Labor’s Dean Winter has worked hard to build his brand as an alternative premier, positioning his party at a distance removed from the Rockliff Liberal government on matters of the moment.
But on at least one issue he and Jeremy Rockliff are in lock step. As soon as anyone raises questions about the salmon farming industry, the two leaders respond with one voice. Any and all such criticism, they say, is a dagger in the heart of our state’s economy.
A couple of weeks ago Jeremy Rockliff said a negative federal verdict on the environmental impact of Macquarie Harbour salmon farming would have a ripple effect across the state and could be “catastrophic” for many small towns. Not to be outdone, on Friday the Labor leader declared that the industry “provides safe, secure, well-paid jobs, and underpins the success of many other industries too.”
Both leaders have repeated assertions by Salmon Tasmania that the industry is responsible for a total of over 5000 jobs – an amalgamation of claimed totals of 2100 directly-employed full-time equivalent positions and a further 3000 full-time indirectly-employed positions.
A November 2023 estimate by the Australia Institute, based on 2021 census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, indicates much more modest totals: direct employment of 1097 full time equivalent (FTE) positions and a “best case” 1722 FTE taking in support for indirectly-employed positions.
The same analysis pared down the Salmon Tasmania claim of 17 per cent of West Coast employment, putting the number of West Coast salmon industry jobs at 54 FTE, or 2.5 per cent of the total West Coast workforce, with a best-case total including support for indirect employment of 76, or 3.6 per cent.
All this has been sparked by fears for the Maugean skate, a fish species unique to Macquarie Harbour. Multi-year monitoring by marine scientists David Moreno and Jason Semmens, of Hobart’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), found that numbers had halved over seven years and predicted the species’ effective demise by the early 2040s.
The same two experts found that the species’ plight was overwhelmingly due to declining levels of dissolved oxygen in the harbour caused by salmon pen pollution. That research underpinned official advice to Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek that salmon farming in the harbour should be “paused” pending further approvals.
Salmon Tasmania promptly engaged University of Tasmania ecologist Barry Brook to do a “scientific-based critique” of that advice. He determined that the chosen parameters for the Moreno-Semmens study skewed its findings, and that “the whole exercise should be redone from the ground up”.
Brook’s analysis and a contemporaneous IMAS finding that artificial oxygenation of harbour water was working were seized upon by Salmon Tasmania and its political cheer squad. Winter and Burnie mayor Shane Pitt attacked Canberra for its apparent antipathy toward the industry, and Environment minister Nick Duigan announced an “independent scientific” review of modelling used to establish the species’ viability.
In lashing out at Canberra, Martin, Pitt, Winter and Rockliff have all been hammering economic benefit for a local audience always focused on jobs, pointedly leaving out of their tirades the precarious state of the Maugean skate.
That may come back to bite them. Australia is a party to international legal agreements to protect endangered species like the Maugean skate. Principle 15 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development binds Australia to applying the precautionary approach where there are threats of “serious or irreversible damage” to natural systems and species.
That principle says in part that “lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” Calls for the Moreno-Semmens modelling to be redone “from the ground up” ahead of any precautionary measures are out of step with that agreement.
SIX (Sustainable Investment Exchange), the activist share trading platform founded by Adam Verwey and Sophie Hall, announced last week that it was lodging resolutions on behalf of Woolworths and Coles shareholders to stop the supermarket chains from procuring salmon farmed in Macquarie Harbour. Salmon Tasmania CEO Luke Martin immediately launched into what he called “stunts” by “faceless mainland activists … putting pressure on our customers.”
Calling them faceless is more than a bit rich. Verwey and Hall are readily identifiable on SIX’s website, and while Martin is well known in Tasmania, his foreign paymasters, owners of the three non-Australian companies behind Salmon Tasmania, are not exactly household names here.
Last Saturday, National Threatened Species Day, Minister Duigan announced a $2.1 million fund supporting captive breeding of the Maugean skate. But the acid test is survival in the wild, and right now that looks like a big fat fail.