Albanese sparks anger with pledge over controversial salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour
Anthony Albanese has promised to introduce legislation that will allow 'sustainable salmon farming' to continue in Tasmania's Macquarie Harbour, sparking anger from conversationists and researchers who urged for the local industry to be scaled back.
The promise, made in a letter to industry group Salmon Tasmania, came after years of lobbying for action in Macquarie Harbour to save the threatened Maugean skate from extinction.
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, had also been reconsidering the future of salmon farm licences in Macquarie Harbour after environment groups made a legal case that an industry expansion in 2012 had not been properly approved.
In the letter, the prime minister referenced a new report from the University of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (Imas) which shows the Maugean skate population is 'consistent with the long term average as at 2014'.
Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email
Albanese said the report noted positive signs with oxygenation efforts – with reduced levels of dissolved oxygen across the harbour posing the main threats to the species.
'But even with this new and positive data, it is clear to me the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – introduced 25 years ago – does not allow for a commonsense solution on an acceptable timeline,' the prime minister said in the letter, seen by Guardian Australia.
'I can confirm that the Australian government will introduce legislation to ensure appropriate environmental laws are in place to continue sustainable salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour.'
The Imas report notes that Maugean skate numbers seem to be improving, but also highlights a 'critical need for continued monitoring' of the ancient ray-like species.
'A recent environmental DNA study … has demonstrated that the vast majority, if not all, of the current population of Maugean skate live only in Macquarie Harbour,' the report reads.
The prime minister's promise has been welcomed by the industry and the Tasmanian Liberal and Labor parties, who both back the $1.3bn industry.
But the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) said that – in response to the Imas report – that a slight improvement in the Maugean skate population would not save it from extinction. It said it was especially true if there was another extreme weather event in Macquarie Harbour in the next 10 years.
AMCS shark expert Dr Leonardo Guida said the new report shows a 'strong correlation between increased salmon farming intensity and a drop in estimated Maugean skate numbers'.
'The fate of the skate literally rises and falls alongside salmon production,' he said.
'The skates caught in 2024 were mostly old adults that will not be around much longer given they live to around 10-12 years, and there hasn't been enough time to show that the uptick is solely from juveniles surviving to breeding age.
'The scientists acknowledge huge uncertainty in the data from animals caught in 2023 and 2024 that shows something has happened that's making the skates easier to catch. Without knowing exactly what happened, we're unfortunately no longer comparing apples with apples from previous years.'
Tasmanian Greens senator Nick McKim said Australia's environmental laws were already too weak and to 'water them down even further to underpin corporate profits is an outrage and a betrayal'.
The director of The Australia Institute in Tasmania, Eloise Carr, said special legislation to protect farming operations in the harbour is 'likely to condemn the Maugean skate to extinction should not be rushed through'.
The Tasmanian premier, Jeremy Rockliff, welcomed the announcement and said he 'won't rest until salmon jobs are protected by law'.
'While today is an important step, this could have been achieved long ago, and we will continue to do all we can to support our workers across all industries,' he said.
The state's Labor leader, Dean Winter, said Albanese's letter demonstrates 'an irrefutable case that salmon farming and the Maugean skate can coexist'.
Macquarie Harbour produces only about 13% of Tasmanian salmon, but industry supporters argue it is an important hub and employer on the state's remote west coast.
Prof Jayson Semmens, a co-author of the Imas report, said researchers were 'cautiously optimistic' about the Maugean skate population but that 'there is still a long way to go'.
'Only continued monitoring of the Maugean skate population in Macquarie Harbour will allow us to know the long-term trajectory of recovery of this endangered species,' he said.
A conservation report by the government's threatened species scientific committee last year said the skate should be considered critically endangered, estimating there were between 40 and 120 adult skates remaining in the wild.
