Rebuilding Capacity in Fisheries Management: From Process to Purpose

Over the past decades, I have witnessed a gradual but significant decline in the capacity of public institutions — particularly in complex, high-responsibility areas such as fisheries management and environmental policy.

Departments were built on a foundation of internal expertise. They employed in-house economists, legal advisers, and policy professionals who not only understood the legislation, but who could apply frameworks like Rights-based Management, Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD), and Harvest Strategies in real-world contexts.

These were not just theoretical tools — they shaped decisions, trade-offs, and outcomes. Today, however, many of these roles have been replaced by layers of administration and project management, while core advice is increasingly outsourced. Including large consulting firms for economic and strategic input and to well-funded NGOs on sustainability and even community sentiment.

A Deeper Problem: The Loss of First Principles

It’s not just about who is advising — it’s about how policy is being reviewed and reinterpreted. Successive reforms and policy reviews, often intended to simplify and modernise, have stripped away the detail and clarity needed to uphold first principles.

This trend has led to the erosion of institutional knowledge. For example, Australia once claimed — and earned — a position of global leadership in fisheries management through robust rights-based systems, harvest strategies, and negotiated jurisdictional frameworks under the Offshore Constitutional Settlement (OCS). These agreements provided a structured, whole-of-resource approach to shared management between the Commonwealth and states — covering all species and fisheries through coordinated, principled negotiation.

From Coherent Systems to Fragmented Decisions

Today, that clarity has been replaced with fragmented processes. Instead of coordinated agreements, we now see fishery-by-fishery decisions made in isolation — without consistent principles or long-term strategy. The comprehensive intent of the OCS has been diluted, and with it, the ability to manage shared resources coherently.

Multi-sectoral collaboration has been replaced by consultation theatre, and frameworks like the EPBC Act — once valued for their role in balancing environmental and development priorities — are increasingly used as tools of political or sectoral influence, rather than instruments of principled governance.

OCS negotiations, which were once focused on effective and efficient management, now primarily concern who gets to manage what. Far from the interconnected, comprehensive agreements developed in the 1990s, we now negotiate fishery by fishery — often without knowledge of the principles or the guidelines that were designed to guide these processes.

Harvest Strategies — once the temperature control and engine management systems of our fisheries are morphing into broad, unfocused plans that try to do everything but risk delivering little. With each technical revision, their practical usefulness diminishes.

Australia once stood tall in rights-based fisheries management — hosting a world conference in 1999. Today, no one in the fishing industry feels their access rights are secure. First principles like efficiency and optimal resource allocation are all but forgotten.

We now see decisions on allocation driven by consumption value in recreational fishing, outweighing the production value of commercial fishing. And then we wonder why rural coastal communities decline.

This Is Not About Big or Small Government — It’s About Capable Government

We’ve seen enough of the so-called “efficiency reforms” that simply cut resources and rebrand reduction as improvement.  If ability and effectiveness are defined by size, then I’ll take a big, capable government over a hollow one — every time.

Because public trust doesn’t come from smaller government. It comes from better government — informed, equipped, and willing to act.

Step One: Rebuild Internal Capacity

🔹 Avoid more technical fixes and return to a shared understanding of goals and purpose — capability is not built through compliance checklists, but through a collective commitment to the purpose of public resource management and the principles behind it. This is not nostalgia for the past, but a call to return to a sense of vision and purpose that we can build toward.

🔹 Audit capability to identify where technical knowledge and decision-making memory have been lost.

🔹 Restore key frameworks like Rights-based Management, ESD, and Harvest Strategies — not just in documentation, but in daily practice. Australia once led the world, yet we've allowed those systems to atrophy. We had foundational policies and clear direction — tested through legal challenge and refined through real-world application — and now that legacy is slipping away.

🔹 Protect and value long-term staff who still carry the knowledge and the integrity of how the system was designed to work

And Here’s the Most Important Truth:

Once we restore real capability and direction, efficiency follows — in size and in impact.

Because when the government knows what it’s doing (and is allowed to do its job):

• Decisions are faster
• Processes are leaner
• Outcomes are stronger
• And public confidence returns

This isn’t theory. It’s what happens when we stop outsourcing responsibility and start reinvesting in good, capable government.

So here’s the conversation starter: How do we rebuild a shared sense of purpose, and reconnect Australians with the value of good public institutions?

Time to revisit our "WHY" and a shared management framework — built on providing sustainable Australian Seafood, a dynamic and innovative industry, trust, and pride in what we do.