Australia’s wild caught fisheries: why we need a parliamentary enquiry into fisheries now, and what the nuclear option would be

For thirty years Australian governments have told us our seas are being “protected”.

On paper, our fisheries are some of the most tightly managed in the world.

In real life, there are fewer wild caught commercial fishers on the water, more imported seafood on our plates, growing biosecurity risks from overseas, and everyday Australians finding it harder and more expensive to buy local fish.

Right now, the call is simple and reasonable: We need a parliamentary enquiry into fisheries covering how the Commonwealth and every State and Territory have managed wild caught commercial fisheries since the 1990s.

If, down the track, Parliament refuses to face the evidence or if serious misconduct is proven, the nuclear option would be a Royal Commission. It is not on the table now. The immediate, fair and realistic ask is a full parliamentary enquiry into fisheries.

This is not about aquaculture. This is about the people who go to sea and bring back wild fish for the rest of us to eat.

Why a parliamentary enquiry into fisheries is needed now

Australia’s population has grown from around 17 million in 1990 to about 26 million today. Over the same period, the number of licensed commercial wild caught operators has fallen sharply.

There is no simple national table that shows how many licensed wild caught commercial fishers there were in the 1990s compared with now. That lack of basic transparency is a problem in itself, and it should be one of the first things a parliamentary enquiry into fisheries fixes.

What we do know, from state reports and inquiries, looks like this in plain language:

• New South Wales has gone from thousands of commercial fishers in the 1980s to only hundreds today, and people on the water now believe only about 500 genuinely active wild caught businesses are left.

• Queensland has cut trawl, net, line and crab licences by roughly half over the last thirty years, even as the state’s population has boomed.

• Commonwealth fisheries went through major buybacks that removed hundreds of concessions and licences in a single process.

• Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory now run mostly limited entry systems. Many key fisheries only have a few dozen, or at most a few hundred, licence holders left.

Once you strip out aquaculture, charters and paper holders, Australia probably has only a few thousand genuine wild caught commercial fishing businesses left nationwide, supplying fresh fish for more than 26 million people.

A parliamentary enquiry into fisheries needs to rebuild those numbers properly and ask the obvious question:

How did we get from a large, diverse wild caught fleet in the 1990s to a small, shrinking one today, at the same time the population went up, not down?

While the fleet shrank, imports took over

At the same time as we have cut local wild caught capacity and closed working water, seafood imports have quietly taken over the plate.

Government figures show that:

• domestic wild caught production has dropped or flatlined for many key species

• aquaculture has grown, but mostly in particular high value species

• roughly two thirds of the seafood Australians now eat comes from overseas

Thirty years ago, most Australians assumed that if they bought fish at the local shop, it was probably Australian.

Today, the opposite is often true.

We are told that cutting licences and closing grounds is about “sustainability”. Yet the end result is fewer Australian boats catching less Australian fish, and more reliance on product from fleets we do not control, in waters we do not manage.

A parliamentary enquiry into fisheries has to put this in black and white on one page:

• line one, number of wild caught licences and operators over time

• line two, share of imports in Australian seafood consumption over time

Then ask whether anyone in government ever planned that outcome, or whether it just happened in the gaps between decisions.

Biosecurity, the imported disease risk

Local wild caught fishers are heavily regulated. They follow rules on gear, seasons, logbooks, vessel standards, handling, safety and more. Many of those rules are justified as biosecurity measures.

Yet some of the most serious marine biosecurity failures have come from imported seafood, not from local fleets.

The clearest example is white spot disease in prawns.

• White spot virus was detected on prawn farms on the Logan River in south east Queensland in 2016 and 2017.

• Imported uncooked prawns, sold for food and bait, were identified as a likely pathway into local waters.

• The virus has since been found in wild prawns and crabs, and strict controls and monitoring have been imposed on local industry.

So imported product came through the border carrying a serious disease, and that disease is now part of the local environment.

The wild caught fishers who work under Australian rules did not create that problem, but they are the ones living with the consequences through tighter regulations, surveillance and shaken public confidence.

A parliamentary enquiry into fisheries needs to ask, out loud:

Why have we treated small, tightly managed Australian fleets as the main biosecurity threat, while letting higher risk imported product in the door?

Human rights and labour, who caught our imports

There is another uncomfortable piece to this story.

Human rights organisations, UN agencies and investigative journalists have documented:

• forced labour

• debt bondage

• physical abuse

• slavery like conditions

in some overseas fishing fleets and processing plants, especially in parts of Asia and the Pacific.

At the same time, Australian wild caught commercial fishers:

• operate under Australian workplace law

• pay Australian wages

• follow Australian safety rules

If they do not, they face penalties, licence loss and legal action.

The awkward truth is this:

We have squeezed local wild caught fleets in the name of sustainability and ethics, while increasing our reliance on imported seafood that may be caught or processed by workers whose conditions would be illegal here.

A parliamentary enquiry into fisheries must put that contradiction on the record and ask whether our current settings are simply exporting the uncomfortable parts of the seafood story overseas.

