Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My electorate has some of the best fishing spots in the country, if not the world. I know colleagues from Queensland and the Northern Territory, and perhaps my friend the member for Fremantle, may scoff. Jealousy is a terrible thing! From the east coast beaches to the many lakes in the Central Highlands, people travel across the globe to come to Lyons to fish. My state of Tasmania also has a long, enduring and resilient Indigenous culture, and, as you might expect, with a landmass cut off from the mainland for tens of thousands of years, the ocean forms a significant part of that culture. For thousands of years, people have fished the waters off Tasmania for sustenance, and, more recently, for recreation.

I am pleased to support the Fisheries Legislation Amendment (Representation) Bill 2017, as it seeks to strengthen official engagement between recreational fishers, Indigenous fishers and commercial fishers regarding the management of Commonwealth fisheries. For tens of thousands of years, Indigenous Australians managed fisheries, and that is why it is important that their voices are heard and taken into account when decisions are made about Commonwealth waters.

Last year, a study was announced by the Tasmanian Centre for Marine Socioecology to investigate the potential for Indigenous and commercial fisheries to operate as a key economic component in Tasmania's regional communities. The study, titled ‘Wave to Plate’: establishing a market for Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural fisheries, is funded by the Australian government's Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, in association with the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment and the CMS. Professor Stewart Frusher, director of the CMS, says that the project has great significance and will begin the journey to understand how Indigenous fishery cultural practices can integrate with and help to build regional economies.

Emma Lee, a Tasmanian Indigenous woman and PhD candidate, recently spent six months in the Basque Country of northern Spain studying the fishing industry to bring that knowledge back to Tasmania. Emma is the first Tasmanian Aboriginal recipient of the Indigenous Fellowship in the prestigious and internationally competitive Endeavour Scholarships and Fellowships program. She sees this study as a way to connect fishing—which boosts communication, self-esteem and connectedness—with land, building pride and self-worth. There is nothing like providing food for one's family to generate a sense of pride and self-respect. Emma says that, if we can harness that positivity, we can transform regions of unemployment into vibrant food-producing regions. The study's end-vision is to incorporate Indigenous culture with Tasmania's growing seafood and tourism market. The Wave to Plate movement is, like the more well-known Paddock to Plate movement, gaining traction in Tasmania as our community and particularly visitors to our great state seek more connectedness with the origins of their food. There are 1,900 businesses involved in the movement, servicing 1.26 million visitors, who spend around $2.23 billion in Tasmania—and I am confident those numbers will grow.

This legislation will also ensure that the Australian Fisheries Management Authority takes into account the interests of recreational and commercial fishers. Recognition of Indigenous and recreational fishers is not currently explicit in Commonwealth fisheries legislation, which primarily regulates commercial harvest of fish stock. The bill inserts an objective that will require AFMA, the minister and joint authorities to have regard to ensuring that the interests of commercial, recreational and Indigenous fishers are taken into account in the context of managing Commonwealth commercial fisheries.

Other minor amendments in the bill allow for increased opportunities for membership of AFMA advisory bodies and extend the eligibility criteria for serving on the AFMA commission to include expertise on matters relating to recreational and Indigenous fishing.

I am pleased to see recommendations included in this bill that arose from the Senate's inquiry into factory freezer trawlers, but I am disappointed that the legislation does not incorporate the inquiry's key recommendation, which is to ban the vessels. There is simply no place for factory freezer trawlers in Australia. I made it clear during my election campaign that I was opposed to these vessels and that I would be, and I remain, a voice within the Labor Party that wants to see these vessels permanently banned from Australia. I note that the Senate inquiry recommendation to ban these vessels from operating in Commonwealth waters was reached with the full support of Labor senators. Labor stands with recreational fishers against factory freezer trawlers. I do accept that scientific experts contend that our fisheries can accommodate the quotas allocated to such vessels, but that doesn't mean we should accept such vessels as part of our commercial fishing sector. As I have said before, just because a fishery can accommodate a quota being taken from it, it doesn't mean the quota should be taken. By all means, if the expert advice is that a fishery needs to be harvested to head off environmental imbalance or harm then it should be fished. But it may be better to allow a fishery to simply remain in place, unharvested, rather than sell it for peanuts to these factory freezer vessels. Let the fishery grow. I see no harm in allowing fish stocks to grow.

Members may recall the Geelong Star, which was given permission by this government to harvest the Small Pelagic Fishery off the south coast of the mainland and the east coast of Tasmania. This vessel was of negligible benefit to the Australian economy. It provided few jobs, certainly none that were ongoing, and its other economic inputs were marginal at best. While here, that vessel killed a number of dolphins and seals, and the fate of the protected whale shark remains unknown. There were no tears shed in Tasmania when the Geelong Star headed off over the horizon. In fact, I challenge anyone opposite who supports factory freezer trawlers to point out any community in the world where these vessels have fished that have a happy story to tell. The only people who benefit from factory freezer trawlers are the corporations that own them.

Australia's commercial fishing sector is best served by Australian flagged commercial trawlers, crewed by Australians, home porting in Australia, being maintained in Australia and processing and exporting from Australia. Commercial management of our fisheries should examine not only what can occur but what should occur and, when determining whether quotas are allocated, the community benefit should be weighed alongside the private benefit. Our fisheries belong to all of us, not just a handful of international shipping corporations.

As members might expect, Tasmania has a thriving recreational firing sector. Indeed, it has the highest participation rate of any state or territory of the Federation—115,000 Tasmanians fish, which is about one in five Tasmanians, and there are 30,000 registered recreational vessels. Unfortunately, we can only guesstimate the economic value of recreational fishing to Tasmania—we guesstimate it's around a couple of hundred million dollars—because the federal government is dragging its feet on working with the Tasmanian recreational fishing sector and businesses to draw up a detailed economic profile.

Earlier this month, thousands of Tasmanians enthusiastically took part in the second annual Gone Fishing Day calendar of events, with five days of saltwater events and five of freshwater. We are truly blessed in Tasmania with great fishing. Whether it is in a creek, a lake, a beach or the deep ocean, we have some of the best in the world. We will have the World Fly Fishing Championships in Tasmania in 2019, and we have a burgeoning swordfishing sector off the south-east coast. A three-year research project into the sustainability of swordfish is concluding this year and early indications are very promising for a sustainable fishery ahead. Swordfishing is a sector of the industry that is growing by word of mouth. The chatter has gone through the community like wild fire about how good it is in Tasmania and the fact that in Tasmania it's a daytime experience. You don't have to be out in the dead of night. In fact, the sector is becoming so popular that, without proper management, it does risk becoming—oh, my speechwriter!—a double-edged swordfish. I should read these speeches before I give them! That is why it is important for recreational fishers to have a seat at the table—because they know the issues involved.

Fishing season in Tasmania is just kicking off. I am told squid is a bit quiet and it is a little early for swordfish, but there was very good southern bluefin fishing up until a month ago, which is later than usual. It used to be a three- or four-month season but it is now nine months long. As we know, waters are getting warmer over summer off Tasmania and this is bringing different species down, including albacore and marlin. The warming of Tasmania's coastal waters does of course have significant implications for fishery management, and the input of recreational and Indigenous fishers will be invaluable in developing appropriate mechanisms to take account of it. That is one of the reasons Labor are happy to support this bill. It is long past time that Indigenous and recreational fishers had a seat at the table in the management of Commonwealth fisheries, and we are very pleased to support the bill.

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