Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

There is one final matter that I do need to deal with in relation to this because it has become part of the debate. It is around the setting of the quota. The Greens were quite delighted that a new paper came out from IMAS last week, and I indicated that I would go back and have a look at that. One of the key things is that the science and the discussion around the science is very important and, unfortunately, as I have indicated in my previous contributions on this piece of legislation, there have been some very disappointing attempts to smear the scientists who are involved in this process. I understand there has been quite a reluctance by some of our institutions to allow those scientists to defend themselves. I have to say that that is quite disappointing because the naysaying comment effectively stands and there is very little opportunity for these people to actually make a comment.

The Greens and some media publications were declaring victory because at IMAS there had been some recalculations of the DEPM, the egg survey that is used as one of the elements of establishing the quota in the fishery. The fact that the scientists at IMAS had rerun the calculations using a number of different methods has brought, so it has been suggested, a result that means the quota should be very different. Dr Wadsley made the claim in the first place that the quota setting was wrong because, as he refers to it, he could not reproduce the calculations, he could not reproduce the numbers that were set by IMAS. One of the problems was that he was using the wrong method. In fact, he was not actually using a recognised method in the first place. He was using an Excel spreadsheet, and that is nothing like any of the recognised methods for doing the calculations that are required to establish the biomass. But unfortunately, instead of ringing up the scientists who had done the calculations to understand what the inputs were and what the decision-making process was around the selection of the method of calculation, Dr Wadsley, as Senator Whish-Wilson said yesterday, put it on a blog. So rather than science by peer review, which is what happened with the science that was done out of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, we now have a process where we have science via blog and that is the peer review process—by blog. Quite frankly, I do not think that has any credibility at all, and I do not think that Dr Wadsley's analysis has any credibility at all.

Not only that, but the person who is acknowledged as the expert on the DEPM process does not believe it has any credibility either. Nancy Lo, from the National Marine Fisheries Service in California, completely unsolicited—not asked by anybody—did a critique of Dr Wadsley's criticism. In other words, this is somebody who knows about this versus somebody who works as a geologist in the oil and gas sector and a mathematician. So, as I said when quoting the Chief Scientist, it is a bit like getting a dentist to give you advice on heart surgery. What did Nancy Lo say? She acknowledged that he had made 'some constructive comments' but said he had 'missed some major points'. The terminologies used by Dr Wadsley were too strong and some of them were not correct for the paper. As I said earlier, Dr Wadsley used Microsoft Excel to do the regression analysis. Most researchers use more sophisticated methods. While an undergraduate may know how to use these statistical packages, to understand the theory behind the estimation procedure requires a statistician or quantitative biologist with a higher academic degree. So, unsolicited, Dr Wadsley's criticism of the work done by IMAS has been rejected by Nancy Lo, who is the acknowledged expert in this particular matter regarding the calculations around the egg survey.

Of course, because Dr Wadsley was not a part of the process that decided the method of calculation, he understandably would not be aware of why a particular method was decided upon. So, within the assessment panel that looked at which method would be used—not within IMAS but within the resource assessment group—there was a decision made as to which method should be used. So IMAS used the method that was recommended to them by the resource assessment group. Not only that, but he is not privy to the base information. So he comes from outside, completely cold, and makes an analysis using a very simplistic method—one that does not have the sophistication of the models that are used more broadly in doing these calculations—but he does not even do the common courtesy of ringing the scientists to find out why he could not reproduce their results. He has since changed his story. It is not that he could not reproduce the results; it is now that they used the wrong method. So his credibility is sinking even further.

Interestingly, though—and, I think, showing him a lot more courtesy than many would—AFMA have invited Dr Wadsley to attend one of their meetings. I think that is a decent approach. As I said, many would not give him that courtesy, but they are giving him courtesy that he has not provided to any of them. In a press release yesterday, AFMA have invited Dr Wadsley to make a submission to the Small Pelagic Fishery Resource Assessment Group. They said, 'We also invite Dr Wadsley to contact Dr Tim Ward, the chair of that group, regarding his attention or participation in the future expert work of this group.'