Closures, parks, net free zones and “reforms”

Since the 1990s, governments in every jurisdiction have used a similar set of tools:

• marine parks with no take or highly restricted zones

• net free zones in inshore waters near towns and cities

• licence buybacks that remove commercial access entirely in some areas

• structural reforms that convert many small licences into fewer, larger quota holdings

• new management plans that reduce effort or make it harder for small family businesses to survive

Each step can be made to sound reasonable, especially when presented with a local story, a specific stock and a particular conflict.

The problem is, no one has ever put all of those changes together at a national scale and asked:

• how much water that used to feed the public through wild caught commercial supply is now effectively closed

• how many licences and local businesses have disappeared because of those decisions

• whether the promised benefits, for fish stocks and local communities, have actually been delivered

Instead, the story has been sliced so thin that no one has had to answer for what it adds up to.

Political bias towards the recreational sector

On top of all that, there is a clear political bias towards the recreational sector at the expense of commercial fisheries and seafood consumers.

Recent decisions in Western Australia are a textbook example.

For key demersal species, the WA Government has:

• permanently closed some areas to commercial demersal fishing while reopening them for recreational fishers

• kept recreational and charter fishing open in other regions, while forcing commercial operators into big quota cuts and restructuring

• backed this with a large compensation package for some commercial licences, plus sweeteners and rebates aimed directly at the recreational sector

So on one stretch of coast, commercial demersal fishing is shut down, while that same fishery is promised back to recreational fishers. In the other regions, recreational fishing stays open and commercial operators wear a 50 per cent cut.

The pattern is obvious.

When there is pain to share, commercial operators are asked to take more of it. When there are benefits to hand out, recreational fishers are promised access and even direct subsidies.

Similar stories have played out in other states:

• Recreational only havens created near major population centres

• Blue Swimmer Crab size limits increased for commercial fishers several years before they were changed for the recreational sector, while commercial licences are bought out or squeezed

None of this is to say recreational fishers should be ignored. They are an important part of the picture. But a parliamentary enquiry into fisheries has to look honestly at whether political decisions have favoured one group of voters over:

• the long term viability of local wild caught seafood supply, and

• the interests of millions of Australians who do not fish but still want Australian seafood.

Everyday Australians who just want to eat Australian seafood

There is a big group missing from most fisheries debates.

• People in units and suburbs away from the water

• Older people, or people with disabilities, who cannot safely go out on a boat

• Time poor families who work long hours and cannot spend a day on the water just to put fish on the table

They rely on:

• fish and chip shops

• local co ops and fish shops

• supermarkets, pubs and clubs

to access seafood.

Health advice tells them to eat more seafood. Campaigns tell them to choose Australian.

Yet in practice:

• local wild caught supply into the wholesale system has dropped

• many easy to access estuaries and inshore waters near cities have been closed to commercial fishing

• imported and processed seafood has filled more and more of the cabinet space

In some towns, once local estuary or net fisheries are closed, the long standing fresh fish shop has nothing local left to sell, and either shifts to imports or shuts its doors.

If you cannot fish for yourself, and if local commercial access has been shut down, you do not get a genuine choice to buy Australian wild caught seafood, no matter how much you might want to.

A parliamentary enquiry into fisheries must put these people back in the frame and treat food security and fairness as real outcomes, not afterthoughts.

FRDC, research money and who benefits

Since 1991, the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation has been the main channel for research funding in fisheries and aquaculture.

It receives:

• compulsory levies from industry, and

• matching and formula based contributions from the Commonwealth Government, paid by taxpayers.

Annual reports show federal contributions in the tens of millions each year, and total project investment in the tens of millions more. Over three decades, that means hundreds of millions of public dollars have gone through FRDC.

On paper, that money is meant to:

• support sustainable fisheries

• improve productivity

• build strong communities and better management

From the perspective of many wild caught operators, what they have seen instead is:

• more structural changes that reduce licences and concentrate access

• more projects about “social licence”, “capacity building” and “governance”

• more support flowing to aquaculture and export sectors

• fewer small commercial boats still working their local grounds

Publicly available information typically lists project titles and total budgets, but not detailed, itemised breakdowns of how money is spent within each project. That makes it hard to see how much funding ends up in:

• consultant and contractor fees

• corporate overheads

• travel, workshops and communication exercises

compared with direct, on the water science that supports local food fisheries.

Industry concerns include:

• money being used to keep certain organisations solvent through ongoing contracts

• deals between organisations to pass contract work around, keeping project money circulating between the same players

• lack of hard, independent auditing of project outcomes

• very little connection between big talk about “food security” and real improvements for wild caught supply

A parliamentary enquiry into fisheries needs to follow that money trail.

If it turns out that large amounts of public funding have essentially managed the orderly rundown of the wild caught sector, rather than its renewal, then Parliament needs to say that clearly and change course.

Structural Conflicts of Interest and the Harvest Strategy Pipeline

A parliamentary enquiry must also examine how major fisheries policies are conceived, funded, and then enforced, often by the same individuals or closely linked organisations. The rise of Harvest Strategies is the clearest example.

