Media release – Neighbours of Fish Farming, 12 October 2023
Is Salmon Tasmania serious about saving Macquarie Harbour? Then move onshore
In a desperate bid to shift focus from the damage it’s done to Macquarie Harbour, Salmon Tasmania has resorted to threatening the Federal Environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, using discredited, exaggerated employment figures as a weapon.
“This isn’t about jobs, it’s about a foreign-owned industry’s profits earned at the expense of Tasmania’s unique natural wonders,” says Peter George, president of NOFF.
“Salmon Tasmania should be talking about a transition to land-based salmon production to ensure the small number of jobs in the industry are preserved.
“You really have to ask why the industry and the state and federal governments can’t come together to ensure the future of employment on the west coast.
“Instead the industry threatens it will “not concede one single fish” to help avert a catastrophe in Macquarie Harbour, instead throwing around outrageously exaggerated and discredited jobs figures as a threat.
“Clearly the industry has been rattled by Richard Flanagan’s analysis of the industry’s claims that show how exaggerated and distorted they are. (Attached)
“To be clear, there will be no salmon industry in Macquarie Harbour in five years’ time when the industry’s effluent and rapidly warming waters will make the waterway unusable.
“Then the foreign owners will take their profits, walk away and leave behind a disaster that cannot be put right – and an extinct relic of the dinosaurs, the 60-million-year-old Maugean skate.”
Article – Richard Flanagan, undated
SALMON INDUSTRY CLAIMS IN SECRET REPORT SOUND A LITTLE BIT FISHY
Two years ago the salmon industry claimed in full page advertisements that 12,000 Tasmanians worked “either directly or indirectly in the salmon industry, making this one of Tasmania’s biggest employers”.
You can still find this untruth on the website of lobby group Salmon Tasmania as it puffs out nonsense for its overseas funders, the foreign owners of the Tasmanian salmon industry.
Bizarrely, the same website also boasts the industry today supports 5103 full-time jobs. What happened to the other 7000 jobs is anyone’s guess.
The latest claim of 5103 jobs derives from a confidential report commissioned by Salmon Tasmania from Deloitte, one of the now increasingly embattled Big Four accountancy firms.
The report remains secret but Salmon Tasmania has circulated a version of the report which purports to draw its facts from the Deloitte document. Salmon Tasmania’s hybrid is unverifiable puffery dressed up with glossy photos and what is described as Deloitte analysis.
Having now obtained a back door copy of the original report, I can well understand Deloitte would be embarrassed by the version published by Salmon Tasmania.
Not only is the Deloitte’s 5103 Tasmanian jobs claim difficult to square with Deloitte’s own 2023 report to the Australian Institute of Marine Science that found (p42) only 8239 direct and indirect jobs across all Australia in marine aquaculture, but a fact check of the Deloitte report by eminent economist, Dr Graeme Wells, for the Tasmanian Independent Science Council, found Deloitte’s “claim that the salmon industry represents one-fifth of the state’s entire agriculture, forestry and fishing industry is grossly exaggerated. When measured on a like-for-like basis, the figure is likely to be about 6-7 per cent.”
Dr Wells described Deloitte’s employment and labour productivity data as “puzzling” – perhaps because there is no actual evidence or proof in the Deloitte report supporting its claim of 5130 jobs.
I began my writing life as a historian. I learnt early that bad historians, when wanting to forge an untruth, add a footnote citing unrelated sources confident no one will check the fine print.
Both Deloitte’s original report and the Salmon Tasmania hybrid report cite the same two sources in their identical footnote (footnote 22 in the Deloitte and footnote 8 in the Salmon Tasmania report) for the 5103 jobs claim.
The first source given is the ABS labour force figures for December 2022. But nowhere in these figures does the ABS record aquaculture as a separate category of employment. Nowhere in the ABS statistics there – or anywhere else – are the facts to support the contention that there are 5130 jobs in the Tasmanian salmon industry.
The second source cited in footnotes 22 and 8 is “Department of Premier and Cabinet (Tas.)”
This is curious. Naming a government department is not a factual source. Unless Deloitte can produce detailed documentation provided by the department it implies someone in the department told someone at Deloitte they thought 5103 jobs might be a good guess.
What is even stranger is that there were Tasmanian government figures for employment in the salmon industry that Deloitte chose not to cite.
In 2021 the pro-salmon Tasmanian government found the industry employed 1734 people full time and 199 casuals (page 12 of the DPIPWE’s “Second Progress Report. Sustainable Industry Growth Plan for the Salmon Industry. September 2021”[ii]).
That’s it. 1734 full-time jobs. Not 12,000 nor 5130. Just 1734 jobs – or over 1200 jobs less than the Royal Hobart Hospital.
That report conveniently vanished from the government website in June, just before the Deloitte report appeared.
Luckily, the Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry seems not to yet suffer strangely vanishing public documents. Using census and ATO data it estimated that in 2020-21 there were 1310 people employed in all Tasmanian offshore caged aquaculture. A further 457 people are employed in fish processing and wholesaling.[iii] Many of these 457 would be working for the salmon industry – but not all. Even if we add that entire 457 to 1301 we still only get to 1767 jobs. Look it up yourself.
Wisely, neither the DPIPWE nor federal reports sought to estimate how many jobs are “supported” by the salmon industry, yet both Deloitte and Salmon Tasmania do, making such claims – without evidence – as “In the Huon Valley, over one in four jobs are supported by the Salmon Industry.”
As Dr Wells has highlighted, ‘multiplier effects’ are unreliable and misleading. It’s possible to say in selling, lending and teaching my books in Tasmania, some dozens of jobs are “supported” by my writing. Possible – but fanciful nonsense.
