Tasmanian Bills Fact Sheets Tasmanian Bills Fact Sheets[Index] [Search] [Download] [Bill] [Help]
FACT SHEET
Living Marine Resources Management Amendment Bill 2017
This Bill has one primary purpose and also provides for two other administrative or more minor
issues.
Primarily, this Bill places into legislation that no trawling is allowed in Tasmanian State waters.
This Bill provides the community greater surety that trawling will not be permitted in Tasmania
waters in the future, as undoing this prohibition would require a further Bill with strong scrutiny
of the Parliament and indeed the community.
This measure will allay some concerns expressed that large factory trawler vessels might be
permitted to operate in State waters.
Fishery Management Plans, which are statutory rules, are made through the provisions of the
Living Marine Resources Management Act 1995, that is, they are subordinate to the Living Marine
Resources Management Act 1995.
The Fisheries (Scalefish) Rules 2015 are the current management plan for the Tasmanian scalefish
fishery. This management plan was remade in 2015 as the previous plan expired.
In 2001, the debate around the impacts of trawling saw a review of the scalefish fishery
management plan. Amongst other changes, this review saw restrictions on the use of trawling in
State waters. The current rules now state:
“A person must not use a board trawl net from a fishing vessel in State waters”.
As such, trawling is currently not permitted in State waters. However, a review of that
management plan through the statutory review process required could potentially see that
provision rescinded.
The purpose of this Bill is to reinforce or strengthen this existing provision by increasing the level
of scrutiny to remove restrictions on trawling and the possible introduction of this fishing method.
Two other administrative or more minor issues are also proposed in the Bill.
First, the Living Marine Resources Management Act 1995 provides that a range of decisions or
outcomes must be notified through a Public Notice. A Public Notice is defined as a notice
published in the Gazette and a daily newspaper generally circulated.
Such decisions include setting a total allowable catch or notifying abalone divers the catch in an
area has met a predefined limit and the area is closed to them for the rest of the quota year.
Some decisions affect a wider portion of the community, and some are very specific.
Such a “one size fits all” arrangement is considered, in some situations, to be outmoded and
potentially overly bureaucratic and unnecessarily expensive.
Page 1 of 2
Administrative flexibility is appropriate where the needs of the community are safeguarded, but
more tailored cost effective measures may be more appropriate and indeed more effective and
much less costly for the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment.
However, this proposal only affects some notifications under the Act that are not seeking an
active response from the public but are essentially only notifications of outcomes (i.e. those within
section 40). It is considered some of these are appropriate candidates for other more efficient
and cost effective processes.
Processes for key management outcomes (e.g. notification of releasing a draft management plan
for consultation) that seek active action or comments from stakeholders and the general public
still require wide dissemination, and might be considered appropriate for public notices. No
changes are proposed in these cases.
An important aspect of this change is if rules are made under section 40 that allow say closing
part of a fishery, those rules must also then specify how the outcome is to be determined.
The intent is to provide contemporary alternatives depending on the breadth of the decisions
and individuals involved. For example, if all persons affected by a decision are known, notification
to each individual might be used in that case.
This measure also provides potential opportunity for moving individual notifications to quick,
effective and cheaper electronic notifications.
This is only a sensible move in contemporary communication in this electronic age and aligned
to the commitment that the Government will
“help to transition commercial fishing in Tasmania into the digital age, aiming at world’s best
practice for both regulators and commercial operators, including regulatory compliance
through the use of modern IT systems”.
The Living Marine Resources Management Act 1995 also provides for making industry levies to
collect monies for particular purposes, e.g. funding industry bodies such as the Tasmanian Seafood
Industry Council.
Recent advice indicates the amounts can only be set as actual dollar amounts. Therefore, in
order for any levy to increase to allow for CPI increase, a levy would need to be remade each
year. This is not administratively sensible.
The fee unit model of setting fees and charges across Government expressly accommodates this
issue and it seems only sensible to provide for levies also to be set with a fee unit amount.
Page 2 of 2