Major WA fishing ban primed for probe after Greens support

A controversial fishing ban covering a huge swathe of Western Australia’s coast will likely be probed by parliament after the Greens threw their support behind an inquiry which could drill into the disputed science backing the restrictions.

The inquiry will be established either after a disallowance motion to scrap the ban altogether is debated in the upper house, or MPs debate one of the largest e-petitions ever submitted to the upper house.

The Save WA Fisheries petition calling for an inquiry contained 27,654 signatures and was tabled in Parliament on Thursday, the same day about 100 fishers turned up to the front steps of Harvest Terrace to protest the ban.

The government banned recreational fishing for demersal – or bottom-dwelling – species until 2027 and indefinitely banned commercial demersal fishing from Augusta to Kalbarri and trawling in the Pilbara from January 1 to address low stocks of beloved WA species including snapper and dhufish.

However, the opposition has denounced the ban and questioned the science that informed the government’s decision, saying it did not align with the experience of fishers on the water.

The Greens support the ban, which means a disallowance motion put forward by the Nationals in the upper house to revoke it is doomed to fail, but will support the opposition’s move to send it to a parliamentary committee.

The inquiry could come off the bat of a debate about the disallowance motion or through the petition itself, which will be considered by the Environment and Public Affairs committee, which consists of one Green, two Liberal and two Labor MPs.

“We support an inquiry into fisheries, because we know there is nothing to hide when it comes to the science,” Greens healthy oceans spokeswoman Sophie McNeill said.

Opposition fisheries spokeswoman and Nationals MP Kirrilee Warr, who addressed the rally on Thursday, said the scientific study, known as the Punt report, that informed the government’s publicly available demersal stock assessment should be tabled in parliament.

“We have been requesting that numerous times from the minister and the government, and they refuse to table it. So what are they hiding?” she said.

“We are hearing there’s fish in the water, and so when we’re getting out there amongst our communities, listening to the people, which is more than the premier and the [Fisheries Minister Jackie Jarvis] herself has been doing, we know that because we are hearing from thousands of people.

“What we hope to discover is, is this being backed by science, or is this a political decision?”

Commercial fisher Tony Westerberg, who attended the rally, believed the Perth metro area data warped the decision to ban fishing across the entire west coast zone.

“The metro area, you’re never, ever, ever, ever going to fix that,” he said.

“You’ve got too many people going fishing. They should not worry about the metro; it’ll never come back, ever. It’s impossible.

“It’s the way they use the data, and the scientists are very good at getting data; they’ve been doing it for a long, long time.

“That’s why I know all the scientists, they would not agree to the closure. It’s the way they use it, and the little pieces of information they pull out of many years of data.”

Jarvis has in the past said she would support a parliamentary inquiry because she had nothing to hide.

She said she would have spoken at the rally on Thursday morning had the Nationals not moved a motion in parliament on the fishing ban, which she had to speak to.

Jarvis reiterated that the demersal stock assessment report made available to the public was peer-reviewed.

“I don’t know what the opposition are asking for. What we released is the west coast commercial resource stock assessment,” she said.

“This was the report that was physically handed to the opposition spokesperson for fisheries in September, this was published online. This report is peer-reviewed.”

She accused the opposition of backing the commercial fishing sector over recreational fishers.

“I’ve made a really tough decision in relation to those 41 boats that are fishing commercially in that zone. I’m not sure if the rally is intended to appease the commercial sector. It appears so,” she said.

“The opposition have very firmly backed the commercial sector, they have very firmly backed those 41 boats over the 130,000 recreational fishers.”

Recreational fishing group Coastal Collective also spoke at the rally.

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