G_Creed
01-05-2002, 11:33 AM
RECFISH AUSTRALIA
NEWS RELEASE
Tuesday 30 April 2002 For immediate publication
FEDERAL STATUTORY AUTHORITY DEFIES GOVERNMENT POLICY
AND LOCKS AUSTRALIANS OUT OF EAST COAST FISH RESOURCES
The Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) is locking Australians out of the tuna, marlin and swordfish resources of the entire East Coast and handing them to professional fishing operators in the form of exclusive rights to trade commercially, in defiance of announced Federal Government policy.
This disclosure was made today by Recfish Australia, the peak national body representing Australia’s 5.5 million recreational and sport fishers.
AFMA is in the final draft of its first formal Plan for the future management of fishing in Commonwealth waters covering the 200-mile wide Australian Fishing Zone down the entire East Coast, known as the Eastern Tuna and Billfish Fishery (ETBF), extending from Cape York Peninsula to the Victorian/South Australian border and including Tasmania.
Recfish Australia discovered late last week that AFMA’s final draft management plan specifically excludes recreational fishers and charter boat operators from operating under the plan and privatises the right to fish the publicly-owned East Coast resources by transferring the fishing rights exclusively to commercial fishers to trade among themselves as saleable property called Statutory Fishing Rights.
Historically, recreational and sport fishers have always had access to the fish of the ETBF, resulting in a recreational fishing industry along the East Coast alone generating expenditures of about $500 million a year and supporting the internationally famous marlin and big game fisheries of Cairns and Bermagui.
In now locking out all but commercial fishing operators from the ETB Fishery, AFMA is defying Federal Government policy, the recommendations of its own ETBF Management Advisory Committee and the policy recommendations of the Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (AFFA). AFMA has also not waited for the recommendations of its Allocation Advisory Panel which has yet to report on its sixth-month study of future resource allocations in the ETBF.
The Government announced in a national recreational and sport fishing policy before the last Federal election that “recreational fishing must be an integral part of Commonwealth fisheries management and must be provided with rights and responsibilities…Rights include negotiated access to quotas of highly migratory pelagic species, such as tuna and billfish (ie. marlin and swordfish)”. (Issued by the Federal Liberal Party on 15 October 2001.)
In addition, both AFFA and AFMA’s ETBF Management Advisory Committee have consistently told the AFMA Board and senior managers that recreational and charter fishing must be included in Commonwealth fisheries management plans where fish resources in the same fishery are shared between the recreational and commercial sectors of the fishing industry.
The Government is also concerned that failure to include recreational fishing management arrangements and catches in formal AFMA management plans potentially compromises Australia’s negotiations with Japan for annual Japanese access to species such as southern bluefin tuna in the Australian Fishing Zone (AFZ).
Recfish Australia’s President, John Harrison, said today that the moves by what appeared to be an out-of-control AFMA to deny access to the East Coast fishery by all but commercial fishers and also in effect to transfer ownership of the resources from the people of Australia to the private property of a select and wealthy few, amounted to organised theft by stealth on a grand scale.
AFMA also appears to be in breach of some of the legislative objectives contained in the Act of Parliament which established it, he said.
“Unless the Federal Fisheries Minister reins in this renegade AFMA and forces its compliance with Government policy, many East Coast regional economies which rely to very large degrees on the hundreds of millions of dollars generated by recreational and sport fishing will be threatened, serious and counterproductive sociopolitical conflict about natural resource allocations between the commercial and recreational fishing sectors will be unavoidable, and the Commonwealth’s own Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) will be clearly breached”, Mr Harrison said.
The EPBC Act requires all fisheries to be assessed for ecological sustainability and the impacts of all methods of fishing, including commercial and recreational where it occurs, to be included in the assessment process.
“The Board of Directors of AFMA, led by Chair, Dr Wendy Craik, must be held responsible for this absurd policy decision. It is extraordinary in today’s fisheries management that a major sector of the fishery is not only completely ignored in a plan of management but in fact is actually written out of the plan. All members of the AFMA Board must be asked why they have allowed such a defective decision to reach the level it has”, Mr Harrison said.
