Speaker 1: The whole entrance is covered by a giant octopus. And
Speaker 1: he thought, oh no, this is where the giant octopus
Speaker 1: lives in this hole, and I'm in its way. And
Speaker 1: that he said, the tentacles were enormously long and very powerful,
Speaker 1: and in the end he had to hack his way out.
Speaker 1: They would equip themselves with his boats, so they would
Speaker 1: be using his boat to chase him. So he would
Speaker 1: have to build one that's a bit faster in order
Speaker 1: to stay one step ahead of them. I'm Andrew Rule
Speaker 1: his life and crimes. Recent news that the Victorian state
Speaker 1: government has sacked half of the people who have boots
Speaker 1: on the ground and boats in the water to stop
Speaker 1: poaching of our natural resources. This is very bad news
Speaker 1: for all Victorians. Already it seems that the poaches, the thieves,
Speaker 1: the sneaky people are encroaching on diminishing resources, diminishing fisheries.
Speaker 1: Here are some small stories that tell us about a
Speaker 1: bigger truth. Early morning walkers walking from Point Lonstyle to
Speaker 1: Queenscliff around the bay. There's a path there people often
Speaker 1: go walking early in the morning. Among them asks some
Speaker 1: people who get out before dawn, and those people say
Speaker 1: that sometimes when there are low tides, they notice a
Speaker 1: peculiar thing. They see men coming out of the water
Speaker 1: in wetsuits, with masks on and with often a spear
Speaker 1: gun in one hand and a netting bag under the other.
Speaker 1: They have no doubt that these people are in fact
Speaker 1: swimming across into the nearby marine park, and they also
Speaker 1: have no doubt that they're probably taking abaloni. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I think that is that these people
Speaker 1: never engage with locals who are walking past. When they
Speaker 1: see them, they sprint towards their cars. They leave their
Speaker 1: masks on, and they run towards their cars and jump
Speaker 1: in the cars and drive away in to the dawnlight.
Speaker 1: And this would suggest that they're up to no good.
Speaker 1: Now around the corner in Queenscliff and Saint Leonard's and
Speaker 1: across the bay places like Wherriby, South Williamstown and so on,
Speaker 1: there are boats coming in and they will have their
Speaker 1: bag limit of flathead or whiting or squid, whatever it
Speaker 1: is that's going at that stage. And if there are
Speaker 1: no fisheries offices around, or if they think that there
Speaker 1: will be no fisheries officers around, the chances are that
Speaker 1: some of these people the dishonest ones, the opportunists, the thieves,
Speaker 1: will take a look around, take their bag, limit bag ashore,
Speaker 1: stash it somewhere in an eski or in a friend's
Speaker 1: car or whatever, and then within a little while reappear
Speaker 1: on the water for a fresh lot of fishing. Now
Speaker 1: they might change their jumpers, they might move things around
Speaker 1: a bit, They might go and have a cup of
Speaker 1: coffee and then return. But those people, if they've got
Speaker 1: a chance to get away with it, some of them will,
Speaker 1: and they go out and they get more fish, more squid.
Speaker 1: And some of them, of course, are selling it on
Speaker 1: the black market to restaurants and to fish shops and
Speaker 1: the like for cash, because if they get the opportunity
Speaker 1: to do it, they will do it. This is human nature.
Speaker 1: And the only thing that stands between human nature and
Speaker 1: theft or any other sort of wrongdoing is the law
Speaker 1: and the enforcement of the law. The law doesn't really
Speaker 1: work unless most of us think that it.
Speaker 2: Will be enforced.
