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I'll start with a quick story, a number of years ago I amongst a couple of other people sitting in this room were sitting
in a meeting with some proponents, for a developmental fishing proposal. They wanted to bring in
foreign boats, and strange companies were involved, and they
sounded like they had a fairly convincing case. We sat there listening very interested
to the talk they were giving, and it sounded like we might a have a deal here
we could actually play with and it sounded like a good outcome. Then someone asked the obvious question.
"So what assurances can you give us that this is going to be sustainable?"
Properly flowing on from the optimism that they were reading around the room, the proponents very quickly
jumped in and said, "Oh it's of course sustainable, 2-3 years maybe."
And I think that shows that there are quite a lot of different definitions of
what we mean by sustainability. For today's discussion I'm just going to assume
sustainability means that you can keep doing what you're doing now. And I think there has been
rightly a very strong focus within Australian Fisheries around the world about making sure
what you're doing now is something you can keep doing. It involves
multiple components. So it's not just about target species even though that's where the focus
has often been. As Tony and other's have mentioned it does need
take into those eco-components, but we also need to have sustainable fishing industry.
And we need to do better then be sustainable, we need to have a good fishing industry. And we are in a good
spot, as those plots as Tony showed and I think it's time for us move on.
Before going on though, maybe I should
at the risk of convincing you that Tony was wrong,
even though if he did such a good job of convincing earlier on that life is pretty good;
take you through why I think life is pretty good.
This is a picture of stocks within commonwealth fisheries subject to over fishing
or excess of being over fished. Life was
ok there for a while. We were down below that sort of what was it 9% for 8th that Tony was quoting and well down
below the 15% rate. Until about 2000, then things seemed to jump up
pretty badly. I think while we are not quite
there yet the trend here is pretty good. And what we are committed too certainly with ANAFMA is
continuing that trend, and getting that number down to something that's a far more respectable
number and get on with stocks. The other thing that's really encouraging at the moment
and that's the 1 that's often forgotten I think on some of the plots where we don't have good information.
Is that were we don't have good information, we are often quite concerned that things might be horribly wrong
and we just don't know. And 1 of the key focal eye
recently has been look at trying to get that uncertainty down in commonwealth fisheries and again while
we are not up there yet. The story is pretty good here. Ok we are getting that uncertain
down and then life is better then certainly where we thought it was.
In the past we had a tendency for stocks to jump from this sort of column into the over fishing
category and contribute to that plot you just saw.
So it's not just about target species, and again that's
the focus on that. This image always reminds me of another story
from management meeting a few months ago when I heard 1 of the particiants say, "look we could have
a fantastic fishery here, all we need to do is sacrifice a few species." Referring to
that some of these sorts of things were constraining.
Australian fisheries development in their mind at that point have realised we're in for a torrid
day. And there is a little bit of education required.
But actaully the story is pretty good, we are, and Tony has gone through this is some detail
and certainly the CSIRO and {BERES?} and others help
we are getting a pretty good hand on this now and the story is getting a lot better.
This is one about compliance, something we don't touch on often we are very good at
talking to people about the rules and what the science says and even a little bit more these days about what the economics says.
But if we don't have compliance with the rules we don't have management.
and that's a fairly fundamental 1 for us. And it's been a fairly big focus over the last couple of years
for AFMA this plot shows, a particularly sensative topic I know
for marine bio-regional planing other issues but we have a lot of spacial management in commonwealth fisheries.
This shows a campaign we've recently started in success of a campaign, we have recently started
saying if you are in closed area and you look like your fishing according to the EMS Track
you need to tell us why and if you don't you are going to be in trouble.
and so this shows that in the month of July this year, we have 15 suspected breaches
and we are now down to just a simple education saying that
"please explain." We are down to a pretty good story now.
But most of it came down to people- with contract Skippers didn't know where they shouldn't be and
the statue fishing right owners didn't know
that their Skippers weren't following the rules, so just some simple education we get
quite good results. It's ok having healthy stocks
if you are just worrying about domestic species, but a lot of AFMA's job is
actually worrying about other's coming in and stealing. Working together
with our partners and boarder protection comand, we have run quote a sucessful campaign. Both in
Northern Australia and around both coasts. We do a lot of that
Send a clear message when you burn someone's boat that maybe don't come back again.