Media contact: Graham Pike, Vice-president, Recfish Australia – 0412 960 032
www.recfishoz.com
NEWS RELEASE
Tuesday 30 April 2002 For immediate publication
FEDERAL STATUTORY AUTHORITY DEFIES GOVERNMENT POLICY
AND LOCKS AUSTRALIANS OUT OF EAST COAST FISH RESOURCES
The Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) is locking Australians out of the tuna, marlin and swordfish resources of the entire East Coast and handing them to professional fishing operators in the form of exclusive rights to trade commercially, in defiance of announced Federal Government policy.
This disclosure was made today by Recfish Australia, the peak national body representing Australia’s 5.5 million recreational and sport fishers.
AFMA is in the final draft of its first formal Plan for the future management of fishing in Commonwealth waters covering the 200-mile wide Australian Fishing Zone down the entire East Coast, known as the Eastern Tuna and Billfish Fishery (ETBF), extending from Cape York Peninsula to the Victorian/South Australian border and including Tasmania.
Recfish Australia discovered late last week that AFMA’s final draft management plan specifically excludes recreational fishers and charter boat operators from operating under the plan and privatises the right to fish the publicly-owned East Coast resources by transferring the fishing rights exclusively to commercial fishers to trade among themselves as saleable property called Statutory Fishing Rights.
Historically, recreational and sport fishers have always had access to the fish of the ETBF, resulting in a recreational fishing industry along the East Coast alone generating expenditures of about $500 million a year and supporting the internationally famous marlin and big game fisheries of Cairns and Bermagui.
In now locking out all but commercial fishing operators from the ETB Fishery, AFMA is defying Federal Government policy, the recommendations of its own ETBF Management Advisory Committee and the policy recommendations of the Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (AFFA). AFMA has also not waited for the recommendations of its Allocation Advisory Panel which has yet to report on its sixth-month study of future resource allocations in the ETBF.
The Government announced in a national recreational and sport fishing policy before the last Federal election that “recreational fishing must be an integral part of Commonwealth fisheries management and must be provided with rights and responsibilities…Rights include negotiated access to quotas of highly migratory pelagic species, such as tuna and billfish (ie. marlin and swordfish)”. (Issued by the Federal Liberal Party on 15 October 2001.)
In addition, both AFFA and AFMA’s ETBF Management Advisory Committee have consistently told the AFMA Board and senior managers that recreational and charter fishing must be included in Commonwealth fisheries management plans where fish resources in the same fishery are shared between the recreational and commercial sectors of the fishing industry.
The Government is also concerned that failure to include recreational fishing management arrangements and catches in formal AFMA management plans potentially compromises Australia’s negotiations with Japan for annual Japanese access to species such as southern bluefin tuna in the Australian Fishing Zone (AFZ).
Recfish Australia’s President, John Harrison, said today that the moves by what appeared to be an out-of-control AFMA to deny access to the East Coast fishery by all but commercial fishers and also in effect to transfer ownership of the resources from the people of Australia to the private property of a select and wealthy few, amounted to organised theft by stealth on a grand scale.
AFMA also appears to be in breach of some of the legislative objectives contained in the Act of Parliament which established it, he said.
“Unless the Federal Fisheries Minister reins in this renegade AFMA and forces its compliance with Government policy, many East Coast regional economies which rely to very large degrees on the hundreds of millions of dollars generated by recreational and sport fishing will be threatened, serious and counterproductive sociopolitical conflict about natural resource allocations between the commercial and recreational fishing sectors will be unavoidable, and the Commonwealth’s own Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) will be clearly breached”, Mr Harrison said.
The EPBC Act requires all fisheries to be assessed for ecological sustainability and the impacts of all methods of fishing, including commercial and recreational where it occurs, to be included in the assessment process.
“The Board of Directors of AFMA, led by Chair, Dr Wendy Craik, must be held responsible for this absurd policy decision. It is extraordinary in today’s fisheries management that a major sector of the fishery is not only completely ignored in a plan of management but in fact is actually written out of the plan. All members of the AFMA Board must be asked why they have allowed such a defective decision to reach the level it has”, Mr Harrison said.
Media contact: Graham Pike, Vice-president, Recfish Australia – 0412 960 032
www.recfishoz.com