NSW Minister for Agriculture Tara Moriarty announced the offer this week. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
The abalone industry and Aboriginal cultural fishers are furious about the NSW Government’s offer to buy back shares at $6355 per share from commercial abalone fishers to address declining abalone numbers.
The area from near Bundeena to Red Point, south of Eden, will be closed to commercial abalone fishing from 1 July 2027 for an unspecified time.
A delicacy in Asia and a traditional Aboriginal food, abalone are under pressure from overfishing, diminishing kelp forests and climate change.
On 4 August NSW Minister for Agriculture Tara Moriarty announced the government is offering a voluntary share surrender program.
It follows an earlier announcement that the total allowable catch for blacklip abalone in 2026-27 was 52 tonnes, down 40 per cent from 2025-26.
To help commercial abalone fishers “transition”, the government will provide up to $9000 for training assistance to fishing business owners who surrender all their abalone shares, and up to $1000 per eligible fishing business owner for financial guidance regardless of whether or not they surrender shares.
Ms Moriarty said on radio she expected a “significant amount of people” will take up the share surrender option. A few weeks earlier the abalone industry rejected the government’s offer to buy back shares at $4221. Shares traded at $10,492 in 2018.
In a statement on 5 August, the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) said the initial share surrender price was based on valuation advice by BDO Corporate Finance Australia. After shareholder consultation, the higher valuation of $6355 was adopted, “using more conservative and risk-averse assumptions about future returns and fishery performance”.
Second-generation diver Ryan Morris dives for abalone and the longspined sea urchins that are destroying the coast’s kelp forests.
Mr Morris said what the government was doing to commercial abalone fishers was “bordering on criminal”.
He said Minister Moriarty was being “very coy” about what the government will do with the shares. “Those shares should be ripped up, never to be used again, but she doesn’t want to have that,” he said.
Furthermore, the compensation only covered abalone shareholders, not the processors or divers who would become obsolete due to reduced abalone volumes, nor other businesses reliant on the industry.
He said the NSW Fisheries Department seemed unable to prosecute Indigenous fishers who he claimed were harvesting abalone illegally, beyond their cultural fishing rights. “The illegal fishing is already happening in Disaster Bay and Green Cape outside the Native Title area,” he said.
Mr Morris said the share buyback offer “sets a really bad precedent for commercial fishing in this state”. He is also concerned about the implications for NSW’s emerging sea urchin industry.
Diving for sea urchins off the coast of Eden. Photo: Stefan Andrews, courtesy Great Southern Reef Foundation.
“They can’t give us any advice on the sea urchin,” he said. “I have done all that work and spent all that money. I had to tell my staff that probably they may not have work in three months.”
Walbunja man Wally Stewart is a traditional custodian, advocate for Aboriginal fishing rights, and a member of the applicant for the South Coast Native Title claim.
The claim covers land from Bundeena in southern Sydney to the Victorian border and extends three nautical miles offshore. It was lodged with the Federal Court of Australia in 2018.
“I am disappointed the commercial fishers got paid out for damaging our Sea Country, but I am glad they are out of it once and for all,” Mr Stewart said. “I am disappointed she isn’t talking about putting any money into the restoration which we urgently need.”
Mr Stewart said there were major problems with the ocean including the sea urchins and the growing population of seals eating tonnes of fish daily.
“It seems like native title holders are the only ones lobbying for restoration,” he said. “The others just want their golden handshake.”
The government is also beefing up resources to combat illegal, unreported or unregulated abalone fishing. It is recruiting eight senior officers and beginning a recruitment drive for up to 11 new fisheries officers across NSW.
This week it is introducing a bill to parliament calling for increasing the powers of fisheries officers around inspections and compliance checks, support for safer interactions in the field, improved evidence collection, more thorough investigations into illegal activity, and better support for environmental and habitat protection work.
Mr Morris said the $6355 share price offered was a “slap in the face when it has been created by mismanagement by DPIRD”.
Mr Stewart said he was “blaming the government for this”.
“They have been in bed with the industry and now they are in this predicament,” he said. “It has played Blackfella off against the abalone industry and we’ve been used as the scapegoat.”
Original Article published by Marion Williams on About Regional.
