Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fisheries Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2010. I seem to be following the member for Calare, Mr Cobb, quite often as we speak about fisheries, agriculture and forestry—but not the fur or hunting trade these days. Australia works hard to have a good, sustainable fishing industry. The Australian Fisheries Management Authority has been the body working to manage Australian fisheries since its creation in 1992, if I remember correctly, and it has done a lot of hard work on improvements and establishing a connection between the managers of AFMA and industry leaders, the fisheries and the fishers out on the boats at sea.

We have this great seafood industry that we all love, especially in the state of Tasmania. We have been reasonably successful in bringing aquaculture organisations together. I think that in the future wild fisheries will also continue to move forward in that area. Abalone is assured in Tasmania. There is a lot of work being done on rock lobster. We have Atlantic salmon in the southern parts of Tasmania and we hope that climate change does not heat up the oceans too much in our part of the world, which would destroy that industry because you need to have a certain level of cold.

This bill seeks to amend the fisheries legislation and it has four objectives: firstly, to broaden co-management arrangements in the Commonwealth fisheries; secondly, to simplify the regulatory process applying to the administrator and the fishers; thirdly, to facilitate the restructuring of AFMA’s management advisory committees to have an effective dual advisory model; and, finally, to enable AFMA to charge for services to Commonwealth agencies utilising AFMA’s expertise and skill base. They have an observer model as well, where people are put on boats and observe what is taking place at sea.

AFMA have advanced enormously over the period of time since 1992. I remember the report of a committee of which I was deputy chair, back in 1997, entitled Managing Commonwealth fisheries: the last frontier, where we dealt with AFMA and some of the issues at the time—and there were a few issues around at that time. The constitutional settlement arrangements were coming together. Some were held up because states were being a bit tough in signing it, and we made some recommendations along those lines.

This amendment bill is dealing with the issues of advisory committees. We made recommendations in the Managing Commonwealth fisheries: the last frontier report back then about our advisory committees. One of them was that only legitimate stakeholders participate in the management process. Broader public concerns over the management of fishery resources were addressed, as was ensuring that the concerns of individual industry operators could be taken into account during decision making. There was also some concern raised in evidence about people on those advisory committees, so we made a recommendation that the majority of industry members of a management advisory committee be selected through a democratic process, as determined by the minister. We also recommended that elected members of management advisory committees should be required to give the same undertakings about their participation as given by appointed members.

There were very strong recommendations in the Managing Commonwealth fisheries: the last frontier report and we are now moving, a few years later, to upgrade that process. We are moving to bring the number of MACs down and to bring together the issues of committees. Peak bodies are going to be brought into the fray and will become advisories to AFMA. The advisory committees will give information on community interest issues. I do not mind that. I can see how that will make savings and streamline administration, make things more efficient and bring down the costs of administration processes to the industry.

I hope everyone is in favour of this. There have been good discussions. People have worked to deal with that in a proper way. I think peak bodies could also play a role in some of the legislation dealing with advice regarding maritime parks. The issue of maritime parks—and the previous speaker mentioned it—always gains a lot of attention around the coast in my electorate when mentioned. There is a need to tell people, to discuss these issues in detail and to try to make sure that people are informed about what is being achieved so that everybody is well aware of what the goal is. In the past sometimes we have not always done that in the best possible way.

I remember that the last fisheries legislation before us, in 2009, was about the innovative way that AFMA came forward with electronic decision-making schemes known as e-licensing, where licence holders could log in via the internet and complete a range of licensing transactions. This was an innovative way to bring down costs and help the fishing industry. I am sure that that was well received at that time.

I want to go back a little bit to that report in 1997. I remember making the recommendation concerning the Southern Surveyor and her research work out of the Derwent River at Hobart about the need for upgrading her. We made that recommendation that she be upgraded and we started to look for that as a nation. I think it was in the 2008 budget that Minister Carr got that decision through the cabinet and through the budgetary processes, and we will be going forward with that decision in the future.

I welcome this legislation. I am glad that it has got bipartisan support. I hope it does not take away anything from people’s input. We are reducing some of the advisory processes but industry seems to be giving strong support to it. I hope that AFMA is very pleased with it. I remember in the report where we made recommendations about by-catch. We were trying to build confidence between science, the fishermen and AFMA, hoping that with shared information in the logbook that could be taken on board, people would not just push the by-catch overboard but actually put the data in the logbook. We were trying to argue that people could take that back and at least get a payment at that stage. I think that we have moved on from those days. Hopefully, there is a lot more confidence in their decision making and that people do share information. We need to have a lot of confidence between AFMA, the science and the fishers out there. We need to make sure that we have a sustainable fishery into the future. I look forward to these amendments coming into place and I look forward to talking about them to the fishers in my electorate. I support the amendments.

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