Trust hard to come by as WA's demersal fishing ban faces scrutiny
By Saghir Hussain ·
The West Australian government has lost the plot on demersal fishing — and British consumers are the ones who'll pay for it.
Three days of parliamentary hearings in Perth this week laid bare what the fishing fleets have been screaming for years: the science behind the blanket ban on catching dhufish, pink snapper and baldchin groper is shaky at best, political at worst. The McGowan government slammed the door shut on the metropolitan and mid-west zones in 2023, promising a recovery by 2030. Now their own scientists can't agree on whether the stocks are actually rebuilding, or whether the closure just pushed effort into other zones and called it success.
The trust deficit is earned
This isn't about conservation versus catch. It's about a government that treated stakeholders like obstacles rather than partners. Commercial operators, charter skippers, tackle shops — the backbone of coastal economies from Kalbarri to Mandurah — were handed a closure with no transition plan, no compensation, and a "trust us" that's worn thinner than a worn-out trawl net.
Sound familiar? It should. UK fishing communities from Grimsby to Peterhead have watched the same playbook: top-down quotas, marine protected areas drawn on Whitehall maps by people who've never hauled a pot, and "consultations" that conclude before the first boat leaves harbour. When trust evaporates, compliance follows. The black market for West Australian demersals is already thriving. Prohibition doesn't work for fish any better than it did for gin.
Your Friday night takeaway just got pricier
Here's where it hits British households. Australia exports over £200m of seafood to the UK annually. Demersal species — particularly frozen fillets bound for food service — feed the pub chains, the hospital canteens, the chippies in Wigan and Wolverhampton that keep Friday nights affordable. When supply tightens in WA, the global price lifts. The distributor in Billingsgate passes it to the wholesaler in Manchester, who passes it to the shop in Stoke. You pay the difference at the counter.
Small businesses take the hit first. The independent fishmonger in Leeds can't hedge currency or lock in contracts like the multiples. They absorb the spike or lose the customer. The charter skipper in Exmouth sells his boat. The tackle shop in Geraldton closes. These aren't abstract economic units — they're people who vote, pay tax, and keep high streets alive.
Transparency isn't a slogan
The parliamentary committee heard calls for an independent scientific review, real-time data sharing, and co-management models where fishers help design the rules they live by. Revolutionary? Hardly. Iceland and Norway have done it for decades. Their stocks are healthier, their fleets profitable, their coastal communities viable.
WA's Fisheries Minister says she's "open to dialogue." That's the phrase politicians use when they've run out of road. What the industry needs — what UK policymakers should note — is structural change: statutory science independence, mandatory socio-economic impact assessments before closures, and a legal duty to minimise harm to small-scale operators.
The fish don't care about politics. But the people who catch them, sell them, and eat them damn well should.
If a resource-rich state like Western Australia can't manage a demersal fishery with honesty and rigour, what hope for the shared stocks of the North Sea post-Brexit? The nets are in the water. The clock's ticking. Who's actually steering the boat?