Labor romped home in Tassie. The PM's salmon move worked
Tasmanian voters have endorsed Labor's shift to protect salmon jobs from environmental challenges, as the government claimed two fresh Tasmanian seats, retained two others and locked the opposition out of lower house seats entirely.
But the politics of salmon farming continue to carve a course through the south of the state, with anti-salmon candidate Peter George coming second on preferences to Labor's Fisheries Minister Julie Collins.
Salmon farming pens that proliferate along Tasmania's south-east and west coasts are owned by eight companies including foreign-owned giants Huon Aquaculture, Petuna and Tassal.
The $1.8 billion industry made national and international headlines when a 'mass mortality' event over summer caused by a bacterial outbreak killed more than a million fish, and led to chunks of salmon carcasses and oil globules washing up on beaches near the pens.
After salmon workers were filmed shovelling still-writhing fish from diseased pens, and sealing the lids closed, the RSPCA revoked its certification for Huon Aquaculture salmon. No Tasmanian salmon is now certified as meeting the authority's animal welfare standards.
As negative headlines grew, so too did industry concern for the more than 5000 workers it says rely on the industry (estimates vary between 1700 and 5100), and for the wider impacts losing the $1.3 billion industry could cause in the state.
In March, the day before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the federal election, Labor and the Opposition joined forces in the Senate to pass amendments to federal environment laws.
Those changes put a line under Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek's formal reconsideration of the 2012 expansion of salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour – in the electorate of Braddon – at the request of environmental groups.
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