By Ross Winstanley* Since 1995, Victoria has see-sawed between structured co-management and "fit-for-purpose" arrangements, depending on the government of the day. Coalition governments have twice introduced broad-based statutory co-management councils while Labor governments have twice turned to less-structured arrangements. From the 1960s, Victoria was at the forefront o...
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The Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) has announced that, as of 1 May 2018, all South East Trawl (SET) vessels that have fished more than 50 days in either the 2016 or 2017 fishing seasons will be required to use electronic logbooks (e-logs) to report on their fishing operations. SETFIA members have resolved to support this move. Up until now operators have had the option of...
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By Ross Winstanley* The Victorian Government's proposed restrictions on commercial fishing in Port Phillip Bay from 2022 will leave the remaining fishermen hamstrung. At best, these restrictions reflect the Government's indifference to the future viability of commercial fishing in the Bay. In my opinion, at worst, they reflect a subterfuge aimed at quietly eliminating all ...
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AFMA has just released their draft cost recovered levy proposal for 2017. The latest levies will be recovered under a new cost recovery policy called the AFMA Cost Recovery Implementation Statement 2017 (CRIS2017). AFMA propose to recover $2.8m from industry in 2017 which includes $62,000 from fee-for-service activities such as the cost of processing paper log books that are invoiced to indu...
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