fishing party export policy

[jockey]

I don't mind someone trying to point out self contradictions or hypocrisy in my views, but there is a fine and subtle line between that and a 'personal' attack so if you don't know the difference then don't bother. Basically criticise the views not the person. KC ould you please be more specific about the apparent contradiction in my views?

I don't believe that economic rationalism and environmentalism are at odds. I see a clear path to a better environment through economic rationalism. But that comes down to the definition of economic rationalism. A good example is what I said before about making the price paid for energy reflect its real worth. A lot of the criticisms of globalism are of economically irrational situations. One person exploiting a situation is greed not economic rationalism. So if a big multinational (sorry about the cliche) pays a few bribes and gets unrestricted access to the natural resources of a poor country without those poor people getting involved in the decision making process that is irrational.

Driving a fishery to the point of collapse is not rational. Reason: they were selling the fish for less than their actual worth. They were charging the cost of getting the fish out and ignoring the value of the fish as broodstock.

Making coral trout a rec only species is a more reasonable proposition and may even make economic sense. However there would be a lot of waste in the form of lost income as the rec sector would not fully exploit (sustainably of course) the situation. So a good policy would be to wind back the TAC as the pro catch comes into increased conflict with rec anglers. This would probably become necessary anyway to ensure the trout are fished sustainably. I assume that the TAC is broken up into regions so you could force the pros away from big cities and areas that are popular with rec anglers.

Basically giving the resource to the people who value it the most is at the core of economic rationalism. That means it is a good idea to give the fish to the rec sector if it values it appropriately, but it is not a good idea to get pros to catch the fish and sell them for less than they are worth. A few exceptions may be abalone, crays and perhaps crabs and prawns where they are worth more to the pros than to rec anglers.

This means that where rec and pro fishermen come into conflict the resource should generally go to the rec sector. But where rec fishermen and the tourism sector come into conflict the resource should go the tourism sector (via 'split reefs' etc). Note that this does not mean that the entire fishery will be closed down and given to the tourists. Tourism can be very concentrated. A couple of good spots would be very valuable to the tourism sector, but the whole lot would only be slightly more valuable.

Note that green zones serve a purpose as tourist zones and as a fisheries management tool and to make the reef more resilient to other problems. The large green zones on the GBR are about fisheries management and resilience, not diverting 1/3 of the reef to tourists.

Gazza this (the export policy) has nothing to do with the precautionary principle and is not based on scientific investigation, unless you call economics a science. My argument is that the community as a whole would suffer under the proposed export policy.

The fact that the policy will never get implimented is irrelevent. If it is a bad policy, scrap it.

Pauline didn't get howled down because she was popularist. The other parties took notice of her because she was popularist. She got howled down because of her policies.

You can by any local seafood in Australia that you want. You just have to pay for it. If they are not in the local shops its because people would rather by cheap imported food and get the benefits of selling our food at rediculous prices to rich foreigners. The benfit of the free market is that we don't have to vote on it - or at least we vote with our wallets.

KC I think that what you were referring to is 'lasse fair' (not sure of the spelling) capitalism. That is where the government doesn't interfere at all. Taken to extreme it means no tax and build no roads, hospitals etc and if people want them they will pay for them. The international market is largely 'lasse fair' at the moment because there is no effective international government, esecially on economic issues. Luckily though most of the players are rational and are trying to enter into rational trade agreements. It is often local politics, not international politics that gets in the way of sensible trade policy. An example is US cane farmers stopping our cane farmers from getting access to the US market.

[raefpud]

like any Australian product in comparison to an imported product, it is always going to be more expensive than an inferior impoted product, but unfortunately thats the price we pay for having a far superior product from a somewhat pristine environment, minimum wages and working conditions, a public health system and social security, and I think thats why we live in the "lucky country" even if we end up paying through the nose for it. Prices for local seafood have actually dropped recently due to world economic climate and increasing $$ value.

Here is a couple of interesting facts for you, even though it may not have any relevance to the arguement at hand -

Australia Ranks 51 in the top seafood producers throughout the world - i.e. that means 51 other countries harvest more seafood than we do. Australian seafood industry is considered a low volume, high value industry.

Seafood is Australias 4th largest export of primary produce.

It is cheaper to sell a whiting to vietnam, have it filleted and cleaned there, buy it back from the vietnamese and sell it as local produce, than it is to process and sell it here.

