Comments to the "Black-Marketing of Seafood" Review

Black-marketing of seafood is a tradition that has been going on since Jesus fed the Masses on the hill, probably with black market bread as well as with non-unionised labour!

What is the main aim of addressing this Activity?

• Is it because of the cash economy, where governments arent collecting any taxes?
• Does/will collecting the taxes ease the burden of harvesting the resource or make things cheaper?
• Is it because Governments think that black-marketing takes more of the resource than is allowed than if obtained legally?
• Do bureaucrats think that black-marketing is only the activity of illegal (read non-commercial) fishers?
• Questions need to be asked as to why this activity is so rife, and is it really a problem other than with expensive abalone and lobster?
• If the problem is not so rife, then what is the big deal?
• Who is actually engaged in this activity (Commercial, Recreational, Indigenous, Pensioners, the Unemployed, Businesses, Licensed, Unlicensed)?
• Are they involved because the taxes through legal operation are too high?
• Are they involved because of the piles of red tape associated with commercial fishing?
• Is fishing, in general, too regulated and bogged down with paperwork?
• Are there problems because the industry was de-regulated?
• Has this de-regulation worsened/opened the opportunities for more black-marketing of seafood?
• Has the introduction of the Fish Receiver and Fish Seller permits broadened the chance of docket manipulation (if they are checked)?
• Are the laws too lax in their intention?
• When the industry was de-regulated in Nov 1999 by Minister Obeid, the much-publicised paper trails were (supposedly) going to be created to reduce black-marketing in the seafood trade. What happened?
• Is this much highlighted paper trail being monitored at all, and if so, by whom?
• Which Fish Receivers and Fish Sellers are monitored, how, by whom and how often?
• Has compliance suffered because insufficient Government budget funding has led to the unscrupulous knowing that the chance of detection is minimal?
• Has compliance focused too much on the issues of abalone and lobster, allowing the other fishery black-market issues to flourish?
• Has compliance been lax because of redundancies to on-ground staff resulting in too many seat warmers being on the payroll?
• Has the management strategy of Fisheries contributed to this increase in black-marketing, i.e. How are quotas checked and monitored? How are catches monitored to comply with TACs?
• How are recreational anglers monitored, given that they can catch in excess of the bag limit in any one outing, or more than a single bag limit per day?
• Black-marketing can be attributed to anywhere where there be an outlet to receive it.
• Has the compliance been directed too much at the source and not at the reseller or user of the end product?
• How does the problem of the human nature of the general public seeking and demanding more and cheaper seafood influence black-marketing?
• What separates indigenous food gathering from black-marketing?

Summary of observations:

1)      Black-Marketing will be difficult to weed out under the current Fisheries structure unless Governments commit more resources towards compliance/monitoring/investigation.

2)      De-regulation needs to be further investigated.

3)      More attention must be given to helping sectors working together, instead of this divide and conquer regime.

4)      Incentives/concessions might need to be given to the end users to commit to compliance.

(Compiled by Robert Smith on behalf of The Fishing Party from information supplied from groups and individuals throughout NSW and Qld)