Speaker 1: So Mike, to start with, can you tell me what
Speaker 1: the locals in southeast Tasmania discovered recently?
Speaker 2: Well, it was about nine p thirty on Sunday morning,
Speaker 2: a little over two weeks ago when Jess Coglin, who's
Speaker 2: a campaigner with Neighbors of Fish Farming or NOF, she
Speaker 2: got a phone call and it was a local calling
Speaker 2: her to say that thousands of these oily, stinky globs
Speaker 2: had washed up on for Ona Sands Beach, which is
Speaker 2: about sixty kilometers south of Hobart. The caller suspected it
Speaker 2: was fish food from one of the salmon farming pens
Speaker 2: in the area. You know, there are scores of them,
Speaker 2: and he said that his dogs as well as flocks
Speaker 2: of guggles were quote in a frenzy eating it. So anyway,
Speaker 2: Jess grabbed Ajar hastened down to the beach to grab
Speaker 2: a sample and see for herself this massive amount of
Speaker 2: gobs that were scattered along the entire length of the beach.
Speaker 2: And she collected samples, intending to send them off to
Speaker 2: the state's epa inter alia. She rang a contact of
Speaker 2: hers who was a retired diver and he said, break
Speaker 2: open some of the larger clumps, and she did, and
Speaker 2: inside was pink flesh and fish scale. So it wasn't
Speaker 2: just fatty stuff, it was actual chunks of fish.
Speaker 3: She realized pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: I guess that it wasn't fish food, obviously, it was
Speaker 2: dead rotting salmon.
Speaker 1: That's just gross spike.
Speaker 3: Well it is. There were thousands of these things.
Speaker 2: There were small blobs of fatty stuff and there were
Speaker 2: larger chunks that were actual fish flesh.
Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media on Daniel James. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Warmer waters, disease and antibiotics have pushed tasimani As salmon
Speaker 1: farms into crisis. But it's not just an environmental disaster.
Speaker 1: It's a political one. Now, with an election looming, the
Speaker 1: Albaneze government is pouring millions into salmon farming, hoping to
Speaker 1: save jobs and votes in the process, even as rotting
Speaker 1: fish littered the shore. Today National correspondent for the Saturday paper,
Speaker 1: Mark Second on what is happening in Tasmanian waters and
Speaker 1: why it might impact the upcoming election. It's Monday, March three. Mike,
Speaker 1: You've been looking into the salmon industry in Tasmania and
Speaker 1: how it's likely to impact the upcoming election, So can
Speaker 1: you tell me what you specifically set out to investigate?
Speaker 2: Well, funny story. I actually started to look at the
Speaker 2: Albanesi government's recent announcements of funding to prop up salmon
Speaker 2: farming at Macquarie Harbor on the west coast of Tasmania,
Speaker 2: where Labor is trying to win the seat of Bratton,
Speaker 2: but events very quickly redirected mealswhere down to the southeast
Speaker 2: corner of the state and to the seat of Franklin.
Speaker 2: The southeast of Tasmania produces the bulk of farmed salmon
Speaker 2: in in Tasmania and in the nation. It's a billion
Speaker 2: dollar industry. It produces roughly eight hundred thousand tons of
Speaker 2: fish a year. We hear a lot about Macquarie Harbor
Speaker 2: because of the threat of extinction of the more Gan skate,
Speaker 2: but it only counts for about ten percent of production.
Speaker 2: The southeast has hundreds of pens floating around holding millions
Speaker 2: upon millions of fish. And the seat that I wound
Speaker 2: up being more interested in is the seat of Franklin,
Speaker 2: which is one of the few labor held seats being
Speaker 2: targeted by a climate two hundred in this election. Mostly
Speaker 2: they go after liberal health seats, and Franklin is also
Speaker 2: the only one held by a current cabinet minister, that
Speaker 2: is Julie Collins, the Minister for Agriculture and importantly Fisheries,
Speaker 2: and against her is running a number of candidates, including
Speaker 2: a Green but the interesting one is Peter George. He's
Speaker 2: got a bit of a profile. He's a former senior
Speaker 2: reporter for the ABC. A lot of people would remember
Speaker 2: him from Four Corners and Foreign correspondent. He's also the
Speaker 2: founder of a group called Neighbors of Fish Farming, which
Speaker 2: is a group that's been campaigning against the industrial fish
Speaker 2: farming in Tasmania for about a decade and that's essentially
Speaker 2: what's going to be George's pitch running as an independent
Speaker 2: for this election. That was one of the interesting things
Speaker 2: that shifted my focus. But the bigger one was that
Speaker 2: I started hearing about a bizarre and frankly gross thing
Speaker 2: that was happening on some beaches in the southeast in
Speaker 2: the electorate of Franklin.