Around 15 years ago, governments moved toward single species reporting and management. On paper it looked scientific. In practice, it has been damaging for mixed species commercial fisheries, where fishers routinely catch multiple species together. Under single species TACs and TAEs, a fisher can hit the limit for one species long before reaching safe levels for another. This can force them to stop fishing entirely.This is not ecological failure. It is a management design failure.

How the model was created and embedded

The Harvest Strategy pipeline follows a pattern that raises major governance concerns:

1. A researcher promotes Harvest Strategies as the preferred model through papers and presentations.

2. Government adopts the idea and funds further research and development around the framework.

3. The same individual is then hired to implement it, including in NSW, where Harvest Strategies were embedded in management reform, with senior appointments extending to their immediate professional circle.

4. That same individual later becomes the Managing Director of the FRDC, the body that funds further Harvest Strategy research and national rollouts.

This creates an unbroken chain from idea to policy to regulator to funder, with limited external challenge and no independent test of whether single species Harvest Strategies are appropriate for multi species wild fisheries.

These concerns are structural, not personal, but they must be examined. A parliamentary enquiry must ask:

• Were conflicts of interest identified and managed?

• Did any independent body assess whether Harvest Strategies suited mixed species fisheries?

• Were commercial fishers properly represented before the model was imposed?

Exporting the model while domestic fleets shrink

Australia has since exported this management model overseas and received awards for it, even while domestic small boat commercial fleets have declined, access has tightened, and consumers have been pushed toward imported seafood.

This raises a simple question:

Are we celebrating a management success story that has come at the direct cost of removing Australian commercial fishers?

A parliamentary enquiry needs to put this pipeline on the record, assess the governance around it, and determine whether the model itself is contributing to the steady erosion of Australia’s wild caught seafood sector.

What the parliamentary enquiry into fisheries needs to do

A serious parliamentary enquiry into fisheries management since the 1990s should be asked to:

1. Rebuild the numbers

   • Produce a clear, public time series of wild caught commercial licences and operators, by state and fishery, from the early 1990s to today.

   • Show how many have exited through buybacks, closures and reforms, and at what cost.

2. Audit closures, reforms and allocations

   • Map marine parks, net free zones, recreational only areas and other rules that have removed commercial access.

   • Quantify how much productive water has been taken out of wild caught food production.

   • Examine how resource allocation decisions between commercial, recreational and charter sectors have been made, and whether they have been politically biased.

3. Face the import reality

   • State exactly what share of Australian seafood consumption now comes from imports, species by species.

   • Compare environmental, labour and management standards in the main supplier countries to what we require of our own fleets.

4. Examine biosecurity and labour risks

   • Review biosecurity incidents linked to imports, such as white spot in prawns.

   • Take evidence on labour abuses and modern slavery risks in overseas fleets and processing chains that feed into our market.

5. Follow the FRDC money

   • Add up total Commonwealth contributions to FRDC since 1991.

   • Break down spending between wild caught food fisheries, aquaculture, recreational fishing, governance, communications and so on.

   • For a sample of large projects, require itemised spending and independent assessment of outcomes.

6. Put non fishing Australians at the centre

   • Ask what these policies have done to the availability and price of Australian wild caught seafood for people who cannot fish.

   • Consider stronger country of origin and method labelling so consumers can actually choose Australian wild caught.

7. Recommend reforms

   • Propose ways to protect both the environment and a viable base of wild caught commercial operators in each state.

   • Address data gaps so this situation can never again drift for thirty years without anyone seeing the whole picture.

What the nuclear option would be, if Parliament fails

Right now, the ask is a parliamentary enquiry into fisheries. That is the normal, democratic way to test policy, put facts on the table and hear from people who live with the consequences.

If, down the track:

• Parliament refuses to hold such an enquiry, or

• an enquiry uncovers serious misconduct, deliberate cover ups or corruption that cannot be properly dealt with in that forum

then the nuclear option would be a Royal Commission into fisheries governance, imported seafood and research spending.

A Royal Commission would:

• have stronger coercive powers than a Parliamentary Committee

• be able to compel witnesses and documents more deeply

• be designed to deal with systemic failure and misconduct

It is not what is being called for now. It is simply the logical next step if Parliament will not do its job, or if evidence emerges that goes beyond poor policy into something darker.

A simple principle

Australian fish, caught by Australian fishers, feeding Australian families, should be at the centre of fisheries policy.

Right now, the system looks upside down.

We have:

• fewer wild caught commercial operators

• more closures and “reforms”

• more imported seafood from higher risk fleets

• hundreds of millions in research spending, with little to show for local wild caught supply

• an increasing political bias that favours recreational access over local food supply

A parliamentary enquiry into fisheries management since the 1990s is the least that Australians should expect.

If Parliament will not even look at the facts, then people will be entitled, in future, to start talking seriously about the nuclear option of a Royal Commission.

For now, the message is clear and measured:

Put the numbers on the record, follow the money, confront the hypocrisy and the political bias, and rebuild a system where Australians can still choose Australian wild caught seafood, caught under Australian rules, by people whose kids go to school in our towns.

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