Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the 2006/07 SBT Australian National Catch Allocation Determination, made under subclause 17(2) of the Southern Bluefin Tuna Fishery Management Plan 1995, be disallowed.

This motion for disallowance relates to the southern bluefin tuna quota and I seek to disallow this quota. Last October the Australian Fisheries Management Authority announced that the Australian fishing industry was to be allocated a 5,265-tonne quota for southern bluefin tuna. We are now taking a larger catch of this species than any other country. I seek to disallow this quota and I would like to make plain my reasons for doing this.

My case rests on both the survival of this species and the survival of the industry that depends on it. By all accepted measures this species is now in danger of being fished to extinction. The global catch peaked in the early 1960s, and warnings have been issued repeatedly since the 1980s. Most recently, the government’s own Bureau of Rural Sciences published a 10-page update on the southern bluefin tuna in its 2005 Fisheries status report. The status report reads like an obituary for this species. The southern bluefin tuna, commonly known as SBT, is declared to be:

Overfished, and overfishing is occurring; spawning stock severely depleted and current catches severely limit likelihood of rebuilding.

It also notes:

the most recent assessments suggest that the spawning stock is likely to decline further if the global catch remains at recent levels...

Further it states:

The scientists estimated that if catches continue at recent levels ... there is a 50% chance that the spawning stock will be half its 2004 size by 2022.

The Bureau of Rural Sciences, BRS, has classified southern bluefin tuna as overfished every year since it began compiling these reports in 1992. The 2005 report recommended an immediate 5,000 tonne reduction in the assumed global catch, or a 7,160 tonne reduction if governments delayed action until 2007. I appreciate that marine ecology is not an exact science and that uncertainties remain, but the BRS report states:

… data collection and stock assessment procedures for SBT are among the most comprehensive in the world for highly migratory species.

So this time there is no hiding behind gaps in the data or scientific uncertainty—we know.

This report also touched on the unacceptable levels of bycatch, in particular albatross and other seabirds which are hooked when diving on baits. At least one species, the Macquarie Island population of wandering albatross, was listed under the Endangered Species Protection Act 1992, with longline tuna fishing listed as a key threatening process.

The BRS report was written before the real extent of Japanese piracy had been made public. I refer of course to the incidents reported in the media in the latter half of last year about illegal catches. Japan has been taking between 12,000 and 20,000 tonnes a year against an average quota of around 6,000 tonnes. Australia, in a sense, has been no different. We have been earnest in our pursuit of pirate operators and illegal fishing but have avoided taking the harsh measures ourselves, which now leaves Australia in the shocking position of having the world’s largest take of a critically endangered species.

For a long time the Greens have pushed for staged reductions in quotas in exchange for a long-term future of the fishery. Now we face the prospect of the complete collapse of this species, with unknown consequences for the food chains and wider ecosystems of which these creatures are a part. The World Conservation Union, or IUCN as it is commonly known, lists the bluefin tuna as critically endangered. Governments in all the countries who fish this species have been incredibly reluctant to stand up to pressure from fishing interests. I am dumbfounded at the prospect that this government is willing to hammer this species into extinction and throw hundreds of people out of work in the process, all the while accusing conservationists of being anti jobs.

This was certainly the case with the former Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, who somehow came to the conclusion that listing the species as threatened under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act would hamper conservation efforts. I raise this today because we have a new minister for the environment who will, hopefully, take a science based approach to this issue and take action before this fishery is permanently closed because there are just no fish.

There is some evidence that the Japanese government are beginning to make changes in response to the revelations last year. They accepted a roughly 50 per cent cut, to around 3,000 tonnes per year, in their quota. The decision by AFMA to allocate 5,265 tonnes of this fish to the Australian industry this year is a triumph of politics over science and conservation—and, may I say, rationality. It is time the government stood up to the fishing industry in order to ensure that there is an industry in 10 years time. It is nonsensical to keep fishing for this fish at this quota level.

In Kobe recently, at the gathering of the regional fisheries management organisations with responsibility for managing tuna stocks, there was acknowledgement for the first time that the current system of management is failing. But, unfortunately, that was about all that was achieved at that meeting—‘Yes, so the system is failing, but let’s delay even longer before we do anything.’ Very halting steps were taken, including the issuing of certificates of origin, to prevent illegal fishing and greater transparency in the setting of regional fishing quotas. However, anyone waiting for a comprehensive plan of action or sharp reductions in the quota was severely disappointed. No concrete actions were agreed as a result of this meeting. There was an agreement to further talks in 2009, but we need to do much more than talk. At the very least, we need to talk much more urgently.

There are three concrete actions that the new minister could take. Firstly, he could list the species as ‘conservation dependent’ under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The Threatened Species Scientific Advisory Committee advised the minister to take this step in September 2005, and things have certainly taken a turn for the worse since then. I do not accept the tortured logic that doing this would reduce our influence within the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna. In December 2006 the Humane Society International again submitted to have the southern bluefin tuna listed as ‘conservation dependent’. In their application, they note the following: ‘In 2003 it was found that an entire generation appeared to be missing from SBT stocks off Western Australia’—

Debate interrupted.