The Australian Fishing Trade Association (a consortium of retail recreational fishing businesses) advertised widely around Australia urging recreational fishers not to vote for either the Australian Greens or the Australian Labor Party.
Theirs was a well resourced campaign which included prominent television commercials on programs such as Sunrise (on the Southern Cross Network) and full page advertisements in Tasmanian newspapers with the intention of driving down the vote received by both the Greens and the Labor Party.
The fishing retailers were objecting to proposed new marine protected areas (predominately in Commonwealth waters).
In Tasmania the Greens increased their vote by 3.5 percent and the Labor Party by 1 percent. There was a swing of 4.7percent against the Liberal Party who stated they were the more fishing friendly party and who had made clear that they would suspend the creation of any new marine protected areas in Commonwealth waters. Obviously the fishing retail traders’ message was ignored by vast majority of Tasmanian voters who considered other issues more important with respect to the federal election than fishing.
There was no political payoff to the Liberal Party in relation to chasing fishing votes in Tasmania. In this election however we saw for the first time in the Senate a part fishing party (the Shooters & Recreational Fishers) who obtained just under 2 percent of the Tasmanian Senate vote.
It’s not possible however to measure a swing either for or against them because this was the first election they have stood in Tasmania. Much of their first preference vote seems to have been transferred directly from Family First, the DLP (who both polled poorly) and from the Liberal Party (when compared with the 2007 Tasmanian Senate result).
Fishing is not a first order political issue for 98 percent of Tasmanians, its political influence greatly overblown by only weakly representative fishing organizations. Recreational fishers have a much broader set of opinions about society as whole and resource management in general.
Most recognize the need to conserve the resource even if some peak organizations do not.