Speaker 1: And just as we don't drive through red lights because
Speaker 1: there are cameras there to record the fact and record
Speaker 1: our car registration numbers, people who go fishing, many of
Speaker 1: them obey the laws because they don't want to be
Speaker 1: caught breaking them, and so they don't bring in undersized fish,
Speaker 1: they don't bring in twice the bag limit because they
Speaker 1: don't want to be grabbed for doing it, because if
Speaker 1: you are grabbed, the penalties are quite severe. So if
Speaker 1: the officers aren't around, it's a case of when the
Speaker 1: cat's away, the mice will play. And you can guarantee
Speaker 1: that these people, some of them, if they're not filling
Speaker 1: freezers at the expense of more honest anglers, you can
Speaker 1: bet they're actually selling to restaurants for cash. Now, when
Speaker 1: the government announced that they were going to cut the
Speaker 1: numbers of fisheries officers in half, there was a bureaucrat,
Speaker 1: a dithering bureaucrat, who said a ridiculous thing. He said
Speaker 1: that recreational anglers would regulate themselves. He said something like,
Speaker 1: there's not a big problem, is there, Because if someone
Speaker 1: comes into the boat ramp, you know, boasting that they've
Speaker 1: got three hundred fish, they'll get a punch on the nose,
Speaker 1: won't they. And essentially he's saying that other anglers, other
Speaker 1: fishes should police their fellow anglers, and you inspect their
Speaker 1: catch and if they think they've got too many fish
Speaker 1: punch them on the nose. Now, that is a very
Speaker 1: silly thing, because no one is going to go and
Speaker 1: inspect other people's catch. No one is going to inspect
Speaker 1: the catch of someone who's by definition armed. People who
Speaker 1: go fishing have knives, fishing knives to fill it fish.
Speaker 1: You aren't going to insert yourself into that conversation, particularly
Speaker 1: with the thought of people that you suspect might be
Speaker 1: poaching fish, because by definition they're going to be law
Speaker 1: breakers and nasty pieces of work and possibly threatening and defensive.
Speaker 1: So it's exactly what you would not do. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure that the police would not advocate doing it. And
Speaker 1: why some lunatic bureaucrat would think that was a good
Speaker 1: thing to say, I don't know, but it's certainly not
Speaker 1: sustainable or sensible. If anyone acted on it, it could in
Speaker 1: fact lead to some very ugly scenes, and you know,
Speaker 1: we could end up with cases in court where the
Speaker 1: defense is well, you know, we heard a bureaucrat tell
Speaker 1: us that we should police other fishermen, and I just
Speaker 1: tried to do it, and you know, then he tried
Speaker 1: to stab me and then I hit him with a boathook.
Speaker 1: It's not going to wash. It's not going to go
Speaker 1: well in court. So I think the idea of vigilantes
Speaker 1: doing it wild West style and starting some fishing war
Speaker 1: is absolutely ridiculous and it distracts us from the realities
Speaker 1: of this situation. It's hard to believe that government bean
Speaker 1: counters would actually believe their own propaganda. The evidence is
Speaker 1: that abaloni and other marine life are under attack, and
Speaker 1: that's there for anyone to see. That's an uncomfortable fact
Speaker 1: for the state government. And the reality is if you
Speaker 1: cut the fish officers numbers in half, this can only
Speaker 1: get worse. Now every other abaloney fishery in the world,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking from South Africa to northern California to
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia has collapsed from overfishing and from poaching that
Speaker 1: ultimately escalated, particularly in South Africa, into pillaging. They just
Speaker 1: raped and pillaged all the reefs until the reefs were
Speaker 1: bare of abalone, all shell fish. And once that happens,
Speaker 1: there is no breeding stock at all. It cannot breed
Speaker 1: up again. It cannot replace itself because all the breeding
Speaker 1: stock is gone. The only way to replenish it would
Speaker 1: be to introduce stock from somewhere else and try and
Speaker 1: graft it onto.
Speaker 2: Those reefs, which is.
Speaker 1: Probably not going to happen, so once gone, it's gone
Speaker 1: for life.
Speaker 2: Really pretty well.
Speaker 1: Now at this point in Victoria's history, it would seem
Speaker 1: that our abalone industry, and that's what it is, is
Speaker 1: teetering between poaching which has gone on for decades, some
Speaker 1: sort of poaching, and the sort of free range pillaging
Speaker 1: that could destroy it.