Still, it was on just such nonsense that the Legislative Council recently so shamefully voted to support the salmon industry – drawing its arguments entirely from the flawed Deloitte report’s fake findings.
To her great credit, MLC Ruth Forrest spoke of her difficulty checking sources, discovering dead links and warned against taking glossy brochures at face value with ‘more pictures than detail’, while MLC Mike Gaffney described it, correctly, as “an advertorial paid for by foreign-owned entities”.
Now Deloitte’s questionable jobs figures underpin the demands of Salmon Tasmania’s Luke Martin to keep salmon farms in Macquarie Harbour despite driving the Maugean skate to the edge of extinction. In his words, it is about getting “the balance right” and protecting the “17 per cent of all employment on the West Coast” for which “salmon aquaculture is responsible”. [iv]
The figure of 17 per cent is an impressive number. Except there’s no factual evidence to support it.
Here’s what we do know.
In 2021, according to the fiercely pro-salmon Tasmanian Department of State Growth the total number of jobs in ‘Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing’ on the West Coast was – and sit down for this – 81 people. In all three sectors.[v]
That’s it. Not thousands, not hundreds. Something less than 81 people.
Will that report be altered or disappear next? All jobs matter, of course. But so, too, does the truth.
The truth is that a 100 per cent foreign-owned salmon industry cares little for Tasmanian jobs or Tasmanian communities or Tasmanian species or Tasmanian waterways or Tasmanian values.
The truth is that Salmon Tasmania’s spin is only about protecting the foreign companies that finance it while the public is becoming increasingly concerned about the potential risk of salmon hatchery effluent on Hobart’s drinking water catchment, the Maugean skate is driven to extinction and Tasmanians watch their birthright, their beaches and waterways and rivers, slowly being destroyed.
Why does the truth matter? Because it’s our Tasmania, not theirs.
Richard Flanagan is a Tasmanian writer. His book Toxic: The Rotting Underbelly of the Tasmanian Salmon Industry, was short-listed for the 2021 Walkley Book Award.
Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 12 October 2023
Salmon Tasmania doubles down on misinformation about industry impact on endangered Maugean Skate
The latest media release from Salmon Tasmania says that nearly 400 jobs are supported by Macquarie Harbour fish farms, but an analysis by Toxic author Richard Flanagan found that in 2021, according to the Tasmanian Department of State Growth, the total number of jobs in Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing on the West Coast was 81 people.
Salmon Tasmania then went on to repeat the line that “…it is critically important the real cause of its population decline is identified and dealt with…” despite Federal Government conservation advice explicitly stating that aquaculture has a catastrophic impact on the Maugean skate.
“Salmon Tasmania is feeling the pressure, now that everyone can see they are responsible for the possible extinction of the Maugean Ssate, so they are now trying to mislead the public and the media,” said Alistair Allan, Antarctic and Marine Campaigner at Bob Brown Foundation.
“I challenge Salmon Tasmania to publicly release all data they have, including the secret Deloitte report, to back up these claims. If the Maugean skate goes extinct, it will be the first extinction of a ray or shark linked to aquaculture anywhere in the world.”
“Tanya Plibersek promised no new extinctions when she came into office, and I know that the Australian public expects that she upholds this promise. Salmon Tasmania says it will not concede a single fish in Macquarie Harbour, but this too is false. They are all too happy to concede the fate of the Maugean skate and let it vanish off the face of this Earth forever in the name of jobs and profit,” concluded Alistair Allan.
Plibersek consulting with industry again
“It is outrageous for Australia’s Minister FOR the Environment to meet Atlantic salmon industry interests but shut out the environmental groups and local residents concerned by the multiple impacts on Tasmania’s natural wellbeing,” said Bob Brown.
Reference:
The Advocate
https://www.theadvocate.com.
Its comments have come as Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek visited Devonport for a roundtable discussion with industry, government officials and other key stakeholders about what to do about aquaculture in the area.
Media release – Tasmanian Alliance for Marine Protection, 12 October 2023
Salmon Tasmania false claim exposed
Salmon Tasmania’s claim there’s “no evidence” to back removing salmon feedlots from Macquarie Harbour to help save the Maugean skate from extinction is patently false.
“The lobby group’s Luke Martin has claimed “there’s no evidence that … opting for a political quick-fix where salmon is is blamed will help to save the [Maugean] skate” is an astonishing untruth even for the salmon industry,” says Peter George spokesperson for TAMP.
“It flies in the face of all the scientific evidence.”
The Federal Government’s own scientific advice on protecting the Maugean skate from extinction says: “Eliminate or significantly reduce the impacts of salmonid aquaculture on dissolved oxygen concentrations. The fastest and simplest way to achieve this is by significantly reducing fish biomass and feeding rates.”
“Mr Martin’s comments today reflect increasing desperation by the industry whose claims to be focused on protecting the skate are as empty as their discredited claims of protecting employment on the west coast.
“Salmon Tasmania’s increasingly fabricated efforts to deflect the focus from the industry’s depredations sound ever more desperate.
“If Mr Martin and the multinationals that own the industry were serious about protecting Macquarie Harbour rather than protecting their profits, they would be planning to save jobs now by joining the global move towards onshore salmon production.
“IMAS scientists have warned the Maugean skate is one catastrophic event away from extinction and with an expected marine heatwave expected this summer, the industry should already be drastically reducing production in Macquarie Harbour and preparing to move out.
“Instead Mr Martin threatens the Federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, ‘cautioning’ her that “the industry will not concede one single fish” to save the skate.
Those are the words of a desperate lobby group that has no credibility and nowhere to turn unless it’s prepared to seriously invest in Tasmania’s future.”
