Wednesday, 5 March 2025

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2024‒25 Budget Estimates

Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (10:24): My contribution on committee reports today is on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee’s 2024–25 inquiry, and I refer to page 65 of that budget estimates report and the government’s commitment to law enforcement and crime prevention. For the point that I want to make in relation to law enforcement and crime prevention, I want to make some commentary on that around the fisheries officers and the reduction in the number of fisheries officers that is causing considerable concern in my electorate. One might think that recreational anglers would perhaps welcome less scrutiny over their fishing activities, but the weight of emails and calls into my office over the last week indicates that they are very angry and they want their fishery protected.

One of the challenges we have in both Lakes Entrance and Mallacoota is that each will now only have two fisheries officers, and this is where a level of concern lies, because to undertake surveillance or enforcement work fisheries officers rightly must be two up. There must be two of them there. It is over 2 hours between Lakes Entrance and Mallacoota, and when there is a need for urgent work, if one of those fisheries officers at either of those locations is on annual leave, sick leave, parental leave, long service leave or whatever leave they are on, they do not have 2 hours to travel between locations so that they can undertake that surveillance or enforcement work, so they cannot do their jobs properly. We also had a regional manager in place who could provide some flexibility to this arrangement, but that job is also gone.

Fisheries have told us not to worry because the special investigations group will be provided and it will have additional resources to ensure that poaching and major crime will be tackled head on. The only problem is we have no guarantees that they will have a presence in East Gippsland. They are probably going to operate out of Melbourne. They will not be on the ground as the fisheries officers are, and they will certainly not be able to respond in the quick amount of time that local fisheries officers on the ground are able to.

We are also told as part of this announcement that the majority of anglers do the right thing, and that is true, but the reason for that is because of the presence of fisheries officers. That is why they do the right thing. The bottom line is this is going to have less on-water hours for those people who are protecting our fisheries. If you want to boost your input into the top-end crime element, do that, but do not reduce the fisheries officers.

We are also told on the Victorian Fisheries Authority website that fisheries officers also enforce laws pertaining to littering, boating safety, wildlife protections, appropriate campfire use – they do a whole lot of things. But there is silence on who is going to take up the slack here, because we have had a reduction in our parks office in East Gippsland as well. This is largely a money-saving exercise trying to be dressed up as something good, and I would urge the minister and fisheries to have a look at this, because there are unique geographical circumstances that apply in East Gippsland where we need workers having the flexibility to be able to operate two up at very short notice.

We accept that there are changes coming, but we need reconsideration of some of these elements. The fisheries officers cannot be restricted in the work that they do, having to wait for someone to drive 2, 2½ hours in the hope that they are available to be able to work two up on what is t basically their bread-and-butter roles in the community.

We are having these cutbacks to fisheries officers while we are handing out free fishing rods to schoolchildren. That is good; that is important. But these positions in our local communities are a far more important priority, and we should not be handing out free fishing rods to every student while we are cutting back on fisheries officers. So I urge both the minister and fisheries Victoria to revisit this structure to allow our officers the flexibility they need to do their job properly, and that is probably going to be three fisheries officers in each of those two locations. Please consider the unique geographical challenges that a location like East Gippsland presents and allow these people to do their job properly in our community.