Tag Archives: Commercial Fisheries Business Adjustment Program
Catch Shares – ‘I have no fingernails’: Paul’s distress as livelihood slips away
Those are the words of Illawarra commercial fisherman Paul Heron – spoken amid a heartfelt plea against planned NSW government changes that will likely see him without a job. Those reforms – part of the government’s Commercial Fisheries Business Adjustment Program, announced last year – include the introduction of minimum shareholding from July 2017. That means fishers must hold a certain number of shares to be endorsed to fish. “It is basically going to make a small fisher like me, with a young family and a mortgage – I am two years into my mortgage – we are basically going to lose our house,” he told the inquiry. Minister for Primary Industries Niall Blair told the hearing he had listened to fishers up and down the NSW coast. “The change is difficult, the change is hard, but it is necessary to have an industry going into the future,” Mr Blair said. A man in a suit. Video, read the rest here, including Paul Heron’s submission to the Senate inquiry into commercial fishing in NSW. 14:42
Commercial fishers ‘gutted’ by govt reforms
Commercial fishers gathered in Coffs Harbour from across the state in protest against fisheries reforms. More than 80 fishermen from Hawkesbury River to as far north as the Tweed rallied at the Jetty foreshores on Tuesday and Wednesday to garner public support to fight the reforms. Fishermen like Allan Bodycote, of the Clarence Valley, say the State Government’s Commercial Fisheries Business Adjustment Program will cripple their businesses because they will need to buy back their right to continue their current catch quotas. “We’ve got active fishers here who have been actively fishing up to 35 years in the game and come 2017, we believe we won’t have access to the shares to continue fishing because there is not enough shares to go around,” Mr Bodycote said. “We are buying our jobs back, how many times do you have to buy your job?” Read the rest here 17:04