Speaker 2: We're probably at.
Speaker 1: A tipping point in our history, and there's a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons for that. The thing that's tipping us over
Speaker 1: the edge is this willingness for the government to run
Speaker 1: the risk of not policing it properly. The signs that
Speaker 1: this is happening increasingly are all around us now. One
Speaker 1: of my colleagues here at the Herald's son is a surfer,
Speaker 1: and he tells me that he and his friends, and
Speaker 1: he and his son, they go surfing in remote, out
Speaker 1: of the way spots. One of the remote spots they
Speaker 1: go to is a way around the coast on South Gippsland,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to get to this particular place, as
Speaker 1: he says, one hundred meter cliff and to get down
Speaker 1: to the waves below at this very dangerous stretch of
Speaker 1: water which can have good waves, which so it attracts
Speaker 1: some surface not many. He said, You've got to slip
Speaker 1: and slide down this very rough, dangerous track, down down
Speaker 1: down through the rocky slopes and the shale and the
Speaker 1: bush that sticks into you and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: And when you get down to the bottom, if the
Speaker 1: conditions are suitable, you can get a good surf there.
Speaker 1: But not a lot of people do this because you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to climb back out again and so on.
Speaker 1: And he said, the fascinating thing about this place, though,
Speaker 1: is that around out of sight, pretty well out of sight,
Speaker 1: there's a little hut being built of driftwood and crap.
Speaker 1: Is the way this gorib driftwood and crap. So it's
Speaker 1: a bit of brush and a bit of a few
Speaker 1: rocks and driftwood, and this little shelter, crude little shelter
Speaker 1: sort of blends into the environment. It's hard to see.
Speaker 1: And inside it, he says, is a sauceman sitting over
Speaker 1: a little campfire, and a few odds and means that
Speaker 1: would indicate that somebody camps in that hut for several
Speaker 1: hours and or overnight. And he said clearly what it
Speaker 1: is is ab poaches. They're they're waiting for the tides
Speaker 1: to turn from one tide to the next so that
Speaker 1: they can go out duck diving for abs, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe one hundred meters out or whatever it is. Because
Speaker 1: because it's such a dangerous stretch of water and so inaccessible,
Speaker 1: the abs there have had a chance to breed up,
Speaker 1: and so it's a relatively rich reef for these poaches
Speaker 1: to pillage. And he said, clearly that's what they're up to,
Speaker 1: and he said the last thing he would want to
Speaker 1: do would be to catch them at it, or to
Speaker 1: try and discourage them from doing it, because they will
Speaker 1: be armed with knives. And there's two things about ab poaches.
Speaker 1: One is they want to avoid the attention of witnesses,
Speaker 1: and if they can't do that, the other thing they
Speaker 1: might want to do is to intimidate witnesses. Now, these
Speaker 1: ab poaches, they're in a dangerous game. I've took to
Speaker 1: some of these poaches over the years that they're sort
Speaker 1: of highly organized, quite professional poaches. One of them, a
Speaker 1: fellow in Tasmania, told me that the scariest thing that
Speaker 1: ever happened to him was that he was underwater, and
Speaker 1: he went into like a cave thing, a hole in
Speaker 1: the rock underwater, and it was full of big fat
Speaker 1: abaloni and he thought, how good's this. And he's in
Speaker 1: there with his ab knife they call it. It's like
Speaker 1: a long squared lever knife. And he's leaving abs off
Speaker 1: and jamming him into his net bag and counting each
Speaker 1: one's a fifty dollar note or whatever it is. And
Speaker 1: suddenly he senses that it's gone darker, the water's darker,
Speaker 1: and something brushes against him. He turns around and the
Speaker 1: entrance to this hole. He's just in a hole. It's
Speaker 1: only you know, big enough for him to get into.