Speaker 4: A shoreline discovery causing.
Speaker 2: A stinct There were chunks of what appeared to be
Speaker 2: salmon flesh partially broken down at very very well.
Speaker 1: So it became pretty clear pretty quickly that this was
Speaker 1: dead rotting salmon, So where were these globs coming from?
Speaker 2: They're the result of what happens when salmon die. They
Speaker 2: sink to the bottom of the pens, they rot, and
Speaker 2: then their flesh an oil rise back up to the surface,
Speaker 2: and that appears to be what happened here. As to
Speaker 2: where they came from, Jess Coglan and her other activist
Speaker 2: friends suspected they came from a farm being operated by
Speaker 2: Huon Aquaculture, which is one of the two big producers
Speaker 2: of Atlantic salmon in Australia, and sure enough, later that
Speaker 2: day workers from Huon Aquaculture turned up at the beach
Speaker 2: and began cleaning it up.
Speaker 3: Although she says they didn't actually identify themselves.
Speaker 2: They weren't in uniform or anything, and they wouldn't answer
Speaker 2: any questions that the locals put to them. But it
Speaker 2: wasn't just Forona's hands. Remains continued washing up on other
Speaker 2: beaches too, both on the mainland side of the channel
Speaker 2: and also on Bruney Island, which is just across the
Speaker 2: other side of the channel, and there employees from the
Speaker 2: other big aquaculture company, Tassel, were witnessed cleaning up the mess.
Speaker 1: Right, So there might have been something bigger going on
Speaker 1: here than just an accident one particular seven farm.
Speaker 2: It would appear to be the case, and it would
Speaker 2: appear that it wasn't just fish in one of the
Speaker 2: scores of pens that doted the channel. It was more
Speaker 2: widespread than that. But even before then there were signs
Speaker 2: that something major was going wrong, because a week prior,
Speaker 2: hugh On Agriculture had revealed that it was using antibiotics
Speaker 2: at one of its sites near Bruney Island, and then
Speaker 2: on February fourteen, our Brown Foundation released drone footage of
Speaker 2: hundreds of dead and decomposing fish being vacuum pumped from
Speaker 2: a pen well to the north near the Tasmanian Peninsula.
Speaker 2: By then was pretty obvious that some kind of major
Speaker 2: incident had happened, probably a disease outbreak. But for a week,
Speaker 2: maybe longer, neither the Tasmanian Environmental Protection Agency nor the
Speaker 2: companies involved, you know, provided much in the way of
Speaker 2: detail about what was happening.
Speaker 1: So when did we start getting answers.
Speaker 3: Mike Well, it took a while.
Speaker 2: Under pressure from environmentalists and the media, the Tasmanian EPA
Speaker 2: put out a statement on the Friday after the Sunday
Speaker 2: when the fish started turning up, and it was pretty anodyne, frankly,
Speaker 2: it just said they'd start an investigation into how quote
Speaker 2: a quantity of biological material had washed up at Arana Sands.
Speaker 1: So that's not much of an answer at all.
Speaker 3: No, it's not so.
Speaker 2: I put some questions to the EPA and they provided
Speaker 2: a little more detail. They said that there had been
Speaker 2: unusually worn over recent months, and there had been a
Speaker 2: proliferation of pest species that can irritate salmon gills. But
Speaker 2: the thing that appears to be actually killing the fish
Speaker 2: is something called reck Rickettsia, which is a bacteria. It
Speaker 2: appears to have broken out in one or more pens
Speaker 2: and quickly spread, And according to the EPA, the particular
Speaker 2: strain of this bacteria that's affecting the salmon is endemic
Speaker 2: to Australia, and for that reason they say it's not
Speaker 2: a danger to native species. But opponents of the industry
Speaker 2: aren't so sure about that, whether it is in fact
Speaker 2: an endemic species, and in any case, whether having these
Speaker 2: millions upon millions of salmon there as a sort of
Speaker 2: pull potentially of the bacteria couldn't still lead to deaths
Speaker 2: among native species. The other that they confirmed was that
Speaker 2: the companies were dumping large quantities of dead fish into landfills,
Speaker 2: which is significant because in the usual course of events,
Speaker 2: when there are deaths in the fish pens, the dead
Speaker 2: fish get turned into either pet food or fertilizer. But
Speaker 2: in this case there were clearly too many for that purpose,
Speaker 2: so they had to go to the last resort, which
Speaker 2: was just dumping them.