It would be nice to see Dr Wadsley inform himself rather than just go public, make a criticism and allege that the quota is set at too low a level without understanding what happens behind it. I think that is a reasonable process to occur because that work of Dr Wadsley has been used in this debate against IMAS, and in particular against some people within IMAS. What has been forgotten in this process is that that work has been peer reviewed by SARDI in South Australia, and there is also a very, very sound body of work done by CSIRO. My understanding is that CSIRO has rerun all its calculations for the biomass in this fishery and that that work indicates the biomass is between 100,000 and 200,000 tonnes. The assessment of the resource assessment group and IMAS is that the biomass was at 140,000 tonnes, which was the basis for the setting of the quota.

The work by CSIRO was done using the Atlantis ecosystem model, something I referred to last night, and it has been rated the best in the world by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations—not by us; this was an external recognition. So, in respect of the certainty around the science for the quota, let us just put that to bed because there are a number of calculations, not just one, and the AFMA commission, as the minister has actually indicated on a number of occasions, does not just take the advice of the resource assessment group or the MAC, it takes advice from its own scientists and other sources. Here we have a very credible source, the CSIRO, that has made an assessment of this biomass as being between 100,000 and 200,000 tonnes.

So Dr Wadsley is now very much alone in his criticism. He was not aware of the inputs. He has taken one graph, tried to recalculate the calculations using Microsoft Excel rather than the modelling tools that are available to the industry and to the scientists, and could not reproduce it. He did not provide the common courtesy of going back and discussing it with the scientists who did the calculations to find out what was behind it and why; he just posted to a blog.

So, chair, I think that does deal with this issue. There has been much excitement. It is a 'gotcha' moment for the Greens and some of the people opposing the vessel but, as I have indicated, there are a number of other sources. I think it is appropriate that we do go back to the science to discuss this in order to have a good understanding. The important thing about the Atlantis model—and I am not sure whether Minister Ludwig is aware of it, because he has not said that he is aware of it, or Minister Burke—is that it actually modelled the whole biosystem. So the issue of interactions and impacts on marine mammals and other marine species are actually modelled as part of the CSIRO work. As I indicated, it is rated the best in the world by the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Let us put all that stuff aside. My understanding is that the reworked modelling from the CSIRO has not yet been released. I would be interested to know whether the minister has asked for it. I have, but I have not been able to get hold of it yet. I will be very interested to read it. I would recommend it to Minister Burke, because it might do something about his uncertainty.

I have one other final point on Dr Wadsley. I had a bit of a look at his qualifications and, as I said in my presentation, he is eminently well qualified in his fields, and I make no comment around that at all. But this is not the first time he has intervened in one of these environmental debates, so he actually has form.

He came out during the pulp mill debate in Tasmania to join an anti-pulp-mill panel, so here we have a second occasion where Dr Wadsley is opposing an investment in my home state of Tasmania and I just wonder whether or not there might be some philosophical perspective behind his comments, particularly given that he did not give the common courtesies that I mentioned before as part of his engagement with this particular issue. It is very disappointing that he did not do that but, as we now know, it is not the first time he has intervened in one of these types of issues. So I think it is important that I address where we were because the Greens seemed to be in a situation where they were really happy that the scientists that had done the research were now seemingly saying that their research was wrong. That is not what they were doing. They ran a number of calculations, they remained confident in the numbers that they put out and they remained confident in the reasons they put out, but there was not only that: their work was verified by other fisheries scientists in Australia and, importantly, it was reinforced by a completely separate model run by the CSIRO. That CSIRO work does not just deal with the biomass in this fishery; it actually deals with broader ecosystem issues and is regarded as the best in the world. It is something that we ought to be proud of, that we have an institution like CSIRO that can produce that sort of work.