Tasmania gets it right and feds get it wrong with finfish farming inquiries

The Legislative Council Fin Fish Inquiry Report should serve as an example on how to make our marine environment sustainable, writes Jamie Kirkpatrick

IN the last weeks before the Tasmanian Parliament broke up for two months, there was an opportunity to adopt the recommendations from the Fin Fish Inquiry led by the Legislative Council, instead of its chilling anti-protest laws.

The Fin Fish Inquiry confirmed that fin fish farms as they currently operate in Tasmania are not sustainable. Mass fish deaths, environmental dead zones and jellyfish blooms were among the concerns expressed by scientists and the public before the inquiry.

The Legislative Council recommended a revised Sustainable Industry Growth Plan for the salmon industry as part of a marine plan for Tasmania, to be designed through a marine spatial planning process. Until this recommendation was adopted, the Legislative Council recommended that the industry should not expand, and inshore fin fish farming sites should be reduced.

Furthermore, the Legislative Council recommended that environmental licence conditions for all existing and new fin fish farms should be reviewed. Such conditions to be reviewed included defined limits of total biomass, dissolved nitrogen and other key nutrients. It was also recommended an independent review of the impacts of fin fish operations on inland waterways should be conducted; statewide water quality objectives developed, and an independent review of the fees, levies and penalties for the industry be conducted.

The report serves as a model for the Tasmanian and federal governments. It starkly contrasts with the report from the House of Representative’s National Aquaculture Inquiry released earlier this year.

We, the Tasmanian Independent Science Council, made a detailed submission to the national inquiry. Thirty per cent of all submissions, and 47 per cent of Tasmanian submissions focused on environmental issues, the rest being from government, industry and organisations receiving government funding for work in aquacultural research. The national process did not involve an interim draft report for public comment, nor much opportunity for the environmentally-focused submitters to speak to the committee.

The final report strongly