Speaker 1: What do we know about the scale of his frozen
Speaker 1: die off?
Speaker 3: It's huge.
Speaker 2: The peak body for the Tasmanian salmon industry, which is
Speaker 2: called Salmon Tasmania, I found actually more forthcoming than the EPA.
Speaker 2: I spoke to its CEO, Luke Martin, and he confirmed
Speaker 2: that they were dealing with, and I'm quoting him here,
Speaker 2: unprecedented mortalities in the southeast. He didn't give exact numbers,
Speaker 2: but he did say that the normal, as he put
Speaker 2: at some immortality rate for salmon farms was about five percent.
Speaker 2: Given the scale of production in Tasmania, that equates to
Speaker 2: several thousand tons of dead fish. Activists, not surprisingly, have
Speaker 2: been more keen to hazard estimates of the numbers. The
Speaker 2: Bob Brown Foundation's Alistair Allen, who's not only a campaigner
Speaker 2: for Bob Brown Foundation but also a Greens candidate for
Speaker 2: another seat in Tasmania. He said that industry sources had
Speaker 2: told him that two million fish had died in just
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks. I also spoke to Peter George.
Speaker 2: The boat that his contact worked on had pumped seventy
Speaker 2: tons of dead fish and fish parts and that it
Speaker 2: was just one of thirteen pump boats working in the
Speaker 2: area at the time. So based on those numbers he estimates,
Speaker 2: you know, hundreds of thousands of fish were being removed
Speaker 2: on a daily basis.
Speaker 3: These are astonishing.
Speaker 1: Numbers after the break the political.
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Speaker 1: Mike, this is all happening in the lead up to
Speaker 1: an election, and the Prime Minister Anthony Albanez he visited
Speaker 1: Tasmania to cement his support for the industry, even enjoying
Speaker 1: a plate of grilled salmon at a community barbecue. So
Speaker 1: how is all this playing out politically.
Speaker 2: Well, first observation, exquisitely bad timing on Albanizzi's part. I
Speaker 2: suppose you couldn't foresee that there would be this kind
Speaker 2: of catastrophe in the industry. But you're right it is
Speaker 2: becoming a big political issue in a couple of ways.
Speaker 2: We're talking about two electorates here, quite different electorates. There's Franklin,
Speaker 2: a large progressive cohort there. I think the Greens at
Speaker 2: the last election got fifteen sixteen seventeen percent of the
Speaker 2: vote and Labor holds it by what appears on paper
Speaker 2: to be a reasonably comfortable margin. And of course there
Speaker 2: Peter George is running as a community independent against Julie Collins,
Speaker 2: Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.
Speaker 5: We're getting a two party system that has delivered an
Speaker 5: environmental mess, has delivered us with an environmental crisis, and
Speaker 5: has delivered us a cost of living crisis.
Speaker 2: Peter George could potentially have been a threat to Julie Collins.
Speaker 2: Even before this, the fish started washing up on the beaches,
Speaker 2: one would have to think that his vote probably goes
Speaker 2: up proportionate to the number of fish that turn up
Speaker 2: riding on the beaches. That's the southeast. Then we have
Speaker 2: Bradden up in the Northwest, which is a much more
Speaker 2: conservative seat. It's currently held by a Liberal member, but
Speaker 2: he's retiring at the election and the government is hoping
Speaker 2: they can flip it. They're running a pretty high profile candidate,
Speaker 2: Anne Urkhardt, who's currently a Senator for Tasmania. She's hoping
Speaker 2: she can make the shift to the lower House. And
Speaker 2: of course Albanezi was in Bradden tucking into the salmon
Speaker 2: and potatoes even as the fish were turning up dead
Speaker 2: on the beaches. In the Southeast, he was announcing a
Speaker 2: further two point nine million dollars in funding for a
Speaker 2: captive breeding program for the more Ga skate, which is
Speaker 2: in danger of extinction. And of course one of the
Speaker 2: key reasons why the more g and skate is endangered
Speaker 2: is because of salmon farming in Macrori Harbor. Essentially, there
Speaker 2: were two principal problems affecting the skate. One was low
Speaker 2: oxygen levels and the other was large quantities of fish pooh,
Speaker 2: which both affect the skates which feed at the bottom
Speaker 2: of the harbor. So the government has been spending money
Speaker 2: not only on this captive breeding program, but also on
Speaker 2: technology that pumps what they call microbottles into the water
Speaker 2: to try and lift the oxygen levels. And in total,
Speaker 2: so far this support has cost thirty seven million dollars.