The move comes after Albanese last year vetoed a deal Plibersek had struck to support her nature positive legislation.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Statesman
3 hours ago
- New Statesman
Australia is no model for assisted dying
Photo by Kelly Barnes / AAP Image via Alamy Australian laws on voluntary assisted dying (VAD) are deemed so similar to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill that three quarters of overseas witnesses invited to give evidence to MPs were from Australia. 'This is not a revolutionary law reform,' Alex Greenwich, a politician from New South Wales, told the bill's scrutiny committee earlier this year. 'It has been tried and tested, we have appropriate safeguards in place throughout Australia, and they work.' Although Australian states extend the six-month life expectancy requirement to a year for those with neurodegenerative conditions, in terms of eligibility, process and safeguards, their laws are similar to the UK's bill. The two differ only in that self-administration of life-ending drugs would be permitted here, and a multidisciplinary panel would review cases. So when Kim Leadbeater, Labour MP and the bill's sponsor, responded with a heart emoji and '#ChoiceAtTheEndOfLife' to a Guardian article published on 7 June that showed the Australian system being abused, eyebrows were raised. An elderly couple had been granted VAD when neither were terminally ill; medics in New South Wales effectively greenlit their suicide pact. 'Looks like the safeguards didn't work,' Mark Taubert, an NHS consultant and the vice-president of the European Association for Palliative Care, responded on X. According to the palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke, the story 'could not highlight more starkly the dangers of the law we are currently debating'. MPs hearing evidence on the bill had little time with six Australian witnesses, all of whom were supportive of VAD. Their arguments didn't always stand up to scrutiny. 'The medications are completely effective. I have not experienced any failures,' said Chloe Furst, a palliative care doctor from South Australia and board member of Voluntary Assisted Dying Australia and New Zealand. But, MPs pointed out, there is no requirement that a doctor be present when someone self-administers, nor is there provision for reporting complications. In Western Australia, where this information is collected, complications were recorded in 4.3 per cent of deaths in 2023-24. Asked if it was a concern that a 'large proportion of people who opted for assisted dying cited being a burden as their reason', another witness, Meredith Blake from the University of Western Australia, replied this was 'not the evidence that we have got'. Except it is. Official state figures showed 35 per cent of those seeking VAD cited being a burden on family, friends or carers as their reason for doing so. Blake replied: 'If there are people who are saying they are a burden, that does not mean that their decision is not voluntary.' While MPs were told Australian palliative care doctors had 'embraced' VAD, I have spoken with medics in Australia who are troubled by how the legislation operates. Academics and politicians are, too. Robert Clark, a former attorney-general and MP in Victoria wrote to the committee twice with his observations: the second time after his fellow Australians had addressed MPs. Numerous aspects of their evidence were 'factually incorrect or incomplete', Clark claimed. There was not adequate palliative care available to all terminally ill patients in Australia. Evidence didn't show any reduction in non-medically assisted suicide. The right of doctors to object to VAD was not respected. Many doctors 'feel unable to raise concerns about VAD… lest they suffer adverse professional or career consequences, or else they are leaving the hospital system altogether', he said. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe British palliative care doctor Alex Hughes recently relayed his experience of assisted dying while working in Australia. Hughes, who is neutral on VAD in principle, described a borderline case in which it seemed the patient had chosen to die because of poor alternative care options. In another, he suspected the man may have been influenced by depression, but this had gone unexplored in assessment. Were assisted dying to come to the UK, doctors would be 'at a heightened risk of unconscious bias… [and] may lean towards giving patients the 'benefit of the doubt', granting assisted dying to individuals who, in reality, have more than six months to live.' The events described in the Guardian confirm that risk is not merely hypothetical. Ahead of its return to the Commons on 13 June, 1,000 doctors urged MPs to vote against the assisted dying bill. They argued it is 'deeply flawed' and unsafe. Similar statements have been made by the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which say they cannot support the legislation as it stands. Such concerns are not 'noise', as Leadbeater has suggested. Many critics have no issue with the principle of safe VAD. But the passage of the bill has revealed law-making at its worst: rushed debate, the views of the vulnerable ignored or downplayed, and crucial information on how the bill would work absent. Supporters say there will be time to iron out details later. That is too risky. Under current plans, some vulnerable people will be helped – in Hughes's words – to have 'an inappropriate assisted death'. He now poses two critical questions for MPs: how many vulnerable people slipping through the net is acceptable? And can adequate safeguards be put in place 'without creating a system so cumbersome that it becomes unworkable'? It's time for MPs to be honest with themselves and the public: enabling some an autonomous death through assisted dying will inevitably put others at risk of harm. [See also: Has any Chancellor faced a challenge this daunting?] Related
Daily Mail
13 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Services Australia: Millions of Aussies on social services payments set for cash boost
Millions of Aussies receiving social services payments are set to pocket more money. From July 1, Services Australia payments will be indexed (adjusted in line with inflation) by 2.4 per cent. Paid Parental Leave, Family Tax Benefit A and B, the Newborn Supplement, and Multiple Birth Allowance will all receive a modest increase, affecting about 2.4million Australians. For example, a family receiving Family Tax Benefit A will pocket an extra $5 a fortnight. Parents with triplets will receive an extra $120 a year, while first-time parents of a newborn child will pocket an additional $48 over 13 weeks. Minister for Social Services Tanya Plibersek described indexation as a 'crucial way to help families when cost of living rises'. 'Millions of recipients of social security payments will see more money in their bank account,' Plibersek said. However, asset limits and income thresholds will also increase by 2.4 per cent. That means some Aussies will become ineligible for JobSeeker Payment, Youth Allowance, Austudy, ABSTUDY Living Allowance, Parenting Payment, Special Benefit and Parenting Payment Single. The July indexation will not impact youth and student payments, which are indexed each year in January.