And the result there is pretty obvious.
This is apprehended Indonesian fishermen in Northern waters.
2006 we apprehended 2,500 people fishing in Northern Australia
fishing zone. I think we are down to 30 something at the moment.
for the current financial year. So the story is pretty good, it's going to be a long watch
to keep that going there. There's thousands of boats lined up just
outside the Australian EZ but it's pretty good
success story and a good story about protecting the sustainability of Australian fisheries.
Fisheries are profitable.
This wasn't a good story, some of them are getting to be a good story, and the trend is pretty good. I'll leave it with that.
Robert went into this in enormous detail, but life is getting better
and profitable fishermen are also the ones we can have a healthy conversation with about how to make things better.
When fishermen are on their back side's struggling
its very hard to have a conversation with them about how to be better than just sustainable and in fact getting
even to sustainable and ... peers is always a tough conversation.
How's AFMA going? This is how often we have to go and defend ourselves in court and
other test and how stongly people feel we are doing the wrong thing. This reflects not just fishermen
take us to court, but again life was pretty good there for a while and then we saw a real
sprike. Interestingly it carried on for a bit longer then some of the other
trends I showed you. That's cause when you start to manage things people have different views
about what you are doing, and suggests that maybe you should do it differently and if you don't agree with me I'll take you to court.
Last couple of years, it's working, the trends have been making
more money, and stocks are getting more profitable and people are challenging us less in court.
another 1, what are the parliament or others
think of us? AFMA was reviewed more times than it had years
in existance for about it's 1st 8 years of life. This is a new agency set up
to go and solve some problems and yet it was being reviewed, and in fact spending large quanity of money in times
of being reviewed. We haven't been reviewed in quite a while, I'm not sugesting 1
to you, I'm not asking for 1.
But life is pretty good, if you compare that trend on the previous slide
a couple each year for a few years there, and we're getting
run over all the time. For about the last 10 years it's been pretty good and then make the most
of these we have actually worked pretty closely with, this was 1 we wanted to have happen, this was 1 we
are working part as part of, so
paliament thinks we are doing ok. So where too now?
Nasty, nasty photo it's not as pessimistic as Kate's
is but I think there are some serious challenges coming, and part of it is about getting
social license. At the moment I have just given a version of the facts and Tony has
talked about and Robert certainly did as well.
The facts are better than the public perception. This is a post card we put out a few years ago trying to educate
people that its not about the cute and fuzzies AFMA cares about. '
Ugly Jaw fish, ugly is not the official name.
But 1 of the problems we are having is that
whenever I talk at a...go and meet my family for Christmas, or you
go talk to friends or other functions, or you go anywhere, you talk to the media, the general perception is
this guy is still raping and pillaging and we are helping.
And the social license just isn't there and it's costing me and them a fotune to
try and address that. And I know that at the moment there's a number of agencies
looking very seriously at communication structure to get the facts out there but I never ceased to be amazed
how many media interviews we do where I get through the 1st background
conversation and it's very different, before we even start doing the actual recorded
interview, that the facts that the person you are talking to was working off a very different
or the assumptions that they are working on, are very different to what the facts actually are. And that's
a big 1 for us. We are actually going to get..to be more than just sustainable we've got to get
social license, 'cause otherwise we are going to continue to get the society for the protection of "Blue Spotted
Tri-Ati-Watagons", waking in and saying, "what are you doing about my particular issue
and it's going to spend a whole lot of money and time trying to work it out. So social
licenses are a big 1. Linked to social license is actually...
I think other speakers here assumed that we know what 'good' is,
and I would actually agree with Kate, I don't think we necessarily know what 'good' is.
We have a set of legislation which says this is what you should do, but I'm not sure we know what 'good' is.
And I think if we went and asked the community, and I know in Victoria when they went and did this
it was incredibly informative. When they asked their community at large what they thought
what good fisheries management looked? I think we'd actually learn some pretty good lessons.