Speaker 2: And to be fair, there's some evidence that there's been
Speaker 2: a bit of success. A recent study found that oxygen
Speaker 2: levels had increased and that the skate population had stabilized,
Speaker 2: although still at pretty low numbers. But anyway, Albanizi was
Speaker 2: down there and he was portraying the thing as a
Speaker 2: win win situation. The skate was being protected, as were
Speaker 2: local jobs in the industry.
Speaker 1: The Commonwealth money subsidizing this industry. So how many jobs
Speaker 1: are we talking about here.
Speaker 2: Mike, Not a lot, About seventy If you want to
Speaker 2: divide the amount of money the government's kicked in by
Speaker 2: the number of employees, that's roughly half a million dollars
Speaker 2: per employee. So anyway, I spoke to Andrew Wilke. He
Speaker 2: represents another seat in Tasmania, the seat of Clark. He
Speaker 2: makes the point that Macquarie Harbor, where Escape lives only,
Speaker 2: it counts for about ten percent of Tasmanis salmon production,
Speaker 2: five percent of the jobs. He sees what Albanize he's
Speaker 2: doing as purely an exercise in shoring up Labour's hopes
Speaker 2: of winning the seat.
Speaker 1: So there's a calculation here that if the Albanezy government
Speaker 1: is wanting to win seats in Tasmania, they need to
Speaker 1: appease this industry. But do you think it will pay off,
Speaker 1: particularly when people are seeing these images of rotten fish
Speaker 1: washing up on beaches everywhere.
Speaker 2: Well, the government is certainly making the political calculation here
Speaker 2: that there's a seat to be picked up in the
Speaker 2: northwest of Tasmania, but it could potentially cost them the
Speaker 2: seed of Franklin. When I asked ull Collins office for
Speaker 2: a comment about the outbreak about this crisis unfolding in
Speaker 2: her electorate in the salmon industry, a spokesperson declined to
Speaker 2: talk about it. The only thing they would say was
Speaker 2: they stressed that salmon farming is regulated by the Tasmanian
Speaker 2: State government. One might have thought that as the local member.
Speaker 2: If not as Fisheries Minister Collins would take an interest,
Speaker 2: but apparently not. There is a bigger picture here too,
Speaker 2: I think a global picture, and that is that around
Speaker 2: the world we see offshore salmon farming starting to look
Speaker 2: like a sunset industry. You know, across the world, from
Speaker 2: Chile to Scotland, they've experienced big, big disease outbreaks. In
Speaker 2: the United States, Washington State has just banned salmon farms
Speaker 2: because of the environmental damage they do. And all around
Speaker 2: the world there's money going into actual onshore fish farming,
Speaker 2: you know, which can be done and apparently billions of
Speaker 2: dollars of being spent on it, and that avoids a
Speaker 2: lot of the environmental damage that is done by offshore farming. Frankly,
Speaker 2: it's particularly dirty industry, huge amounts of fish poo apart
Speaker 2: from anything else, and I think it may be losing
Speaker 2: its social license.
Speaker 1: Mike, I hope we haven't put too many people off
Speaker 1: their breakfast.
Speaker 6: Thanks for your time, Thanks mate, cheers.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, an extra fifty billing urgent
Speaker 1: care clinics will be in operation by mid twenty twenty
Speaker 1: six if Labour wins reelection. The government has announced. The
Speaker 1: plan will cost six hundred and forty four million dollars
Speaker 1: and deliver extra clinics in every state and territory, with
Speaker 1: eighty percent of Australians being able to access one within
Speaker 1: a twenty minute drive. At the last election, Laborer announced
Speaker 1: fifty new urgent care clinics, but went on to open
Speaker 1: eighty seven at this term of government, and Britain will
Speaker 1: lend Ukraine four point five billion dollars to spend on
Speaker 1: military procurement, with the money coming from the profits of
Speaker 1: frozen Russian assets. British primary to Kirs Starman met with
Speaker 1: Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski over the weekend to design the
Speaker 1: deal and emphasize his country's ongoing support for Ukraine. The
Speaker 1: show of support comes after an explosive meeting at the
Speaker 1: White House on Friday where US President Trump and Vice
Speaker 1: President j d Vance accuse the Ukrainian president of not
Speaker 1: being grateful for their support. We'll have a full breakdown
Speaker 1: of that meeting and the implications for the war in
Speaker 1: Ukraine on seven AM tomorrow. I'm Daniel James. This is
Speaker 1: seven am. Thanks for listening.