Daily Mail
14 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Grim warning that Australia is being 'hijacked' by union bosses - as a national strike now looms that will bring the country to a grinding halt
Australians are being warned unions will use crippling national strikes next year to hijack supply chains which could stoke inflation under Labor's new workplace laws. Anthony Albanese 's Secure Jobs Better Pay Act, introduced in 2022 during Labor's first term, has revived multi-employer bargaining, handing power back to unions. It allows wage rises in one workplace to be replicated across an industry without the need for separate enterprise negotiations. But unions are already warning of potential coordinated strike action at 200 firms including airlines, supermarkets and haulage companies to leverage big pay deals. Analysts fear it could result in inflation-busting wage rises, which could result in soaring costs for consumers if productivity fails to keep pace with the increases. Treasurer Jim Chalmers is now planning to host a Productivity Summit at Parliament House in Canberra later this year in a bid to avoid an economic output crisis. But new Opposition workplace relations spokesman Tim Wilson has warned union chiefs will use multi-employer bargaining to bring industrial chaos to Australia. 'The Transport Workers Union will use multi-employer bargaining to hijack supply chains, squeeze businesses and pass on higher costs to customers,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'So long as Albanese's multi-employer bargaining remains in place, Australian customers will continue to pay more so unions can leverage their power.' Wilson last month narrowly won back the Melbourne bayside electorate of Goldstein from former Teal MP Zoe Daniel and was parachuted back onto the Opposition frontbench by Coalition leader, Sussan Ley. But he warned Labor's landslide re-election will now embolden unions to cripple Australia economically for the next three years. 'The only solution to stop unions pushing up costs on Australians is to find a better balance at the election,' he said. 'But now the Albanese government has been re-elected, Australians should expect more industrial action and higher costs until we see a change of government.' TWU national secretary Michael Kaine last month predicted that 200 enterprise agreements expiring in 2026 will be an opportunity to launch widespread strikes. 'Make no mistake – this will be the largest co-ordinated industrial campaign in Australian transport history,' Kaine told the TWU's national conference in Brisbane in May. 'This alignment of agreements isn't accidental. It's been carefully orchestrated to maximise our collective bargaining power.' Workers are allowed to strike without fear of being sacked during enterprise bargaining negotiations, under provisions of the Fair Work Act of 2009 introduced by a Labor government. Enterprise agreements expire next year at airlines Qantas and Virgin Australia, logistics companies Linfox and Toll, Amazon, supermarket chain Aldi, construction materials company Boral, waste disposal chain Cleanaway and airport ground handling firm Swissport. Kaine, whose union is affiliated with the Labor Party, had vowed to shut down Australia's transport sector. 'We are prepared to shut down Australian transport,' he said. 'There will be disruption. It will be significant. It will be coordinated. And it will be effective.' Albanese tried to sound conciliatory on Tuesday, emphasising that unions only thrived when private-sector employers were successful. 'Well, we're a Labor government, we support unions existing and some of the commentators prefer that unions didn't exist,' he told the National Press Club on Tuesday. 'That's the truth. But we will always respect both the role of business and the role of unions. 'And one of the things that I say is that there are common interests that – I say this to unions as well: you don't get union members unless you've got successful employers. It's the private sector that drives an economy.' Output at Australian workplaces is going backwards with productivity plunging by one per cent in the year to March. Gross domestic product per capita shrunk in the March quarter, threatening to revive a per capita recession that had persisted from early 2023 until the September quarter of 2024.
