05 May 14 days’ notice to shut up shop: Fisheries closures sign of things to come?

3 May 2024

Mark Furner’s capitulation to his Brisbane masters and their desperate scramble for green votes is an utter slap in the face to the Gulf Fishers who have had their livelihoods obliterated with 14 days’ notice, Katter’s Australian Party Leader, and Member for Traeger, Robbie Katter has said.

Without any scientific backing, the Fisheries minister has pulled the rug from under hard-working and law-abiding fishing businesses.

“What other business would accept 14 days’ notice to the operating environment under which they operate?” Mr Katter said.

“I sure as hell know Labor’s mates in the unions wouldn’t accept it!”

On a Friday afternoon, after the attention of Parliament had died down, Mark Furner has announced a ban on Gill-net fishing in extensive areas in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

“This process has been botched from day one, with ludicrous consultation, multiple rounds of short-notice meetings, and from what I hear, traditional owners who are yet to be properly informed about this local economy altering decision – all because Brisbane and Canberra want to suck up to UNESCO in Paris!” the member for Traeger remarked.

“I’m unsurprised, but highly disappointed that the LNP have not taken up the baton with me and the KAP in vehemently condemning this pandering to UNESCO in Paris – I’ve heard that they, like Labor, fear what some bureaucrats in Paris think too.

“What I care about is the strength of our North Queensland communities, and our ability to feed ourselves!  This is a matter of food sovereignty!

“If there was any evidence of a fishery under genuine threat, then sure; let’s have a chat.  But to close this fishery, purely because Federal Labor’s Tanya Plibersek sold out North Queensland to UNESCO? Please!

“That same letter details how Brisbane’s parties are also planning to sacrifice the grazing via more tree clearing legislation and persecute our food producing farmers by further burdening them with fertiliser restrictions.

“I foresee further abandonment of North Queensland by Brisbane, and I won’t stand for it!” he said.

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