he seems genuinely concerned, why did he leave??

short term  gain for long term gain 

All I can see is the rights of the recreational fishing community are being given away to meet political and commercial objectives. Some aspects of this plan look like the biggest theft of public fishing rights since the QMS was introduced and $4B of public assets given into private hands  in the dodgiest of processes. It is way past time that the majority of the rec community stopped trying to convince themselves that all this stuff is being done to help their future generations, because that isn't what is being proposed. Read the plan thoroughly and think hard about what is really being said. Once you really understand it, I don't think you will like it. The important part is to read and study the detail, because the marketing highlights won't be about the stuff you aren't meant to know about.

The problem with all this is that it is only the recreational community that is giving up anything, so the whole function of these plans is to take what they can from the rec community. Yes we have farmers being asked to stop polluting, but they never had a 'right' to pollute in the first place. Yes we ask the councils to improve the 'pollution' control they are responsible for, but we (the rec community) pay for a big share of that anyway. So what if we move a trawl line out a mile or two. Are the comms going to catch less fish from the Biomass? I really don't think it matters which side of the line you destroy the biomass on. It is still being destroyed.

I don't disagree with the concept of a spatial plan, I just think this one potentially takes a lot more away from rec fishing than it will ever deliver back.