with his old industry comrades. He openly stated that he gets “a lot of my information about the ebb and flow” of the fishing industry from within the industry. His official ministerial calendar shows regular meetings with executives from companies that have donated to him. For instance, he has standing quarterly meetings with Seafood New Zealand (the industry lobby) and frequent discussions with leaders of Talley’s, Sealord, and others who helped finance NZ First. Regulators normally keep an arm’s length from those they regulate, but Jones seems to keep them on speed dial.
Symbolically, Jones even chose to announce his flagship fisheries policy changes at the Seafood NZ industry conference in Nelson – essentially standing on a stage surrounded by his financial backers. The audience was full of the very people who helped fund NZ First’s election campaign. For critics, this was the perfect metaphor: the fishing industry in the front row, applauding a minister they helped put in power, as he handed them the reforms they’ve long wanted. It’s hard to imagine a clearer image of regulatory capture.
THE 2025 REFORMS: DERUGALTION OVERDRIVE AT THE INDUSTRY'S BEHEST
Shane Jones’ policy agenda has culminated in a 2025 overhaul of the Fisheries Act that dismantles key environmental protections – a suite of changes strikingly aligned with industry interests. By the government’s own account, these reforms are the most comprehensive deregulation of New Zealand’s fishing industry since the 1980s. They systematically remove transparency measures, reduce scientific oversight, and prioritise industry profit over sustainability. It reads like a wish list drafted at that Nelson dinner.
Perhaps the most controversial change is a new exemption that shields fishing boat camera footage from the Official Information Act (OIA), meaning the public and press can no longer obtain videos of what happens at sea. This rollback of transparency directly benefits companies like Westfleet, whose owner Craig Boote lobbied Jones to scale back the camera program, by keeping potential evidence of illegal or harmful practices hidden.
The timing is telling: just months before, the Ministry of Primary Industries released data from the first vessels with onboard cameras, and the results were damning. Cameras led to reported fish discards increasing by 46% and albatross bycatch incidents rising 3.5-fold, compared to what crews had been self-reporting. In other words, cameras exposed significant underreporting of waste and wildlife kill by the fishing fleet. The industry’s response was not to clean up its act, but to complain that cameras hurt their reputation.
Now, Jones’ reform ensures that future camera footage stays secret, effectively concealing evidence of bycatch and dumping, and neutering a tool that proved its worth in just a short time. It’s no wonder one watchdog blog dubbed the change “secrecy to protect [fishing] criminals.”
Another pillar of the reforms is a change to quota management that will enable automatic quota increases for five-year periods without public consultation. Under previous law, changes to Total Allowable Catch (TAC) for fish stocks required case-by-case decisions by the minister, guided by scientific assessments and input from stakeholders. Jones’ reform replaces that with a formulaic system to “set and forget” quotas on a five-year cycle, ostensibly to allow more “flexibility” and reduce bureaucratic hurdles.
The industry lauds this as “responsive management” when stocks are abundant. But conservationists point out the obvious risk: if quotas can be raised more easily, the temptation will be to overfish during boom years, potentially driving populations back into decline. Moreover, the reform directs officials to give greater weight to “socio-economic factors” in quota decisions – explicitly reversing a recent court precedent that required sustainability to come first.
In fact, in 2021 the Court of Appeal (upheld by the Supreme Court in 2024) ruled that when a fish stock is overfished, the law mandates rebuilding it in a time frame based on biology, “without regard to social, cultural and economic factors.” Jones’ new law essentially thumbed its nose at that: it invites the Minister to consider economic pain to industry when setting catch limits, tilting the balance back toward exploitation. It is a direct legislative override of hard-won environmental case law.
Jones has also moved to legalise the discarding of unwanted fish at sea, a practice previously constrained by a “land-all” requirement. In the name of reducing costs for fishers who catch non-target species or exceed quotas, the reforms will allow them to simply dump excess or low-value catch overboard.
Newsroom’s Jonathan Milne explains today that “Jones says he’s changing the rules so fishers who catch too much, or catch the wrong species, don’t face such big financial penalties. He’ll do that by introducing flexibility to the ‘deemed value’, which is the higher rate paid by fishing companies for inadvertently catching fish outside their quota. And they’ll be able to discard unwanted catch at sea, rather than having to bring it back to land for counting.” But fisheries scientists warn this will mask the true scale of fish mortality and incentivise high-grading (keeping only the best fish, tossing the rest). It undermines the whole quota management system’s integrity, which depends on accurate accounting of all catches.