The Australian fishing zone is one of the largest in the world and covers an area approx. 16% larger than the Australian landmass

Foreign vessels are now totally banned from fishing in the AFZ
whereas Australia used to allow foreign vessel fishing rights.

In 2000-2001 the gross value of total fisheries production (including aquaculture which now contributes 30%) was about 230 000 t or worth about $2.5 billion

[Gazza]

That is interesting Raefpud , approx. $800M in aqua-vulture
NSW claims about $60M , where is the other ~$700M ......err.... made. ???
err......what do they.....err.....eat ???

RecFishos catch about 50,000T (including C&R) and put into the economy more than $2.5B
p.s. the RecFisho catch is/was approx. equal to Commercial bycatch

Interesting ,hey....

[kc]

Just back from a couple of days away(no, not fishing unfortunately) and just had a chance to read this thread.

Just to clarify a couple of points. Pinhead & I communicate privately & I am sure he recognises an atempt at levity, not a personal shot!! Perhaps this was not plain to people who read my comments about "his best shot" so sorry if some thought that means I am thin on skin and sharp of tounge.

As for Jockey, once again, we have had some pretty good on line debates without geting personal & I don't think I am trying to get personal now in my attempt to understand where he is "coming from"".

In summary look at the worldwide protests at any G7 or CHOGM or gobalisation conference. The protests are led by both anarcists and greens. It is very fair to suggest that as an overall position "phrases like economic rationalism, globalism, free trade policies etc", are generally at odds with the green movement. By its very term economic rationalism is concerned only with the economy and what is best for dollars and cents not what is best for the environment. Green augument is the balance point or counter augument to a totally economically rational one. ie take Brazil where from an economic point of view, it makes rational sense to cut down its rainforests because it brings money into the coutry. It has not enough strenght in its envronmental augument to counter this economically rational view so they cut down all the rainforest and stuff up the environment. The same can be said for large tracts of New Guinie.

In Australia we have enough strenght within the environmental movement to counteract the (purely)economically rational view that we cut all ours down too, oil drill the GBR, develop more uranium mines or destroy our fisheries in the quest for export earnings.

Just take a look at Kyoto. The reasons that this has not been adopted by USA and Australia are 100% economically rational ones!!

This is my problem with Jockey, or anyone elses view that they are an environmental economic rationalist.....my personal view is that there is no such thing!!

Regards

KC

[PinHead]

dammit kc...how the bloody hell do you get to have a couple of days away when I have to stay here and still work on a long weekend.

ahhhhhh..good ol' Kyoto and Montreal Protocols..all totally irrelevant..especially the Montreal one we signed regarding freons and holes in the ozone layer..it means zilch..waste of ink even signing the thing.

[raefpud]

hey gazza, u really want me to break it down for ya???

Mate if u had any idea how much one individual farmed tuna could be worth then maybe you could comprehend that South Australia's Aquaculture exports are probably worth 10X as much as NSW total aquaculture value, and lets not forget tasmanias salmon and the entire oyster (inlcuding Pearl oysters) export value.
Cold water supports much more life and is more nutrient rich than tropical waters such as GBR etc, allthough u might not have the same amount of biodiversity as you do would in the warmer waters, so mariculture (as it should be correctly reffered to) is far more productive in cooler climates such as SA, VIC, TAS and sthn WA than say ur blessed NSW, QLD or NT.

Mate, I am not pro commercial by any means, I study marine resource management at uni and i am specialising in recreational fisheries management, as there are very few of us in Australia. In order for me to help create a better fishery for u, the rec guy, I have to understand the impacts both sectors have on the entire marine resources. Your popular bread and butter species of finfish account for about 1% if that of the entire commercial catch.
And i'm not too sure about your figures either - I am totally aware of economic input that recreational anglers have, however, and yes it is a rather substantial amount, but the breakdown of where that $$$$ is going is a whole new issue. To say that the combined total $$$ is input into the Australian economy is total BS, and whilst tourism $$$ flourish, i think you will find that a lot of the hard earned cash u spend on products such as daiwa, shimano, penn, yamaha, suzuki etc ends up adding to the the economy of other countries that are paying top dollar to buy our premium quality seafood.

Sorry, but like Kevin, I just cant help but look at both sides of the big picture, a lot of peoples livelihood depend on both recreational and commercial fishing, both of which have been around a lot longer than u or I.
One more thing, i think i might have mentioned before, but you do have to be careful when quoting facts or figures as many publications will publish information that is either bias, inaccurate or just not credible to begin with.
Unless you are taught how to sift through and identify the difference between credible information and just plain BS it can be difficult to make an accurate assesment of issues such as this. In a democratic society such as this its perfectly acceptable for anyone to publish anything about whatever the hell they like,whether its true or not, and the internet is a perfect example of this.

