John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Food Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Fisheries Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2010. The coalition recognise the important role that fishing plays in hundreds of coastal and river communities, and in bringing enjoyment to millions of Australians as well as to the national economy. The commercial fishing sector has a value of more than $2.1 billion, making it Australia’s sixth largest primary producing sector. In addition, it is estimated that 3½ million Australians participate in recreational fishing, spending over $3 billion each year on charter hire fishing, boating equipment, travel accommodation and bait.

The coalition are keeping a close eye on the fisheries portfolio, as we are concerned that Labor continues to threaten the sector with massive new no-take marine parks around Australia and has allowed fringe environmental groups to unilaterally influence policy on this matter. The fear of no-take zones has caused great uncertainty for businesses both directly and indirectly reliant on access to fishing resources, be they commercial or recreational. This bill, however, will provide small and practical measures to improve fisheries management.

The bill will amend the Fisheries Management Act 1991, the Fisheries Administration Act 1991 and the Fishing Levy Act 1991 to enable greater efficiency, cost-effectiveness and more suitable fisheries for the fishing industry. The bill amends these acts to achieve four outcomes. Firstly, it facilitates co-management arrangements with various stakeholders. To enable the co-management arrangements to be fully implemented, the amendments will provide the Australian Fisheries Management Authority with the capacity to delegate powers and functions under the Fisheries Management Act to primary stakeholders in a fishery in which there is a co-management arrangement. The exercise of those functions and powers by delegates will still be subject to the directions of the AFMA Chief Executive Officer. The CEO will have the power to revoke a delegation. The power to delegate to primary stakeholders will also be subject to other requirements of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901. Appropriately enough, some powers and functions will be delegated to primary stakeholders, but AFMA will still have oversight capabilities to ensure governance and sustainability requirements under the Commonwealth fisheries harvest strategy policy, and reporting under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

Secondly, this bill simplifies the regulatory regime administered by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority by enabling the regulations to prescribe common conditions that apply to the holders of fishing concessions across different fisheries and by simplifying the requirements for amending fisheries plans of management to remove conditions that have been prescribed by the regulations or which are otherwise redundant, thereby removing unnecessary costs that are passed on to the holders of fishing concessions.

These changes remove the requirement that a plan of management for a fishery contains measures that duplicate administrative processes, in particular with regard to reporting and accountability; consolidate the power in the Fisheries Management Act to direct the closure or partial closure of a fishery; and simplify the procedures for making minor amendments to fisheries management plans, such as the correction of errors or changes in format. These are probably some of the bigger issues that are dealt with by the changes.

The bill will also simplify the consultation process for amending a plan of management, particularly for minor amendments. In cases where an amendment is more than a minor modification of a plan of management, as a minimum consultation with the management advisory committee and the peak industry body representing holders of fishing concessions will be required.

Thirdly, the bill rationalises management advisory committees, or MACs, by removing the restriction in subsection 56(4) of the FA Act on abolishing a MAC that is provided for in a fishery management plan. Under the existing legislation, AFMA can abolish a MAC that is provided for in a plan, but only by amending the particular plan. This would be a more costly process, particularly where amendments are required to a number of plans. The amendment will therefore allow AFMA to complete restructure of the MACs. I understand industry and MAC members participated in and were supportive of the decision to reduce the MAC structure from 12 to six. I also understand that this decision was considered by all parties to be appropriate to improve efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of advice to AFMA, with the added benefit of lowering the fisheries administrative costs borne by industry.

Fourthly, and finally, this bill will allow AFMA to provide its services to other agencies. The bill will allow AFMA to make its expertise in fisheries management available to Commonwealth, state, territory or overseas agencies by, for example, making trained fisheries observers available to state or territory fisheries management agencies or by sharing its technical expertise in the installation and use of vessel monitoring systems. This amendment will also allow AFMA to charge Commonwealth and state agencies for the provision of services under the existing section 94 of the FA Act.