Speaker 1: It's only maybe a meat up high and a meter wide.
Speaker 1: The whole entrance is covered by a giant octopus. And
Speaker 1: he thought, oh no, this is where the giant octopus
Speaker 1: lives in this hole, and I'm in its way. And
Speaker 1: he was terrified. He said it was worse than being
Speaker 1: near a shark. And he said the tentacles were enormously
Speaker 1: long and very powerful, and in the end he had
Speaker 1: to hack his way out using his knife. He had
Speaker 1: to cut one of the tentacles to get past this
Speaker 1: giant octopus. And I found that to be the most
Speaker 1: not merish scenario you could think of. And he told
Speaker 1: me other stories about his adventures as an abaloni diver.
Speaker 1: I think early doors he might have been a legal
Speaker 1: abalone diver, and then at some point he had a
Speaker 1: disagreement with the authorities and he kept doing it without
Speaker 1: a license, and someone but he and another guy who
Speaker 1: was a big diver in Tasmania, they loaded a real
Speaker 1: small boat speedboat overloaded. He said, we had far too many.
Speaker 1: We'd run across a big reef and we've got a
Speaker 1: heap of abaloni and we were well down in the
Speaker 1: water because of the weight of them. And we're speeding
Speaker 1: back towards the.
Speaker 2: I think it's up.
Speaker 1: And he's strawn up on that northwest coast of Tasmania
Speaker 1: and it's very lonely and there's not many people around,
Speaker 1: and the weather's tough and the water is tough, he said,
Speaker 1: we're speeding back and it's relatively dark, I think, and
Speaker 1: they hit a thing called I think it's called the
Speaker 1: needle or the pinnacle or something. It comes out of
Speaker 1: the water a piece of rock and they've hit it
Speaker 1: and they've smashed their boat into a thousand pieces and
Speaker 1: he said they were both plunged deep into the water.
Speaker 2: Both these divers.
Speaker 1: Their boat's gone, it's finished, and there's all this wreckage
Speaker 1: around them. He said, we both went down, down, down,
Speaker 1: And he said that he can measure how deep you're
Speaker 1: going because he's a diver by the darkness of the water.
Speaker 1: And he said it, you know, twenty feet it's this color,
Speaker 1: and thirty feet it's darker.
Speaker 2: And so on.
Speaker 1: He said, we both ended up down so deep in
Speaker 1: this black water and at the limit of our lungs.
Speaker 1: They were down there for minutes, like two or three
Speaker 1: minutes or more, and they were good divers who could
Speaker 1: take a big breath. And he said, if we hadn't
Speaker 1: had on our fins or flippers, if we had not
Speaker 1: had our buoyant flippers on, we.
Speaker 2: Probably both would have died.
Speaker 1: Because he said, we had our boyant flippers on and
Speaker 1: that helped lift us to the surface in time, and
Speaker 1: then helped us to stay afloat to get into shore.
Speaker 1: And the shore was a long long way, and he said,
Speaker 1: we swam around there and we found floating on the
Speaker 1: water some remnants of the boat, and one bit of
Speaker 1: it was a foam bench seat from the boat, you know,
Speaker 1: just like a cushion, and it was all smashed up.
Speaker 1: But they were abled us, i think, sort of tear
Speaker 1: it in half, and they had a bit each or
Speaker 1: something and they used those to kick their way into shore.
Speaker 1: It was miles they had to go miles, and they
Speaker 1: were scared, and they were cold, and they were hungry.