Just one more comment for KC - Do you not believe that your party could somehow incorporate the commercial sector into and fight together for common issues??
I just think that for the best intrests of the fish stocks in general, not either the rec or comm fisher, you will need to incorporate the opinions of all shareholders and interested parties - - - probably even the RSPCA that believe fish hooks classify as cruelty to animals - hahahahah, its not gonna be easy for ya buddy

[kc]

In answer to your question about incorporating commercial interests into our fold raefspud the simple answer is ...NO.
While both sectors have some common ground, particularly in isues like habitat protection we are polls appart on too many issues and many of our policies, as they develop will be oppossed to some commercial fisheries practices....just like the export issue which started this thread.

You identified tuna "farming" as an economically high value fishery (economically rational)and straight up we have a problem (or several) with this. Firstly it is not "farming" as they are catching the small tuna at sea (wild fish before breeding size), feeding them in sea pens, often on imported feed (which was identified as the likely cause of the virus which effected/devastated our wild pilchard stocks) and has the associated seabed pollution effects of most "fish farms". All this to employ very few people and make a couple of individuals very rich. They ae targetting juvenille tuna because the wild stocks of adult tuna are just about exhausted....what happens when no little tuna reach breeding size? I am aware that this industry is working on captured breeding programs but to date it has been unsuccessful. I will have less concern if they can do this but elsewhere in the world no one has successfully breed tuna in captivity.

Have a look at the decline in marlin stocks, now targeted by commercial longliners for export to japan!! Economically rational no doubt but pity help the poor bloody fishery.

How could we work in co-operation with prawn trawl fishery. Described by David Attenbourgh as "the single most destructive method of fishing ever devised by man".

NO.....one of the very attractions of the party is the fact that we will not join with the commercial fishers, we will be proudley a single issue party...not distracted, not infighting and totally focused on fisheries issues and the environment.
At the end of the day I would rather not win a seat than sell out.

Regards

KC

[jockey]

I think I need to clarify what I mean when I say economically rational. It does not mean to consider only profits, within a moral vaccuum. It means taking all things into consideration, including how business affects other people. It means changing the rules within which companies operate so that even if they blindly pursue profits they are still forced to take other people's interests into account. Normally the free market does this pretty well and the major players negotiate to get what they want. This breaks down where someone's business impacts negatively on someone else who is not involved in the transaction. If there is a large negative impact the 'victim' can sue for damages. Usually however, there is a lot of people involved and the impact is too small to make it worthwhile for each person to bother with. This is where the government needs to step in and decide what the outcome would be if the people involved could effectively bargain.

For example suppose there was a proposal to put in a new airport that is worth $1m per year which would affect the quality of life of 100 000 nearby residents. If those residents were willing to pay $12 each per year, they could pool their money and say to the company "This airport will earn you $1m per year, but we will pay you $1.2m per year not to put it in" and the company, being rational would accept their offer. Of course 100 000 copuld not get together and bargain effectively so the government has to decide what the outcome would be if they could and then stop the airport going in.

The same argument goes for things like pollution, but instead of deciding on a case by case basis what factory should go in, the government just needs to put a 'pollution tax' on them which ensures that the company takes into account the value people would place on clean air, if they had the time to ponder such things.

This sort of thing doesn't happen on the international market, which is why people start protesting about the situation.

Just because the words I use aren't thrown around by the anti-globalisation protestors doesn't mean that either of us have it wrong or even that we have different values or see different paths to what we want. This morning on my way to work I passed hippy chick in a yellow shirt. On the front of the shirt was written "Globalise love, not war"

[kc]

Jockey all the words you use and examples you raise demonstrate my very point. The environmental/moral consience you talk of, the pollution tax, quality of life being more important than the $1m airport. What you show is that in this and a lot of other "civillised" societies the environmental augument and "moral consience" is the exact counter balance to the totally economically rational one where $$ is the only concern. The adverb Ecomically...The noun rational....what makes sense solely based on what makes money with no outside consideration. Any other consideration is not economically based but morally, socially or environmentally sure but economically no!!

