Thursday, 6 March 2025

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:18): (1500) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Outdoor Recreation in his capacity as minister responsible for the Victorian Fisheries Authority. Minister, are you happy to preside over the reckless gutting of Victoria’s fisheries department, a 50 per cent staff cut, slashing 73 enforcement officers to just 36 and closing five critical stations around Port Phillip and Western Port bays for three feeble community hubs? This is not a restructure; it is an invitation to chaos, and it is your government’s doing. The VFA might be copping the criticism here, but let us be honest: we all know this is happening because your government has run out of money – our money. Deficit, debt and crippling interest payments are one side, but the other is the spending. Exhibit A is the $216 billion Suburban Rail Loop, a money pit draining resources which could finance fisheries, for example, for several centuries. At what point will you admit all the other cuts? The trade-offs are having such a serious impact on Victoria’s economy and our quality of life that this glorified hole in the ground is not worth the pain.

My constituent David Burgess, a 47-year VFA veteran, calls the cuts ‘insane’. He wrote:

… once word gets out that you can do what you like out in the bays it will be a free for all with illegal fishing and the illegal sale of recreational caught fish which will at some point lead to a serious public health issue.

A diver can nab 100 kilos of abalone, $3000 worth in just a few hours, feeding a black market that will ravage our marine environment. Organised crime, already rampant with tobacco, will arrive. As David told the ABC:

If you have no one out there you can have all the rules you like … it doesn’t work …

Yet, Minister, you are cutting half the workforce of enforcers completely and replacing the other half with ‘engagement officers’. That is not policing, it is a pamphlet patrol. The VFA claims 90 per cent of fishers comply, but compliance collapses without enforcement. Crayfish, whiting and abalone stock levels will crash. Export accreditation is at risk too, potentially endangering many millions in economic activity, and all the while 900,000 recreational fishers and fishing organisations across the state – voters who you are normally pretty keen to butter up – are in open revolt. The action I seek, Minister, is that you return to the reality-based community and recognise that enforcement exists for a reason. I ask you to reverse these cuts and protect Victoria’s fisheries.