The Fishing Party

11Watts Close

SINGLETON HEIGHTS NSW 2330

Ph 0265 560338   0408434591 

Fax 0265560338  0265 731197     

Email  sinali@bigpond.com    

sinali@hunterlink.net.au

8th March 2003

For the attention of The Prime Minister, Mr John Howard MP

Cc: The Deputy Prime Minister, Mr John Anderson MP

    : The Treasurer, Mr Peter Costello MP

    : The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, Mr Warren Truss MP

Dear Mr Howard

The Fishing Party is a fledgling party attempting to represent the interests of the fishing community at Local, State and Federal Government level.

The party aim is to put forward sensible arguments in the management of our fisheries that will let the fishing constituents continue to partake in their amenity of either sport or food for the table from the marine environment.

Standing just two candidates in the last Federal Election for the Senate on behalf of NSW we achieved a fairly good result for a "just formed party".

In the upcoming Federal Election, The Fishing Party will have Senate candidates for NSW and now QLD will be mounting a determined challenge and possibly VIC, along with a few Lower House candidates.

Since the 2001 election there have been many decisions taken both at state level and commonwealth level that have severely restricted the fishing community by way of access and costs. That ultimately has increased the fishing community anger at those Government decisions, and foreseen to be reflected at the coming election time.

The Fishing Party also aims to put an opposing balance to the ever-determined radical green control that has infiltrated the government ranks and their decision making either by way of elected representatives or the allocation of preference votes at election time.

The Fishing Party believes that the Commonwealth Government should have more control over how the States control the marine resource and its funding and how this funding is allocated.

The Offshore Constitutional Settlement between the Commonwealth and each State fails to address how monies paid to the Commonwealth by the Australian fishing taxpayer are spent in each State responsibility when dividing up the GST.

This causes some of the States to believe that they have "open slather right" at creating more State taxes.

I bring your attention to the Carr and Bracks Labor Governments greedy decision to further tax the fishing community by way of unnecessary angler fishing licenses (extra tax)

Queensland along with Western Australia and especially the Northern Territory have successfully managed their fishing resource without the need for extra state taxes being created to do so.

The GST windfall generated from the recreational fishing activities obtained from Government reports is somewhere around $300 million dollar mark with NSW and Vic surely obtaining the biggest share allocation. If just half of each state share was directed towards the management or the fishery that would be more than enough to rescind the angler license tax

In an election year it would make more than a few million anglers/families/voters happy if they were not held to ransom by this greedy state form of tax and the only way of controlling this decision would be from a Federal Government GST collected allocation allotment decision.

Also in an election year this action would or could be seen as an easing of taxes without costing the current Government any money and could pay dividends in the voting ranks.

As an example, this action could be on a parallel with the liquor deregulation threat that made to the Carr Government squirm at the seams and would be no different to the slashing of health funding recently announced.

The Fishing Party would be more than happy to communicate further with you with this subject.

Yours truly,

Robert Smith

Chairman