Anyhow...this has all got off the point about wether we continue to export our seafood at unsustainable levels or wether we seek a mechanism to allow domestic buyers access to "our" seafood at reasonable prices AND wether the encouragement of exports has also had the effect of encouraging overfishing, targetting of species (like billfish) which are far more important(both recreationally and in straight $$ terms) left alive and encouraging the importing of fish products which are downright dangerous.

[kc]

& yes Gary, before you get me...It should be adjective not adverb!! School was a long time ago

KC

[Cheech]

Kevin,

I was interested to see what reply Agnes_Jack would get to his question (statement?) because I have the same thoughts. I was very surprised to find out we were not necessarily buying fresh local produce. But it looks like it was lost amongst the major debate that has transpired on this thread. Most of which most of us are probably having a lot of trouble following.

Read something from one side and it makes sense, but then read the response and that makes sense also.

So is there an easy answer? Obviously not. But I am sure most of us wish there was.

I hope you guys get this issue sorted soon as it is starting to tarnish the concept and enthusiasm that the party needs and deserves.

I have seen enough over the years to know that it doesn't matter if it is business or politics (or even clubs and sporting groups to a lesser extent), those that have the power make the rules and there is bugger all you can do about it. So this is a real shot at getting into a position to get a place on the board and make a difference.

Let's get back on track. Please.

[PinHead]

Shaking my head here Kev..tut..tut...tut..look at what you said:
"The adverb Ecomically...The noun rational"
You ackowledged that Economically is an adjective but so is rational. Rationale is the noun.

[kc]

Hi Cheech, mate, there is no easy answer, otherwise someone much smarter than me would have come up with it by now.

It is clearly the case that a lot of our best seafood is exported..which is good for the economy. We eat a lot of very inferior quality imported seafood, which is probably bad for the economy AND the non fishing but fish buying public.

As a basic principle the fishing party would like to find a way of redressing that situation and redirect a fair percentage of the catch to the domestic market, reduce the cost to consumers and reduce the pressures applied to export (& catch) more and more of our fish. How we go about framing a policy to encompass that basic principle is plainly at issue. How we are going to deal with the effects of such a policy on both the people employed by the export trade and balance the effects of export earning Vs potential tourism earnings are all part of the juggling act of politics.

While it would be much easier to avoid complex issues and just release policy posistions which everyone agrees with this is not being honest.....fancy that a political equivalent of a 4 letter word.... to the cause.

Hopefully as the party gains in both numbers and collective ability/knowledge we may come up with the answers, even if we don't, at least we will have gone down swinging before taking up lawn bowls.

Regards

KC

[jockey]

KC I don't think you have understood me. Blind and unrestricted pursuit of profit is bad and eventually leads to slavery. 'Economic rationaism' (at least as I have described it) is a way of incorporating people's values (morals, ehtics, environmental concerns) into the economy.

You say that the economy is unfair. There are two possible ways to deal with this. One is direct government interference with free trade (your policy). This is the hallmark of communism. Centralised government determining where goods get sold and for how much. The other is economic rationaism. That is, forcing the free market to take people's values into account but still allowing it to determine, within those rules, the most economic (efficient) way to distribute goods.

The reason that most of our good seafood goes overseas and we eat the crap is because we (the community) want it that way. We would rather eat cheap food and sell the good stuff so we can buy other things (eg TV sets) with the difference. There is nothing unfair in it. We all get our fair share of the dividends from the harvest, in the form of money rather than fish. We can choose to spend that dividend on the fish and get our fair share of the fish, but most of us choose something else. Your policy would take away people's choice in the matter and would reduce the dividend we all get from the harvest. Your policy means a net loss to the community. We may eat more fish, but we would pay more for them than if we just bought them at the current market price. The high price of the fish is not an indication of an unfair market, it is an indication of the enourmous benefit the community recieves from selling these fish overseas.

What would be unfair is say if a foreign company entered the scene, bribed a few officials and then took away the resources (which are valued much higher than the bribes they hand out) and profited from it without the community benefiting. This is not happening in Australia, as far as I know. It is certainly not happening with the legal trade in coral trout. By the way, your policy would make the black market in coral trout much more profitable.

The way to ensure a sustainable harvest is via a TAC, not arbitrary restrictions on the market. It is misleading to point to overfishing as a reason for your policy.

I am obviously having trouble getting my point across. Please discuss the matter with someone who has studied economics at uni. Better yet, just ring the economics department of your nearest uni and explain your situation and they should help you out.

[jockey]

delete me