Kingfish Farming

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:43): I rise today to talk about a couple of local issues—or hopefully a couple of local issues, if I get the time. One is the return of aquaculture, kingfish farming, to Fitzgerald Bay to the north of Whyalla. It would be fair to say that it has been somewhat controversial in the area, but we will see a return to aquaculture. I am on the record as supporting the industry, but it is qualified support.

I believe there needs to be a conservative approach to stocking rates and to the increase in stocking rates in Fitzgerald Bay. As I have indicated, it is a return to kingfish farming in the bay, and it has something of a proud history because South Australia Aquaculture Management was the first kingfish farmer in there. It was a syndicate, a bunch of Whyalla businesses and others, involved in a syndicate. They did some good work with SARDI in cracking the breeding cycle of the kingfish, which is native to the area.

Southern Star Aquaculture was a smaller company that also operated in the bay. They worked their guts out. They were a hardworking company with the Edwardses and Lyndon Giles. It was a good family-run business. There were no escapes and high-quality fish. It was a smaller operation that was managed very well. So kingfish farming started there.

Of late, the council have copped flak from some people. I did not get involved in the early discussion in my community because it seemed as though it was being used politically by some people as a vehicle to have a go at the council. The council is not the approving authority for the kingfish farms. Indeed, ultimately the marina is not a council marina, even though they have care and control over it.

Some people in the community wanted the council to say no in relation to the use of the marina. What would have happened is that the state government would have stepped in and negotiated with Clean Seas about the marina. The council held off on making a decision until such time as they got what they felt was a good outcome for the community when it came to the use of that facility. I commend the council for the work it did with Clean Seas. Initially, Clean Seas were not negotiating. They were inflexible, but they did change their position, and maybe a change of CEO helped that process along. So they now have an agreement with Clean Seas.

Sometimes it is forgotten that the facility at Fitzgerald Bay, the marina, was specifically built for the aquaculture industry using money from the Rail Reform Transition Program, which funded a nursery in Port Augusta, the marina and a number of other things in Fitzgerald Bay many years ago. Now Clean Seas are coming back to Fitzgerald Bay.

When I talk about conservative stocking rates, the approval is for up to 4,000 tonnes of fish. I think there might well be issues with that. I will have a deeper look into this, but I think there are going to be issues with that. We know that, to the south of Fitzgerald Bay—at False Bay, which is on the other side of the Point Lowly peninsula—over many years BHP discharged into that bay what was essentially a nutrient load in the form of ammonia. We know that, over time, the ammonia destroyed or degraded around about 20 square kilometres of seagrass beds in False Bay. We have all the figures, going back over the years, for the ammonia discharge.

We know that nutrient load was less than the potential nutrient load that is going to be generated in Fitzgerald Bay. I do not think the impact is going to be on the cuttlefish, because of the coastal dynamics in that area. If there were to be an impact, it would have come from the ammonia from BHP, which was downcurrent from the kingfish.

The fact that so much seagrass was destroyed in that bay is a cause of concern. We need complete openness, complete transparency and really decent monitoring, and it needs to be done in a way that it is not usually done. The public needs to be involved with it so that aquaculture in Fitzgerald Bay can continue to have its social licence to operate. If it is not completely open and transparent, they will lose their social licence to operate.