Ausmarine editorial – April 2008
I have been receiving increasing numbers of complaints from dive charter, party fishing and ferry operators about ever higher government charges and increasingly restrictive and complex regulations.
We can only hope that Australia's passenger vessel owners and operators have learnt from the disastrous experiences of their counterparts in the fishing industry. Effectively, the fishing industry has been hanged, drawn and quartered over the last three decades. It has certainly been quartered because at least 75 percent of Australia's commercial fishing fleet has been eliminated over that period.
What I hope the passenger vessel people and, indeed, the fish farmers and owners of other commercial vessels, have noted is the imperative of unity. If you don't unify and fight back against government depredation, you may as well give up and go home now. You can also be sure that you will go home a lot poorer because the bureaucrats will ensure your maritime assets are worth considerably less.
Another sector that has suffered a similar fate to our fishermen is cargo shipping. The Australian flag cargo shipping fleet has also been reduced by about 75 percent over the same period. While the ship owners were united enough, they did not, for various reasons, fight very strongly. Australia's ship owners and the Maritime Union of Australia that manned their ships were prime targets of Coalition governments over much of that period.
Their dismal experience is very similar to that of the fishermen. The lesson from both sectors is that there is only one response to government depradation. That is that all involved must unite and fight.
That said, though, there is some good news about. Our famed columnist Hagen Stehr and his crew at Clean Seas Tuna have effectively "closed the life cycle" on southern bluefin tuna. If all goes to plan, we should no longer need to catch wild tuna. Tuna will be grown, processed and marketed like Atlantic salmon or even chicken.
The critical phase is "if all goes to plan". Hagen and his colleagues are sure to face plenty of bureaucratic negativism and obstruction before they are finished. There are a number of envious "public servants" who detest anyone who stands up to them as strongly as Mr Stehr does.
Other government impositions are being loaded onto our fish farmers thick and fast. An example is the tripling of EPA changes in Queensland.
We can only hope that the still thriving sectors of Australia's maritime industry will unite and fight. We don't want to end up like Sweden, for example, where the recreational fishing market is now claimed to be ten times as big as the commercial one.
In other good news that seems to have arrived with the new Rudd Government in Canberra, the Federal and state governments are working together to reduce the hyper generous handouts given to the trucking industry, that, hopefully, may encourage a return to marine and rail transport.
The trucking industry was a "sacred cow" under the Coalition. Now, perhaps, we'll see a return to economic, environmental and social reality.
Another welcome announcement comes from the Australian Fisheries Managtement Authority. It is taking a serious look at its costs, with the objective of reducing them substantially to better match the drastically reduced fleet that it now manages.
So, a breath or two of fresh air in Canberra, at least. Nevertheless all sectors of our industry need to remain vigilent, united and ready to fight.
