SO, no trawlers longer than 130m will be permitted to operate in Australian waters. The hard line anti-commercial groups would have liked that length threshold to be lower, perhaps 110m. But as we’ve all now read the proponents have come back with a 95m boat option that will take nearly as many small pelagics as the original would have … why should we be surprised?
When the 130m ban was announced, the pro-productivity, pro-industry development lobby came out to condemn the decision and suggest a plot to enact a total ban on commercial fishing in Australia. One economist, writing in a major Australian daily owned by a US ex-Australian citizen suggested that was on the agenda in an attack on the decision, and penned the following:
“Australia ranks 54th in terms of fish catch yet has the third most extensive coastline. Our poor performance owes much to regulatory restraints and, as a result, we are a net importer of fish.”
This proposition is made up of, technically, a totally false conclusion drawn from an essentially true premise, presumably by an economist who’s either unaware of facts or just making something up to support an opinion.
We probably do rank 54th and have the third most extensive coastline … haven’t checked that for a while. But that coastline is largely remote and inaccessible and the waters around it are not particularly rich in fish density when compared to the traditionally fish-rich north Atlantic and central Pacific regions. So being 54th is probably a good position to be in. It means that the regulations supporting sustainable fishing enacted in recent years by AFMA, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and currently being reviewed in other states, are ensuring that there are fish for the future … unlike the situation in many countries positioned much higher up the fish catch table.
And the second part of the quote is just plain misleading and wrong. Yes, we import 70 per cent of the seafood we consume. It’s in the form of low to medium cost product from South East Asia, Africa, South Africa and New Zealand (basa, barra, farmed prawns, Nile perch, hake, hoki, snapper, flounder etc) which is generally of a good standard and, if you buy a seafood platter in your average club, is probably what you’ll get.
But we export 80 per cent of what we produce (bluefin tuna, rock lobsters, coral trout, tropical snappers etc) because it’s of such high value and quality that it’s basically too expensive for the average Aussie seafood consumer, at least on a day-to-day basis.
Whether you like it or not, that’s about globalisation and successive governments’ encouragement and incentives to exporters. It’s not, as our economist suggests, as a result of unnecessary “regulatory restraints” on the commercial sector.
