State Member for Hill Shane Knuth has called on the State Government to come clean and admit responsibility for the Spanish Mackerel Fishery debacle.
Speaking after the Minister for Fisheries announced this week that commercial fishing quotas will be severely slashed to only 165 tonnes, Mr Knuth said the State Government was avoiding taking responsibility for their department’s own mismanagement of the fishery.
“I am on record asking the Minister to explain how a fishery that was assessed as healthy in 2018 by his own department, after 14 years since quotas were introduced, can suddenly be deemed unhealthy, just 3 years, after the stock assessment model was changed?,” Mr Knuth asked.
Mr Knuth said two key questions posed by the industry have never been answered by the Minister.
- How the Spanish Mackerel fishery could be in trouble, considering commercial fishermen have never reached the yearly Total Allowable Catch (TAC), since quotas were introduced in 2004 by Fisheries, AND;
- Why was the assessment model was changed after the fishery was assessed as healthy with a 60 per cent biomass in DAF’s own 2018 Stock Assessment of Australian East Coast Spanish Mackerel, Predications of stock Status and Reference Points report.
Mr Knuth said these questions must be answered by the Minister, considering just 3 years after DAF’s 2018 report, the biomass dropped off a cliff to 17 per cent under the new stock assessment model.
“Commercial Spanish Mackerel harvests, since 2004, have always been well under the allowable annual catch limit set by Fisheries, so anyway you look at this either the fishery has been mismanaged since 2004 or the assessment model now being used is severely flawed,” he said.
“If we were in a court of law, there could be no reasonable doubt that Fisheries are responsible for this debacle and compensation would be awarded to those affected.
“I call on the Minister to stop dodging the questions being asked by the industry, admit his department got this wrong and immediately compensate those affected by this decision.”
Now we thought this is what they are up to. Thanks Ed
In WA they are reducing the amount of demersal fish the recreational fishers can catch…It is also slowly happening in Tasmania, year upon year they reduce and reduce allowed catch…Basically they are attempting to stop our ability to obtain our own food…..Agenda 21.
Well I’ll be damned. Magda, where did you get the idea fishing was an easy way to earn a living ? Obviously you do not know a lot about it. So we humans are robbing the oceans ? I do wonder what you eat,I presume you are a human also ?
Are you robbing the earth of it’s fruit, vegetables,chickens eggs beef pork .or maybe rice, flour,etc. That is presuming you are human. Not to mention the water.
How many veges have you planted? How many fruit trees have you bought and
nurtured and planted .I am going to take a guess and say sweet bugger all.
If there is one thing I am sure of, and sick to death of hearing,is how “:we humans “” which I note you did not include yourself in are ruining this planet.
All the people saying this stuff have ample to eat and drink often in a manner the ordinary working person .Most people I know work hard to provide for their families. That includes fishermen and women.
Why, you could be a person just writing to stir the pot.Or you could be an alien who lives on air or something.
I am sick of knockers and whingers.
eventually eventually the push back will happen, and it will be nasty read Aleksander solzhenitsyn if only they had stood up to the bolsheviks, petty bureaucrats think they are untouchable every action has a reaction they serve us, not us serve them, its about time that we reminded them.
The Name of the Game here is ‘tank the primary producers and their industries’. The George St Cabal will just invent more rules, Predications and stock status compliances that will have to be observed (and paid for). Post the Corona Baloney Hoax 2020 there will be CoVID Correctness as well.
Ze Auztralians will eat ze bugs with recycled covid masks, plasticated crap and reconstituted cyclamate. The UN CoVID Regime is taking off the menu wild caught seafood from Australian waters with Australian produce.
The sooner humans stop robbing the ocean as an easy way to earn a living, the sooner our planet will heal.
Part of the plan to withhold food supplies and create an artificial famine!