Flawed governance flames fish farm battle

Primary Industries and Water Minister Jeremy Rockliff’s announcement of a review of Tassal’s east coast lease is a purely cosmetic response to what the government knows is a mounting battle over industrialisation of Tasmania’s coastline. Minster Rockliff’s proposed solution – a review of a single lease site by the toothless Marine Farm Planning Review Panel (MFPRP) – won’t paper over the cracks in a deeply flawed system that is creating risk for Tasmania’s fishing and tourism industries, coastal communities and environment alike.

“Our entire regulatory process for marine farming is 20 years old and so sub-standard it practically invites conflict over new fish farm developments,” said Laura Kelly, Strategy Director at Environment Tasmania.

“A review of a single lease by a review panel which has no independent power and which the Liberal Government tried to abolish in 2015, will only increase community anger at the flaws in our marine farm planning process,” Ms Kelly said.

“Our aquaculture planning system contains no clear criteria for assessing site suitability, and none of the best-practice criteria used overseas to ensure a site is able to carry the tonnes of pollution introduced into the water by salmon farming.

The result is developments like the ecological nightmare in Macquarie Harbour – with its mass fish kills and the debacle of salmon companies leaking industry emails to Greens Senators in a struggle to point the figure at each other.

The community has no confidence, and nor should it, in a faulty planning system that allowed the Macquarie Harbour catastrophe and could see this ecological disaster transferred straight to our pristine east coast,” Ms Kelly said.
Laura Kelly, Strategy Director, Environment Tasmania.