A couple other big ones for us, I'm just going to focus on a couple here, there are lots of areas
we'd like to focus on moving forward, but I just want to focus on
a couple. 1 of them is about getting the cost's right.
The...very helpful comment from Robert earlier
on about management cost. I am incharge of management costs and happy to talk about
that, but there are many many cost pressures facing the Australian industry and I talked earlier on , and
management is a very small part of it, I hope Robert will nod and say "yes." Management is a very small part of it
despite what fisheries people tell me when they throw shoes at me at management budget meetings.
There are many cost pressures and life is getting tough, we've
seen and appreciating Australian dollar, high fuel price and strong market penetration from
imports. So I can do what I can about management costs
it's not about making management cheaper, it's about making it cost effective.
But what I can do is make fish easier to catch. And that is the biggest 1, and that's where we are seeing a lot of the profits
being driven out of the early science here, and we hope to see profits being driven.
But that brings me to an important point about where we need further work. At the moment we have
very good biological and increasing consistant information.
Our economics especially in multi-species economics is lacking.
We don't have good multi-species economic information about how to manage stocks.
The average commonwealth fisheries operation, a single operation, putting a net in the water once
retains five species. And yet if you look at most of our
assesments and other information we would believe and that they can go out and actively target
that fish and that's all they are going to catch. So every time they put a net in the water on the average
they are going to retain 5 species and some fisheries it's much more than that. So
they're fishing for dollars they're not fishing for a single species, and yet a lot of our management and assumptions
are based on single species management assumptions. And that's old school.
Getting the rights costed. Linked to that, about getting our economics right
is making sure we have a very strong rights based admin system in Australia and I think thats
actually one of the strong pillars of our management arrangements. But what we don't do very well
at the moment is making sure the individual is paying the full cost.
In a number of areas we're using a fleet average and penalizing the good
operators, and the innovative operators with a fleet average 'cause we don't about their
take of birds. Or we don't know how to
manage them as an indivdual. So we are suppressing innovation by basically
saying, "you are all in the same basket. We don't know what to do here, we can't actually make
you wear the cost properly on your satched fishing rights, so you are going to get the fleet average and wear the costs accordingly."
So getting the rights costed properly and
taking that home to the individual is something 50% of the industry should support
strong. The other 50% will hate. But
if we are going to get innovation, we are going to move just being beyond sustainable, we've got to look at these sorts of tools to get
the innovation right. So that's about getting the rights costed.
Making it easier to go fishing, thats about getting the rights right.
At the moment even within my own fishery, we
have different rights for the same species. And those
rights are cut by, we define our fisheries by the species area method.
Even where the species over lap, because of the area and method,
parts of that equation. For the same species
there are different rights allocated. In some situations those
rights are unlimited. And against a fishery where the rights are very strongly limited.
That's even with my own commonwealth fisheries management arrangements.
So we are actually going through quite a management review at the moment, which is trying to the right at the center
of a conversation about how to do this better. A dead fish is a dead fish.
It doesn't really matter where you left from, what gear you used to kill it,
and how much money you are going to sell it for?
Which seems to drive most of the conversation about getting the rights right.
But it goes well beyond this. Someone mentioned climate change a little earlier,
we are seeing fish move around, and if we are looking at spacial management I'd say
some of our rights are based on area based arangements. We've just got the realistic
and say that the fish are going to move and look at our rights very seriously.
That's spells out well beyond just the commonwealth fisheries though. We have a whole bunch of other state culters
in commonwealth fisheries, both state commercial fisheries and recreation
fisheries, and we've got the same problem. Ok. The rights
at the moment are at risk at being undermind by essentially
variations in management across those systems, so if we are going to get beyond just sustainable
'cause at the moment I can assure sustainability when 1 side
of that equation increases their catch, I can just cut the commonwealth catch. That assures sustainability, but it's
not a very good result, and it certainly doesn't uphold the rights based system.
So getting the rights right is part of it. So that's properly 3 big ones for me. Life should be good.
We are in a good place, we've got a good spring board to go forward here.
It will take a bit of pain and effort but life should be ok. Before I write any
more checks AFMA will have to cash, I'll properly leave it there. Thanks
(clapping)