Speaker 1: It was all bad. And he said, ultimately we got
Speaker 1: in and we were washed onto this empty beach, and
Speaker 1: we were so exhausted that we both just lay on
Speaker 1: the sand and we actually fell into this sort of
Speaker 1: deep sleep. And he said we were woken by cattle
Speaker 1: walking up to somebody's cows that was wandering up and
Speaker 1: down the coast as they might in Tasmania. And he said,
Speaker 1: these cows came up and were sort of rubbing their
Speaker 1: noses on us to see what we were, to see
Speaker 1: if they were edible, these strange black things lying on
Speaker 1: the beach. And it was the two ab divers, and
Speaker 1: he said that was the most astonishing adventure to s
Speaker 1: And those are the sort of stories that these ab
Speaker 1: poaches will tell you if they've been out in Bass
Speaker 1: Strait doing this stuff for a number of years. Of course,
Speaker 1: one of the most famous of them. He's a fellow
Speaker 1: called cam Strawn, and cam Strawn briefly is probably the
Speaker 1: most notorious ab poacher in the English speaking world. He,
Speaker 1: like the late Barry Humphreys, is a graduate of Melbourne
Speaker 1: Grammar School. He could be Melbourn Grammar School's greatest ever villain.
Speaker 1: And his father was a spitfire pilot in World War
Speaker 1: Two who later had a big boat that he used
Speaker 1: to drive around between Victoria and Tasmania. His father used
Speaker 1: to dive for abaloni. He was a very fearless man
Speaker 1: because he'd flown spitfires in the war and didn't really
Speaker 1: care much about the law or protocol or anything else.
Speaker 1: And Cam young Cam learned to poach abaloney at his
Speaker 1: father's knee, and Cam became an abalone poacher diver, and
Speaker 1: he became an expert boat builder. He would build beautiful hulls,
Speaker 1: these long, thin like semi racing holes that were fast
Speaker 1: boats but also seaworthy, and people prize them very highly.
Speaker 1: And among the people that prized them highly, it's the
Speaker 1: Tasmanian water Police, because they've arrested cam Strawn so many
Speaker 1: times that they would confiscate his boats from him, which
Speaker 1: they can under the law, and they would equip themselves
Speaker 1: with his boats, so that next time they chased him,
Speaker 1: they would be using his boat to chase him. So
Speaker 1: he would have to build one that's a bit faster
Speaker 1: and a bit bigger motor in order to stay one
Speaker 1: step ahead of them. And in fact, there was one
Speaker 1: notorious chase across bas Strait which is known as the
Speaker 1: Big Chase, where they had police helicopters, boats, they had
Speaker 1: I think a navy boat or something, and they're all
Speaker 1: chasing cam Strawn. And somebody said later, well, you can't
Speaker 1: really admire him, but that is the finest feat of
Speaker 1: seamanship I've ever seen him, staying ahead of us and
Speaker 1: racing through those sort of seas in that sort of boat.
Speaker 1: It's just astonishing. What's the point of telling us about
Speaker 1: camp cam Strawn has brought up teens of thousands of
Speaker 1: abalone over decades. He sold those four millions of dollars
Speaker 1: on the black market. Mostly he was out deep in
Speaker 1: Bastrada around little islands and things that you know, they're
Speaker 1: out beyond Flinder's Island, beyond King Island and so on.
Speaker 1: So he wasn't denuding the Victorian shoreline per se, there
Speaker 1: is that about it. However, he was breaking the law,
Speaker 1: and he used to break the law a lot, and
Speaker 1: in fact he was arrested I think ninety nine times,
Speaker 1: and apart from having all his geared confiscated and paying
Speaker 1: massive fines, he did end up going to jail.
Speaker 2: He was in.
Speaker 1: Jail in Victoria, at the Fulham Jail near Sale at
Speaker 1: the same time as our old friend the late Andrew Fraser,
Speaker 1: who used to call him the Captain. Cam Strawn in
Speaker 1: jail was known as the Captain because he was the boatman.
