Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In relation to the Fisheries quota system report dated December 2022, I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I'm very proud of this report that's before the Senate today. It's the first federal parliamentary inquiry into fisheries management in this country, and it's one of only two inquiries in this whole country, including by state governments who've had ITQ, or individual tradeable quota, systems in place for 40 years. It's quite mind-boggling when we think that the Commonwealth manages fisheries right around this country through an ITQ based system and a number of other overlays, like harvest strategies, and yet the parliament hasn't reviewed this before. So I'm very proud of this report.

The Greens felt very strongly that this inquiry was long overdue and certainly very timely, given the economic and social evolution of fisheries management in Australia over recent decades and given recent recognised environmental and ecological changes to the habitat of Australian fisheries because of, in short, changes we've seen in our oceans in recent decades. These changes have been caused by the warming of our oceans from the burning of fossil fuels, by pollution in our oceans, by overfishing, by microplastic pollution in our oceans and by a whole range of cumulative pressures and sources.

I initiated this inquiry following consultation with commercial fishers in my home state of Tasmania who felt the government needed to tackle significant market concentration problems and issues around foreign ownership of Australian fisheries quota in their respective fisheries. I then talked to a number of experts—scientists, academics and commercial fishers themselves—and realised there were a whole range of other problems that needed to be addressed. I'm pleased to say I believe they have been addressed through this inquiry, especially through the main body of this report and through many of the additional comments made by the Australian Greens at the end of that report.

I do apologise to stakeholders that the inquiry took so long: It went on for nearly two and a half years. That was primarily due to COVID and the restrictions of senators not being available for a number of hearings. And, of course, we had a change of parliament and a change of government.

There was a good and a bad to that. The good bit was that, over that time period, two significant developments occurred in Australian fisheries management that were able to be captured by the inquiry. The first one was that the ANAO, the Australian National Audit Office, did an audit—the first in many years—of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority. To quote their answer to my question in the inquiry, 'If you gave them an A to an E like a kid's scorecard, what would you have given AFMA?' and they said, 'Maybe a D.' In fact, they only found them to be partially compliant on most of the key measures they were measured against. Of course, that gave us an opportunity to examine the ANAO's recommendations and what that meant for fisheries management.

The second thing that occurred was, in the last term of the last parliament, in the last budget, we found a $23 million rescue package for the most significant fishery in Australia, certainly in terms of size: the South East Trawl. It stretches down to southern New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. When I inquired, during estimates, at AFMA, 'What was this $23 million that the Liberal government was planning to spend on fisheries?' they said, 'Senator, it's a buy-out of fisheries capacity in this key fishery.' I said, 'Well, why are you buying it out?' and they said, 'Because of climate change'. Now, a couple of things on that: this was the first time ever that the Australian Fisheries Management Authority had labelled climate change or named climate change as having had a significant impact essentially on the collapse of a major fishery. But, the more we investigated and interrogated that, absolutely climate change was an issue, but it was also that the fishery wasn't being managed for climate change, so there were fisheries management issues. So, by delaying this inquiry, we actually got a case study of a collapse in a major fishery here in Australia.

Interestingly, one of the approaches that AFMA have taken to try to rebuild this fishery is that they have put in place significant spatial closures. They've essentially shut off entire areas in this fishery in perpetuity. In other words, they're not letting fishing boats in there. So, for all intents and purposes, they've created marine protected areas within a fishery. Although of course no-one's calling them that, that's essentially what they've done. And that is also a precedent in Australian fisheries management. If I had any doubts about initiating this inquiry and getting support to make sure the hearings were attended by senators and that this was taken seriously, that dispelled any doubts that I might have had.

When we look at this inquiry, something else unique happens. The CSIRO did an academic research paper on the Senate inquiry. They actually wrote a research paper that they then submitted to the Senate inquiry on our Senate inquiry. I've never seen that before. What they wanted was to quantify the differences in the submissions across all of Australia's managed fisheries. What they discovered was something I already knew: there were significant differences of opinion between fishers right across our fisheries as to whether fisheries management is working for them. They found the big majority of submitters did not feel Australia's fishing management was working for them.

Now, of course, there are a lot of reasons for that, and they're all detailed in this report, but it certainly suggested that this report was timely and we need to tweak, at a minimum, how fisheries are managed in the Commonwealth of Australia.

I would like to thank all the hundreds of submitters, including many fishers in my home state of Tasmania who have been doing it really tough. We've heard harrowing stories about fishers taking their own lives and the disruption that has occurred to their livelihoods over many years now—mostly because of things that are out of their control. They've been very concerned that they haven't been able to access quota in this, and to buy that quota.

Essentially, if you're a quota-holder in Australia's commercial fisheries, or in many state fisheries, you're like a landlord of the sea. You own access to that fishery and you can trade it and sell it, and, like a house, you can lease it out. Of course, with rising diesel prices and the collapse in markets, like we saw with rock lobster in China, a lot of these fishers were literally getting squeezed. They were not only not making any money but they were losing money and going to the wall. They appreciated the Senate looking into this.

I would like to finish my contribution by saying there are 10 recommendations in the Greens' additional comments. We didn't put a dissenting report in, because there's some very good recommendations in the main committee report. The disadvantage, of course, of having extended the inquiry into a new government was that LNP senators got to write the majority report in the inquiry. While I acknowledge that there's some good recommendations in here, unfortunately I don't believe that the final chapter, the conclusions, reflect the big body of data and knowledge in this report. That's essentially because Senator Colbeck got to write the report. And guess what? He was the fisheries minister for a number of the last 10 years, and so got to reflect on his own fishery performance. I believe that was a conflict of interest, and I've put that in this report. However, I do thank LNP senators who put some key recommendations in here around the ACCC investigating competition issues, improving transparency issues in the fisheries and a couple of other key recommendations.

The Greens give our promise to fishers around this country that this is just the beginning for us. At both the state and federal level, we will continue to build on this inquiry. I will ask AFMA, the FRDC, the CSIRO and other key federal stakeholders questions at every estimates. We will not back off on trying to get reform in the Australian fisheries management system. And that's simply because of this: it is not delivering economic and social benefits like it should be to fishing communities and to the Australian people, who own this resource. And it is failing on an ecological, biological and environmental level. Our oceans are under a lot of pressure and we have to do a lot better.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.