FISHERIES MANAGEMENT REGULATIONS

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (11:43): I move:

That the regulations made under the Fisheries Management Act 2007 entitled Pipi Units, made on 13 December 2007 and laid on the table of this house on 12 February 2008, be disallowed.

These regulations are about changing the manner in which a fishery (partly in my electorate and partly in other electorates) is managed. It is an interesting fishery. It is largely the Lakes and Coorong fishery of which there are some 29 licensees. It is what is known as a mixed-species fishery. The fishers fish for a number of species, and a number of those fishers have endorsement on their licences to fish for cockles. Also, three marine-scale licences have cockle endorsements on them. I understand that a total of 32 licence holders have cockle endorsements. All of the 32 also have endorsements on their fishing licences to target other species within two separate fisheries.

Generally, in fishery management (and this is the case to date in both the fisheries, I understand, but particularly the Coorong and Lakes fishery; and my understanding is more of that fishery than the marine-scale fishery), the management technique has involved regulating the amount of effort that can be put into the fishery. Certainly, this has been the case with regard to cockles, concerning which we regulate where fishers can fish, when they can fish and how they can fish. When or if there is pressure on the fishery under those circumstances, the regulations are basically changed to reduce the effort and consequently reduce the pressure on the fishery.

It has been decided by the minister and the government to change the management structure and move from an effort-regulated fishery regime into a total allowable catch, or a quota fishery with a total allowable catch. I want to make it quite clear that the opposition has no problem with the move of the management structure from an effort-based fishery to a quota-based fishery, which is easier to manage. The management can react much more quickly to changes in the fishery, it is more cost effective and I think that, ultimately, everyone comes out a winner. I do not have a problem with the fundamentals; it is the way that we have moved from being an effort based fishery to a quota-based fishery.

A quota-based fishery allows the opportunity to use two quota systems. You can use what is known as an Olympic quota system, where there is an overall quota. You fire the start gun on a certain date when the fishery opens; and when the total quota has been caught you close the fishery. That is an Olympic-based quota fishery, which I do not think anyone likes or enjoys. It upsets the way in which you market the product out of the fishery, and I do not think it maximises the output from the fishery to anyone—least of all the state but, more particularly, the individual fishers.

It is proposed to have an individually-based quota allocation, a tradeable quota, made to individual fishers. That is the way the government has moved, and I do not have any qualms with that either. Where I start to fall foul of what the minister has done in these regulations is the way in which he has apportioned the quota amongst the individuals in the fishery. Let me start off by saying that a significant number of the 32 fishers have not been out cockling. They have not been active cocklers. They have no, or very limited, catch history—to all intents and purposes, they have no catch history.

I think the government did the right thing in recognising that, notwithstanding that, their licence had a value because of that cockle endorsement. In fact, I have been given evidence that fishers who do not have a cockling history have paid substantial sums of money to buy a licence, particularly because it has a cockle endorsement. In fact, one fisher I know, who basically fishes Coorong mullet in the fishery, bought a second licence specifically for the cockle endorsement. He still fishes only Coorong mullet. His effort in the Coorong mullet fishery has not increased due to his second licence. He bought the licence purely because of the value to him to hold the cockle endorsement, and the government has acknowledged that.

The government has said, 'We understand that there is a value in having that endorsement on the licence; and, as a consequence of that, when we distribute it, we have to give some of the quota to each licensee.' Then it becomes very difficult to work out how to distribute under those circumstances, because some people will get a tradeable quota on their licence when they have not been actively fishing. Of course, others who have been actively fishing in that particular fishery as a consequence of that may see their ability to catch the amount of cockles they have been catching in recent times diminished. So, it is a two-edged sword that cuts both ways and I am not suggesting that it is easy to come to a conclusion. When the minister responds, in whatever form, he will say that he set up an advisory panel to take evidence, that it gave him advice and that he then sat down with all the fishers and talked to them about the decision he was about to make; that he had further discussions and made some modifications, and that that is the basis on which he made the decisions.

I acknowledge that that process happened and that the minister had a difficult job. However, I believe the advisory panel at some point said that it did not have the wisdom of Solomon, that it was quite difficult and threw its hands up in the air and said that it was too difficult. On page 17, the advisory panel report states:

We would caution against paying too much attention to the extent to which a licence had been exploited since it became known that the fishery was likely to move to a total allowable catch. Some people may have increased their catch of cockles or entered the fishery only in order to claim a larger allocation of entitlement, but without any real intention of participating in the industry.

The advisory panel said that it was given evidence that some people had knowledge that there was a move towards a total allowable catch, and some people alleged to the advisory panel that this caused some individuals to increase their effort to make sure that, if the allocation was based on historic catch, they had a larger allocation than they otherwise would have had. It continues:

Several persons claim to have been frustrated in efforts to exploit their licences by a variety of personal circumstances. Whatever period is examined to assess past effort and likely future intentions must take into account these anomalies.