Most alarming to environmentalists, the reforms include new restrictions on who can challenge fisheries decisions in court. This appears to target NGOs like Forest & Bird, which successfully sued previous ministers for overstepping sustainability limits. Forest & Bird’s court victories (for example, forcing a stricter rebuild plan for tarakihi stocks in 2021) established that the Fisheries Act required ecological considerations to override commercial ones.
Jones’ changes aim to shut that avenue down. By limiting judicial review and public input, the reforms make it harder for environmental groups – or anyone – to hold the Minister accountable. As one Forest & Bird advocate lamented, these legal changes “remove the public’s ability to ensure sustainability comes first” and all but invite a return to overfishing.
The speed and timing of the 2025 reform package is also notable. Jones launched this deregulatory blitz within mere months of taking office, and Cabinet approved the final measures in this week. In other words, he wasted no time delivering for the industry. It typically takes new ministers a year or more to review policies; Jones, by contrast, had pre-packaged solutions ready to go – straight out of the industry’s playbook.
Indeed, many of the changes correspond directly to complaints and requests that fishing company executives raised in their private meetings with Jones during his first months on the job. Cameras, quotas, discards, lawsuits – item by item, Jones ticked off the industry’s wish list. The reforms’ debut at the Seafood NZ conference was the final flourish in this performance. As Jones encouraged the gathered industry insiders to “get involved in shepherding these reform options through” the legislative process, environmental observers could only shake their heads. The fishing industry wasn’t just lobbying the government – it was the government, shaping policy from the inside.
CONCLUSION: WHEN 'MONEY TALKS', INTEGRITY WALKS
Why is the minister charged with protecting our oceans so fixated on protecting the fishing industry from oversight? The answer seems to be that “money talks”. Jones and his party have been beneficiaries of the fishing industry’s largesse, and in turn they’ve delivered exactly what the donors ordered.
Of course, Jones would argue that he’s motivated by economic pragmatism – he frames it as fighting for “industry, jobs, export earnings and regional revenue”. At the Seafood NZ conference, he implored Kiwis to consider the benefits of a booming seafood sector: “Do you want industry, jobs, export earnings and a flourishing source of regional revenue in fisheries?” he asked, pointing to a goal of growing seafood exports from $2.2 billion to $3 billion by 2035. In his view, relaxing regulations is a means to that end.
But regardless of whether the monetary benefits flow to politicians, businesses, or even regional communities, it’s clear that money, not science or sustainability, has been prioritised. Jones – the self-declared “apostle of industry” – has pushed through sweeping changes that critics say put commercial interests ahead of marine protection. These changes weaken hard-won safeguards for our marine ecosystems and shroud fishing activities in secrecy, all while Jones and NZ First benefit from the industry’s political donations. The result is a major windfall for fishing companies, but a serious setback for environmental stewardship and public trust.
New Zealanders would be right to have reduced confidence in the political process after watching this unfold. When policies are pushed through that so nakedly appease a donor-rich industry, when scientific evidence is ignored, and when the public is shut out from monitoring what happens at sea, people can see that something is wrong. The fisheries reforms fuel a public perception that deals are being cut behind closed doors, that economic elites hold sway in Wellington, and that the ordinary citizen’s voice – or the silent voice of nature – carries little weight in comparison.
In the final analysis, the evidence points to systematic regulatory capture of New Zealand’s fisheries management by commercial interests. Shane Jones’ 30-year career of industry connections, ongoing financial links, and policy decisions demonstrate how political donations can translate directly into favourable regulations for big fishing companies. The pattern is stark: fishing industry money has purchased policies that undermine environmental protection, reduce public accountability, and even shift costs from private companies to taxpayers.
Without serious reforms to our political donation laws and conflict-of-interest rules, episodes like this will recur. New Zealand’s reputation as a world leader in sustainable fisheries management will continue to deteriorate, while marine ecosystems pay the ultimate price. The Integrity Institute urges that we learn from this “fishy” case. Democracy and environmental stewardship both demand vigilance against the corrosive influence of money in politics. When “money talks” as loudly as it has in Shane Jones’ fisheries portfolio, it is the public interest – and the oceans themselves – that fall silent.
This article was first published by The Integrity Institute. Dr Bryce Edwards is the Director of The Integrity Institute.
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