To sum up, the co-management arrangements and MAC amendments will enable the industry to be given a more prominent and direct role in the management of fisheries and will improve the effectiveness of management advisory committees. The bill will enhance AFMA’s ability to achieve efficient, cost-effective and sustainable fisheries management and to thereby meet its objectives under the FA Act by facilitating the implementation of co-management with various stakeholders in Commonwealth fisheries. I believe this bill does provide small and common sense changes to improve fisheries management. The bill is supported by the Commonwealth Fisheries Association. I will be monitoring this amendment bill, if passed, to ensure that the government delivers a reduction in the costs to industry that are proposed by these changes.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to acknowledge the comments of my colleague the member for Lyons. He is well known as a passionate advocate for the fishing industry, a wonderful spokesman and advocate for them. There are few in this building who know or understand more about it. He is truly the fisherman’s friend.

It is very pleasing to be able to sum up now, for this legislation is so important for our industry. The Fisheries Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2010 amends the Fisheries Management Act 1991, the Fisheries Administration Act 1991 and the Fishing Levy Act 1991 to implement more effective, efficient and less costly fisheries management arrangements in four main ways.

The first group of amendments will enable AFMA to implement comanagement arrangements in Commonwealth fisheries. Comanagement arrangements will allow AFMA to share the responsibilities and obligations for sustainable management with the primary stakeholders involved in the fishery. Comanagement will provide more effective outcomes in fisheries management through collaborative industry arrangements with stakeholders. It will also acknowledge that fishers and other key stakeholders should be involved in the management of fisheries leading to better policy and management outcomes.

Madam Deputy Speaker D’Ath, it was my pleasure to see a practical example of this in operation at the state level when I recently visited the Spencer Gulf and West Coast Prawn Fishermen’s Association in Port Lincoln in South Australia, a true model of how these arrangements can work with a responsible association working cooperatively amongst its members, bringing to bear peer group pressure and providing the raw material, the data, and cooperation with the state authorities that allow comanagement to work beautifully because they understand that sustaining the industry is in their own interests. Also, they would like to hand down their businesses to their children. So it is a wonderful example of how this comanagement regime can work and we hope to now migrate that into the Commonwealth sphere.

The second set of amendments relates to the simplification of AFMA’s regulatory processes. AFMA administers a complex regulatory framework that currently contains some duplication and inconsistency across Commonwealth fisheries. This bill will enable AFMA to reduce the complexity of the management rules that apply to each fishery by prescribing standard conditions in the subordinate regulations rather than in individual fishery management plans.

The third area of reform in the bill relates to management advisory committees, or MACs as they are commonly known. The bill will remove the limitation on AFMA to structure the MACs efficiently. The amendment is required to simplify the process for AFMA to reduce the number of MACs and to enable the implementation of a dual advisory model. This will separate the provision of advice to AFMA: MACs will continue to provide advice to AFMA on community interest issues, and advice on fishery operations will be provided by peak industry bodies.

The last group of amendments contained in this bill will allow AFMA to share its expertise and institutional knowledge with Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth agencies. The measures introduced by this bill are a further step in enabling AFMA to implement more efficient and effective fisheries management and to ensure that Australia’s fishing industry remains viable for both this generation and generations to come.

In conclusion, I refer to the comments by the member for Calare in relation to the marine bioregional planning process that is currently underway. It is a shame to see references to that process still continuing—some of the misinformation and scaremongering that occurred during the election campaign—when in reality this process in no way differs from that which applied under the Howard government, which in fact initiated that process. We are engaged in a period now of extensive consultation with the stakeholders in the industry in the furtherance of those conservation measures that may or may not be necessary that will be revealed through the areas for further analysis that have been delineated under that process.

There will be no marine parks created under this further process. There may be marine protected areas created which will relate to management regimes that are revealed by the areas for further analysis, research and observations by the industry. There should be nothing to fear in this process. It in no way differs from the process that applied under the Howard government.

I thank members for their contributions. I look forward to the arrangements and improvements that will be instituted through this legislation. I know it will be greatly welcomed by the fishing industry.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.