The Department of Primary Industries, which employs NSW Fisheries Officers, has just lost its fight to force these Champions of the State back into risky situations at work. On 4 November, the Industrial Relations Commission’s (IRC) Commissioner McDonald refused to rule that Fisheries Officers cease their work bans, and instead agreed with the PSA that the Department needs to act on the recommendations made by the union to ensure the safety of their members.

In September this year the PSA directed Fisheries Officers who are PSA members to cease night inspections of estuary and offshore trawlers, estuary and ocean hauling, and inland commercial fishing operations, unless police are directly assisting them. The reason for this action is the increasingly dangerous situations Fisheries members have been facing for some time now.

Where their counterparts in Queensland and Victoria have had their powers and protections increase in line with the risks inherit in the job, NSW Department of Primary Industries has stymied its Fisheries Officers’ ability to carry out their duties in a safe manner.

“Over the past decade, more than a dozen officers have been threatened with being shot, stabbed, or faced significant threats of violence,” said PSA Assistant General Secretary Troy Wright. “Earlier this year an officer was threatened with a wooden club, and then chased through a town on the NSW South Coast in his car. The accused person is currently before the courts charged with 13 offences.

“This is the stuff of gangster movies.”

This is because gangsters have moved into the seafood trade. Organised crime has come to the shores and wetlands of NSW, driven by the high prices of abalone, rock lobster, and other species.

Abalone Association NSW co-chair, Stephen Bunney has stated: “Last year, it was over 50 tonnes of illegal catch in NSW, so that’s serious organised crime. You’re looking at over $15 million of product.”

“What our members in Fisheries need is serious personal protection, and serious powers of surveillance and data access to cope with the seriousness of illegal activity,” said Mr Wright. “Officers are demanding protective equipment like stab-proof vests, capsicum spray; and the same powers as Fisheries Officers in other states to check boat and car registrations, conduct surveillance, undertake investigations, and real time GPS tracking of the commercial fishing fleet.”

The PSA is demanding the introduction of a ‘fit and proper person’ test for commercial fishing licence holders and their crews. In Victorian and Queensland if people have a prior history of crimes against the environment, or violent crimes they won’t get a licence.

“It may sound like a long list; however, without these demands being met, not only are endangered species going to go extinct in a short period, but Fisheries Officers are going to get severely injured or even killed. We are just lucky these things haven’t occurred yet,” said Mr Wright.

“Fisheries Officers have no powers of investigation, they can’t even use binoculars or a camera, in other states they can apply to a magistrate to put a tracking device on a boat, here we can’t do that. Why? We know drug traffickers have infiltrated the commercial industry.

“Miles off the coast, in the dead of night, we need to board boats. But, unlike other states, we don’t have a Global Positioning System vessel monitoring system for our commercial fishing fleet. One day Fisheries Officers will board a boat and they’ll get killed. This is why the NSW fishing fleet is so appealing to drug traffickers for collecting cocaine shipments.

“In 2020 a fishing trawler called Coralynne was caught carrying 1.8 tonnes or $850 million worth of cocaine it had picked up from a larger ship in international waters, if Fisheries Officers had boarded this boat they might have been killed.”

Commissioner McDonald has recommended that the Department of Primary Industries implement the safety measures.

Main picture is a stock image. Vessels depicted are not involved in the criminal activities mentioned in the story.