Speaker 1: Cam Strawn, without doubt was present at the death of
Speaker 1: one of his young deckhands. This young man died of
Speaker 1: a brain hemorrhage. Now this is probably caused by coming
Speaker 1: up too fast from deep water, because these guys dive
Speaker 1: with heavy stuff on, so they go down to depth
Speaker 1: and they have these air pumps with lines all the
Speaker 1: way down so they can breathe down deep and if
Speaker 1: they're young and inexperienced, sometimes they come up too fast
Speaker 1: and this young bloke had done this. He had a
Speaker 1: brain hemorrhage and he died and cam brought him into
Speaker 1: Port welsh Pool, which is South Gippsland, and he was
Speaker 1: frightened that he would be pulled up by the police
Speaker 1: and that he'd be charged with manslaughter for this young
Speaker 1: fellow being dead. And he put him in the boat
Speaker 1: on the tiler, the boats on the boat trailer, put
Speaker 1: him on the boat and covered the boat over and
Speaker 1: then he drove to a hospital in South Gippsland, like
Speaker 1: curram Borough or land Gath at one of those places,
Speaker 1: and produced this young bloke. And there was no hope
Speaker 1: for him. Of course, he was dead on arrival. But
Speaker 1: that is the sort of risk that the poaches will take.
Speaker 1: One of the officers I've spoken to in the past
Speaker 1: he had personally saved poaches who were poaching in you know,
Speaker 1: relatively close to shore, get into trouble with the ocean
Speaker 1: and waves and so on. Each swum out and saved
Speaker 1: more than one person. The poaches had rammed a boat
Speaker 1: a little bit like that Tasmanian story.
Speaker 2: I just said.
Speaker 1: A couple of them hit the Pope's Eye. I think
Speaker 1: it's called out near the rip near the heads of
Speaker 1: Port Philip Bay. They hit it at full speed and
Speaker 1: I think it crippled one of them. It could have
Speaker 1: killed them, and I think one ended up very badly hurt.
Speaker 1: This is the danger those guys face. And they do
Speaker 1: it for agreed and they do it for money. But
Speaker 1: it also tells you that if they're willing to take
Speaker 1: those risks personally, some of them are going to be
Speaker 1: willing to hurt other people as well, because they won't
Speaker 1: want to be caught, they won't want to be locked up,
Speaker 1: they won't want to lose their boats or their income.
Speaker 1: And so this whole black market poaching business is bad
Speaker 1: for everyone because it creates a class of criminal and.
Speaker 2: It is directly.
Speaker 1: Similar to the growth of the tobacco trade. The government
Speaker 1: imposes big excise taxes on tobacco products. Therefore the prices
Speaker 1: go up in the legitimate market. Therefore there's a chance
Speaker 1: for organized crime. So because the government intervention, tobacco prices rise,
Speaker 1: and it creates a whole class of criminal who then
Speaker 1: starts up these cheap tobacco shops. And then they start
Speaker 1: standing over each other, and then they start fire bombing
Speaker 1: each other, and ultimately we've got a situation where innocent
Speaker 1: people are already being hurt by these fire bombings. We've
Speaker 1: had a situation where firebombers are paid to go and
Speaker 1: burn places down. And just recently this year we've had
Speaker 1: a young woman burnt to death in the inner Western
Speaker 1: suburbs for no good reason at all, only because fire
Speaker 1: bombers were sent to burn down X house, they got
Speaker 1: the wrong house and they burnt to death an innocent
Speaker 1: young woman. This is a class of crime and of
Speaker 1: criminal that the government has created through badly thought out policies.
Speaker 1: And the point of that is that the government, through
Speaker 1: a sin of omission, has effectively given crooks permission to
Speaker 1: go out and to go out and poach abalone, all.
Speaker 2: The other shellfish species that.
Speaker 1: They can find a market for and fish because it
Speaker 1: is not enough officers to police it. That is what's
Speaker 1: going to happen, and the result will inevitably be a
Speaker 1: new class of krim. They will flock to it, and
Speaker 1: they already are. We've got Biki gangs involved in it.
