Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to give voice to the Western Australian families who were shafted by the WA state Labor government's decision to close down the demersal fishing industry, commercially forever and recreationally for some 21 months, with the ban curiously being lifted just out from the next state election in 2029. I'm sure it was on the basis of robust scientific advice.

But that's where the plot thickens a little, because on 31 October last year the Commonwealth certified the demersal fishery in Western Australia as sustainable for the seventh time. So the Commonwealth's science, for the seventh consecutive time, suggested that the fishery was perfectly sustainable, and 33 days later the Western Australian fisheries minister stood up and described the industry as being on the brink of causing extinction for species like dhufish.

Being locked out from fishing some 900-kilometre of closure is impacting 80 per cent of the Western Australian population, particularly in towns like Bunbury and Augusta in the electorate of Forrest, home to multigenerational fishing businesses. This has stripped them of their livelihoods and their family businesses, built over some 100 years of experience in those particular fishing grounds, with less than a month's notice.

This was particularly brought home to me when, standing on the fishing wharf in Bunbury, I met a young guy of about my age, mid-30s, who had stepped out from the family fishing business, gone to the bank, got a very substantial loan of some hundreds of thousands of dollars and bought his own fishing boat. The Western Australian government processed the licence transfer so that he too was a commercial shark fisherman, and 10 days later the government announced the permanent closure of the fishery. There have been no details on the compensation package. There is no future for him, his business or the new employees he'd just taken on, and, of course, that boat that he'd just bought is now worthless because nobody in Western Australia can buy a shark fishing boat.

Why is a shark fishing boat caught up in a demersal fishing ban? It's because 0.4 per cent of the dhufish and snapper caught in Western Australia is bycatch of shark fishing, and 0.4 per cent was enough for the Western Australian minister to cancel their licences permanently. I don't know whether they've jumped the shark—whether their science is wrong and the Commonwealth's is right or vice versa—but there are clear questions to answer, and I've written to the federal minister to ask her to intervene and sort this mess out. Unfortunately, in the first response, she's denied any responsibility or any concern about the science. This has a long way to go.