Foreign fishing boats netted

[fishingjew]

THE Federal Government says it is winning the war against illegal foreign fishermen after a record number of boats were destroyed last year and the apprehension rate more than doubled.

New figures released exclusively to The Courier-Mail show that 365 illegal fishing boats were captured in Australia's northern waters last year.
This is the biggest number of interceptions in one year and easily beats the previous record of of 281.

Fisheries Minister Eric Abetz said the data showed a turning point in the battle to protect Australian borders and the nation's fish stocks.

"While it is still too early to claim victory, these figures are very encouraging and indicate that the Government's policy of apprehend and destroy is working," he said.

In the last Budget the Government committed $389 million to combat illegal fishing, and Senator Abetz said some new initiatives were still coming online.

"I am hopeful these measures will continue to drive down incursions and help to safeguard our fish stocks and our biosecurity for all Australians."

Senator Abetz said that for the first time since 2004 there had been a reduction in the number of illegal foreign fishing vessels entering the northern waters. Almost all illegal fishing boats entering Australian waters are from Indonesia, and they sometimes penetrate the Gulf of Carpentaria off far north Queensland.

The new figures for 2006 show that the number of apprehensions as a proportion of sightings reached almost 8 per cent.

This strike rate is a big increase on 2005, when the number of captures was only 3.6 per cent of sightings.

But Opposition spokesman for homeland security Arch Bevis said it was not good enough, and most illegal fishermen still escaped.

"The odds are in favour of the illegal fishing boats; they have got better than a 90 per cent chance of going scot-free," he said.

Mr Bevis said the Government was playing catch-up on protecting Australia's northern waters.

A spokesman for Senator Abetz said sometimes there were multiple sightings of the same vessel that distorted the figures.

The spokesman also said there had been a change in the type of vessels entering Australian waters.

He said most boats being picked up now were very small, with a maximum crew of four, rather than large vessels with the capacity to take many fish and freeze them for long periods.

Border security and the fight against illegal fishing boats is expected to be an important issue at the next federal election.

[tunaman]

Landline had a interesting program with indo fishermen, and it was revealed that Australian based interests were involved. You may of seen this program.




signed tunaman

[fishingjew]

Monday, 22 May 2006
BY AUTHORITY OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
SPEECH
Date Monday, 22 May 2006 Database House Hansard
Page 124 Proof No
Questioner Responder
Source House Speaker Burke, Anna, MP (Chisholm,
ALP, Opposition)
Type Speech In Main Committee
No
Cognate bills:
Ms BURKE (Chisholm) (8.35 pm)—I also rise tonight
to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1)



The other issue I want to look at is illegal fishing.
This is something that you would not think of as a big
issue in downtown Chisholm, I admit; but, as chair of
Labor’s task force on transport and maritime security,
it is something I have become quite interested in and
quite passionate about. I would say again that the
Howard government’s measures to fight illegal fishing
are woeful also. While it is encouraging that the
government has finally acknowledged that illegal
fishing is a problem—for many years now, it has put
its head in the sand and said that it was not actually
an issue—it seems it has no idea about just how out
of control illegal fishing is in our northern waters.
Peter Costello boasted in his budget speech that
this new measure will double the number of apprehensions
of foreign vessels each year. Again, whoopdedo!—
because last year alone there were only 204
apprehensions. Considering that there were 13,018sightings of illegal fishing vessels in our waters by
coastguards, doubling the current rate will only bring
apprehensions to 408 next year, which is around three
per cent of all illegal fishing vessels which enter our
waters. What a joke! Labor believes Peter Costello
should aim to catch 100 per cent of illegal fishing
vessels coming into our waters and, indeed, he should
be deterring these fishing vessels from even starting
the treacherous journey from Indonesia, not settling
for just a lousy three per cent.

[tunaman]

Just to ad, Australian companies were found to be funding indo fisherman and paying for their boats and the parlament know this is going on. Dont beleve them.





signed tunaman