Speaker 1: We've already got a scenario on the south coast of
Speaker 1: New South Wales and we've mentioned that on this podcast before,
Speaker 1: where there's at least a two hundred kilometers of New
Speaker 1: South Wales coastline from just south of Sydney right down
Speaker 1: towards the Victorian border. That is denuded of shellfish of abalone. Specifically,
Speaker 1: there are whole reefs that are now bare because the
Speaker 1: poaches have been allowed to just pillage it and to
Speaker 1: take undersigh abaloni. Abaloni needs about seven years to grow
Speaker 1: to a stage where it's big enough to reproduce. Now,
Speaker 1: if you let it do that, it will reproduce. And
Speaker 1: if you only take one in ten of the adult
Speaker 1: size abalone, it's not a problem. They will reproduce ad
Speaker 1: nauseum forever. It's not a problem. If it took two
Speaker 1: of the adults out of ten, maybe you'd start to
Speaker 1: cramp its style a little bit. If you take more
Speaker 1: than that, you know it's a diminishing return. If you
Speaker 1: take everything, including the young ones, you will wipe it
Speaker 1: out in a matter of a few seasons. It'll just
Speaker 1: be gone. Because if you take all the little ones,
Speaker 1: they don't grow into big ones and they don't reproduce,
Speaker 1: and that is the end of that. And the problem
Speaker 1: with this mob out of the south coast of New
Speaker 1: South Wales is they call them the Mogo mob. They
Speaker 1: are spreading further and further down the coast into Victoria
Speaker 1: and in January this year, this is six months ago
Speaker 1: when we still had enough fisheries offices in Victoria to
Speaker 1: police the place they caught the mogo mob at wing
Speaker 1: and Inlet. Now wing and Inlet is much towards Melbourne
Speaker 1: from Malicuta, so it's well into the Victorian waters. WinGen
Speaker 1: Inlet is roughly between Malicuta and all Boss, let's say.
Speaker 1: And the authorities discovered this mob. They had hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of abloni, many of them under sized, and this
Speaker 1: mob have moved down out of New South Wales into
Speaker 1: Victorian waters because there's still some wild abalone in Victorian waters,
Speaker 1: because our fisheries and our police have gone to some
Speaker 1: lengths to protect our waters from poaching, but now it
Speaker 1: doesn't look as if that's going to happen. So now
Speaker 1: the go mob out of southern New South Wales from
Speaker 1: around Bateman's Bay, but they spread it north and south.
Speaker 1: They will probably have open slather and they don't get
Speaker 1: prosecuted effectively in the courts of New South Wales because
Speaker 1: they claim that it's an indigenous.
Speaker 2: Right to cultural fishing.
Speaker 1: The fact that they're taking undersized abaloni doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: worry them or worry the judiciary doesn't seem to worry
Speaker 1: the magistrates either, but it will destroy the fishery in
Speaker 1: a matter of a handful of years. And meanwhile, and
Speaker 1: he's no doubt about this, they are selling to organized
Speaker 1: crime groups, many of them Asian triad groups, who take
Speaker 1: that abalone, dry it in illegal illicit factories and sheds,
Speaker 1: and they send it off shore, exported offshore, which is
Speaker 1: apparently relatively easy to do because of a glitch in
Speaker 1: export rules, and they are able to swap that for
Speaker 1: other contraband that comes in, such as drugs. So isn't
Speaker 1: that a good idea? Our government wipes out fisheries officers
Speaker 1: and that promotes poaching, and that promotes extinction, and it
Speaker 1: also before the extinction, will promote the importation of more
Speaker 1: drugs that do more damage to the very communities that
Speaker 1: say they want the right to take all the abaloney
Speaker 1: that they can get. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes
Speaker 1: is a Sunday Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more,
Speaker 1: go to Heraldsun dot com dot au, forward slash andrew
Speaker 1: rule one word.
Speaker 2: For advertising inquiries, go to news.
Speaker 1: Podcasts sold at news dot com, dot com you that
Speaker 1: is all one word news.
Speaker 2: Podcasts sold And if
Speaker 1: You want further information about this episode, links are in
Speaker 1: the description.