The advisory panel further states:

In the end it was our view that the various personal problems we were told about were so widely spread that very little could be done to remedy one except at the expense of the other.

That is the point at which the advisory panel acknowledges that it was not going to get it right and that there were issues there and that it was not able to come up with a solution. I believe that it was constrained by its terms of reference at that point. It acknowledged in its report that it was not going to get it right, that there would be anomalies, and in that acknowledgement it was implied that some people would be affected and receive a lesser allocation than they would otherwise have obtained.

That is the crux of the problem we have before us because, in moving from an effort-based fishery to a quota-based fishery, at least one fisherman (and a number of fishermen have approached me) who recently bought into the fishery will be seriously disadvantaged. He believes that not only will he be seriously disadvantaged but also that it will break his business and cause financial ruin for him.

That is the problem created by this change and I implore the minister at least to take on board the circumstances of that individual. It is not right or conscionable for a government to take a decision which will cause the financial ruin of an individual through no fault of his or her own, as is happening in this case. I believe the minister is well aware of the circumstances as this individual has written to the minister on a number of occasions.

It becomes even more complicated than this because the cockle fishery itself is changing dramatically. Traditionally, cockles were fished to supply the bait market (a low value market) with a value in recent years, I am told, of about $1 a kilo. We had fishermen on the beach off the Coorong fishing for large quantities of cockles and selling them as bait. A few years ago, with the support of the local fishermen's association, which obtained a federal grant to support this, it developed a market for human consumption for the cockles. Before cockles can be sold for human consumption they have to be purged as in their environment they get a lot of sand in them, which is not palatable.

So, this market has been established over a period of years, and a number of fishers have been working towards producing product for this market. They have made some investments in putting in purging tanks, they go and fish, put the fish in the purging tanks and then sell them to the human consumption market. Some fishers, I understand, grade their fish and then on-sell them to someone who has already established the infrastructure to purge the fish, and there is a three-stage marketing situation.

I understand in the previous cockling season (I am talking about the 2006-07 fishing year) about 40 per cent of the total catch was sold to the human consumption market. I have had to do a few calculations on the back of an envelope, because one of the submissions to the advisory panel suggests that the bait market was still worth about $1 a kilo but, when you took into account that 40 per cent of the fish was sold to the human consumption market, the total value of the fishery came up to about $3.50 a kilo. I did a few sums and said that the human consumption market must be worth somewhere between $8, $9 and $10 per kilo—of that order. I am told that in the most recent season that value has increased to probably $12, $13 or $14. So, suddenly, the kilo value per fish for a substantial portion of the fishery has increased dramatically.

I believe this is where the minister has an option to make a political decision to overcome the anomalies without financially disadvantaging people. The person who has been most severely disadvantaged—and I will use his name because he has given me permission to do so—is Steve Alexander, and I think he has written to virtually every member of the parliament. Steve came into the fishery recently. He bought his licence before an investment advice was given by the department to say we are going to change the way the fisheries are managed, which I understand was given in January 2007. Steve bought his licence before that but was unable to go and work the fishery, because he had to get some more capital behind him, and that took about 18 months. He then went into the fishery and fished diligently but only supplied the human consumption market, so he was not fishing for bait. While he was doing that, it appears that a number of other fishers were supplying some of their fish to the human consumption market and the bulk of their fish to the very low value bait market.

Under the quota system that has been established by the minister, all fishers have been, by and large, allocated quota based on their historic catch, irrespective of whether that catch was destined for the human consumption market or the low value bait market. So we are establishing catch history, by and large, on the low value bait market, whereas those people as we move forward will be able to put all of that quota into the human consumption market, so they will get a huge windfall as they go forward and will be financially just as well off with a much smaller quota than what they have received under these regulations. Therein lies the main argument that we can actually resolve the anomalies that have been caused because of the nature of the change in the way the fish have been marketed.

There are a couple of other issues, and one of them is that I believe the department actively wants to have the fishery contained to as small a number of fishers as possible, and I have a concern with that, and I think in some way that may have driven some of the decisions that have been taken. One of the reasons I make that claim—and I know I am rapidly running out of time—is that the Director of Fisheries has written a letter detailing a lot of the things that have happened, and one of the things he says is that all cockle fishery management costs will be based on the allocated quota units. Since that letter was written, the department has met with the fishers to organise cost recovery—

The SPEAKER: The member's time has expired.

Mr WILLIAMS: I think the minister knows what I am going to say.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. R.J. McEwen.

Mr VENNING: Mr Speaker, I bring to your attention the state of the house.

A quorum having been formed: