HON GIZ WATSON (North Metropolitan) [9.34 pm]: I do not want to take up a lot of the time of the house, but I want to speak before the minister because I have a number of questions about this issue that I hope he will be able to respond to. The Greens (WA) were not intending to support this disallowance, and I am glad that it has been withdrawn. The circumstances that led to the need for this new management plan are very serious indeed.
In my previous job, I was involved in marine conservation and fisheries issues. I was present at the conference at which fisheries officials bragged about Western Australia having the best managed fisheries in the world. I considered that that statement would always come back to bite them as soon as something like this situation arose, in which we are confronted with some very serious research that indicates that we are very close to losing some significant species. That is very significant for those species themselves, but as I have said before on this issue, we do not even know what the consequences will be for the ecosystems that those fish are a part of. Each fish in an ecosystem has a particular role and if a significant portion of that biomass is taken out, it is bound to have a cascading effect on the creatures that those fish are no longer predating on and on the habitats they are no longer occupying. It is a much more complicated equation, and we receive only a glimpse that things are not right. Part of the frustration of fisheries, as fisheries researchers and marine scientists themselves will acknowledge, is that the information in the marine environment is always so imperfect. It is frustrating to never have enough information to fully understand the life cycle of even the iconic species.
The objective of reducing fish mortality by at least 50 per cent is described as being achievable in the short term. I wonder whether this is contained in the document “Managing the Recreational Catch of Demersal Scalefish on the West Coast — Future Management Scenarios for Community Consideration” that was released in September 2007. I am curious to know, because “short term” is not actually further defined. Are we talking about one year or 10 years?
I attended the public meeting at Fremantle to hear the concerns raised. It was important to hear what people had to say. I acknowledge that people who fish commercially have a very extensive knowledge of a range of matters in fisheries management, and sometimes they will be at odds with the fisheries research officers. There was a very lively debate. I also have an enormous amount of sympathy for the distress suffered by the people who are now required not to fish in this fishery, because a lot of them have been doing it for a long time. It is not only their problem that these fish stocks have been so heavily depleted. It raises a question about how much more complicated it is to manage the recreational fishing effort.
I have some questions about the capacity for policing the recreational fishing activities. I understand that most of the monitoring occurs at the boat ramps. I am curious to know how many boats actually operate in this area, and whether the bulk of the compliance for the recreational fishing sector is pinned on monitoring at the boat ramps, which will address only some of the problems. Hon Bruce Donaldson spoke of the issue of high-grading, which can result in a significant fish mortality. People go fishing, catch 10 fish and keep them on deck until they have selected the two largest ones, and then throw away the rest. This is an incredibly wasteful practice.
I acknowledge that seasonal closure to protect the breeding processes also has a lot of merit. It has been argued to me that this has a lot of support within both the commercial and the recreational sectors, because the seasonal closure will apply equally to everybody. I am interested in whether, at any time, the minister will consider the seasonal closure of that area.
Can the minister advise the estimated percentage of recreational fishers who are actually intercepted and their catch checked in any given season? I did not give the minister any notice of the question, so I do not expect him to answer it. Are we suggesting that half the catch is checked in any given season or is it 10 per cent? Again, the recreational effort is much harder to monitor than is the commercial effort. This precipitous situation is an indication of the problem with an unmanaged fishery. It is interesting how the fisheries sector or the fisheries department has prioritised which fisheries have come under management plans and at which time. I argue that this one should probably have come under a management plan much earlier. Perhaps the reason it did not is that the emphasis has been on prioritising the high-value species such as crayfish, prawns and pearls. I understand that the management plans for those fisheries were put in place as a matter of priority over and above what I would have thought would have been a better criterion—namely, the fishery that is most susceptible to over-fishing or the area that is under the most pressure—in which case I strongly argue that the metropolitan area should have been brought under a proper management plan earlier and that would perhaps have meant these measures could have been introduced sooner.
As did Hon Bruce Donaldson, I raise the question: what is to prevent the effort that has been removed from this fishery being transferred to the south coast in particular? My colleague Hon Paul Llewellyn has had meetings with concerned south coast fishers about there being nothing to prevent those 26 licence holders shifting their effort to the south coast if they choose. When will the south coast fishery also be brought under a management plan? I understand there are different conditions. I certainly understand from discussions with fisheries advisors that the number of days they can catch fish on the south coast are much fewer; nonetheless, if we are allowing even the possibility that those licence holders could shift, there is a very real concern that that could increase pressure on stocks in the south coast region.
Hon Barry House interjected.
Hon GIZ WATSON: Yes. Perhaps the minister could answer that and indicate what priority is being given to bringing the south coast fishery under a management plan and when that might actually occur.