ANSWER 1

Written response:

It’s a great question, and to help Australian fishers navigate the challenges of a changing climate, we need to update our rules through policy reforms to make it easier for them to adapt. Our current management frameworks are often fragmented across state and Commonwealth jurisdictions, with limited mechanisms for climate-adaptive governance and significant data gaps on the socio-economic effects of reform. We saw a clear example of this during the major marine heatwave in Western Australia in 2011, which led to multi-year fishery closures, catastrophic habitat loss, and multi-million-dollar economic losses.

To address this, the focus needs to shift towards more a more flexible policy and regulatory enviroment. A key reform could be the increased use of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), where fishers own a percentage of the total allowable catch for a species. By assigning transferable shares of a total allowable catch, ITQs incentivise long-term stewardship, reduce wasteful competition, and facilitate the consolidation of licenses to a more profitable and sustainable level. This not only encourages consolidation within the industry—allowing some fishers to buy out others and operate more efficiently—but also gives them the flexibility to catch different species as their abundance changes. This kind of flexibility is crucial for long-term survival in a changing climate. However, to ensure a fair transition, this type of reform must be complemented by a government-supported programs such a license buy-back (successfully implemented in New Zealand), mitigating the social distress and economic hardship that can result from structural policy reform and adjustment.

Policy reforms should also support and encourage innovation in scientific research, building collaborative frameworks, and empowering fishers with the tools to adapt. For example, supporting and encouraging community-driven innovation, learning from local successes such as the Tasmanian urchin fishery, which has transformed an invasive, climate-driven species into a profitable new fishery, and through whose removal also restores threatened kelp ecosystems.

Larger scale reforms, although challenging, will be those that create a national framework to manage mobile fish stocks, moving beyond state-by-state borders. This means better collaboration between state and Commonwealth governments. By allowing for a national approach to fisheries management, we can ensure that as fish populations move, the policies that govern them can move too. This would also make it easier for fishers to shift their operations or licenses across jurisdictions, creating a more resilient and adaptable industry for the future. However, making these changes can be incredibly complex and require widespread political buy in. It requires balancing the needs of many stakeholders and navigating established policy and legislation such as the Offshore Constitutional Settlement (OCS). Nevertheless, these reforms are essential for creating a sustainable and resilient Australian fishing industry in the face of climate change.