Parliamentary Committees

SELECT COMMITTEE ON CONDUCT BY PIRSA IN FISHING OF MUD COCKLES IN MARINE SCALEFISH AND LAKES AND COORONG PIPI FISHERIES

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins:

That the report of the select committee be noted.

(Continued from 9 September 2009. Page 3108.)

The Hon. C.V. SCHAEFER (17:52): I will make a brief contribution to this report. I believe the structure and main findings of this report have already been enunciated by the chair of the committee, the Hon. John Dawkins. I did, however, want to make some comments because setting up this committee in the first place was somewhat contentious. I think the belief was that because the council agreed to this select committee we would inevitably find against the recommendations of the government of the day.

In fact, that has not happened, and I believe that it was the council perhaps working at its best. We had representatives from the two major parties and a cross-section represented on the committee. We were brought quite legitimate complaints by the pipi fishery and the mud cockle fishery. We investigated those complaints and have handed down a number of recommendations that I believe PIRSA would be well advised to take into account when it inevitably regulates other fisheries within South Australia.

I think the lesson to be learnt is that the matter of whether PIRSA or a government department considers it has consulted and the matter of whether those affected by the decisions of that department consider that they have been consulted are two very different things. That was adequately shown in this case particularly with the mud cockle fishery. Many of the participants in that fishery believed that they were not given sufficient notice, that the meetings that were held were, if you like, biased and that some people had inside knowledge that their fishery was to be regulated and others did not.

We saw a newsletter which was circulated to that fishery enunciating that it was a fishery under stress due to over-fishing. That, of course, came about with the increase in the value of cockles as they were used for human consumption as opposed to bait. However, it was quite clearly enunciated some time before this regulation that the fishery was under stress and that it was likely to be over-fished.

If I was a participant in that fishery I would have taken that as a hint that the fishery was going to be regulated in some way or another. Therefore, I reject the view that some people had inside knowledge. Some simply chose to read the information that they were provided with and others did not.

One of the arguments that we heard was both for and against the methods used for deciding on the size of the quota for each of the fishers and the proportion of that decision which was allocated according to fishing history and that which was allocated as a right of licence. I have looked at this, as best I can, from every angle and I hark back to the days when quotas came into grain farming. They did not last very long, thankfully because, again, there were winners and losers, and there were farmers who were going to go broke under a quota'd system.

However, one of the things that was applied was a harvest history—how much the property concerned had produced over an average period of time. I cannot see, if an industry is to be regulated and quota'd, how there is any other fair method. I think it is quite unfair and unjust to allow for the fact that someone has a given right simply because it was part of their licence. So, the method used was probably quite just. It was an amalgam of those two: of the catch history and licence right.

There was a system of appeal, which is quite unusual within the fisheries industry generally, put in place. Again, we can argue whether that system of appeal was or was not transparent enough. Those who won out of that system were happy with it and those who lost were unhappy. In the end, those who had been on the appeals committee agreed that they had differed only in respect of the decisions involving two of the fishers. So, the people who served on that committee agreed on the allocation of additional quota to everyone but two people. Given that licensing is always contentious and regulating a free-for-all system is always contentious, as sad as that may be for those two people, I think it is probably about as fair as it is going to get.

As I said, we have made a number of recommendations that I believe are applicable to future regulations including, I think quite importantly, that in the future any fishery which goes to management has an audit conducted to inform those concerned what their actual catch history is and what method will be used in applying that to decide what their quota becomes.

In the end, as a committee we believed that delaying the process any further was going to impinge on the commercial viability of the fishers. Some will find it difficult but they will at least have a commercial value on their quotas and it will make their quotas transferable so that they will be able to either buy or sell additional quota. Our committee, in the end, recommended that the minister reintroduce the regulations relating to quota allocations as soon as practicable, and I concur with that decision.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. A. Bressington.