Fed Govt under fire over reef no-take zones

[jaybee]

The Federal Opposition has accused the Commonwealth of failing to properly assess the impact of more no-take zones on the Great Barrier Reef.

Fisheries spokesman Senator Gavan O'Connor says the director of the Bureau of Rural Sciences told a Senate committee the bureau was only able to carry out a limited assessment of the implications.

Senator O'Connor says families dependent on fishing deserve a full study.

"Those fishermen deserve more than a rapid desktop analysis that the Minister said he undertook, which was only five weeks when, in fact, the director of the Bureau of Rural Sciences, Dr Peter O'Brien, has told a Senate committee that the bureau would have needed six months to do an accurate assessment of those impacts," he said.

Federal Fisheries Minister Senator Ian Macdonald has defended the process.

"This assessment only forms just one part of the very wide consultation that will be embarked upon by the Government," he said.

"There will be a lot of work done, already we've had a number of meetings with the Queensland Seafood Industry Association and that association has indicated how supportive it was and it felt its proposals had been taken into account and listened to.

Last Update: Wednesday, February 18, 2004. 7:36am (AEDT

[BurdekinBob]

Jaybee, what he has said is very true......
For the government to properly compensate the stakeholders for losses incurred from the RAP proposals would probably cost tens of millions of dollars.
The BRS assessed the Burdekin regions total loss at $17,000, when the real loss to the commercial fishery only, (without all other stakeholder's losses, eg., bait and tackle outlets, boat dealers, service stations, etc etc), will be about a million bucks, ($500,000 from just one small area).
If this so-called (undervalued) assessment is spread over the whole of Queensland, the government wouldn't have enough money.
Bob

[Kerry]

The Federal Opposition has accused the Commonwealth of failing to properly assess the impact of more no-take zones on the Great Barrier Reef.

Well fancy that :-X actually failed in many respects [smiley=thumbsdown.gif]

Cheers, Kerry.