Locking up Australian fisheries is a crime against humanity

The Australian government is again proving its commitment to green genocide by its move to lock away even more Australian fisheries in “marine parks”, which is intended to reduce our fisheries output, ramp up the price of seafood, and deny the people of Australia and the world an important source of food.

“This policy is a calculated crime against humanity,” charged Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood today.

“The Commonwealth Government’s plan to establish a National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas (NRSMPA) by 2012 along with similar State Government schemes, are based on scientific quackery,” he said. “Australia has the lowest fishing harvest rate in the world—about one-thirtieth of the global average—so any claims of overfishing are absurd lies.”

Mr Isherwood pointed out that Thailand, Australia’s largest supplier of seafood imports, harvests 11 times the quantity of Australian fisheries in wild catch and their aquaculture industry is 30 times larger than our own, yet in area Thailand’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is only four per cent that of Australia’s, and its continental shelf area, which provides most of the catch, is 10 times smaller!

Even though greenies scream that Thailand’s large harvest rate is overfishing, it has remained near its present level for the past 20 years.

The same greenies and successive Australian governments have deliberately sabotaged Australia’s potential to have one of the world’s largest fishing industries. Two-thirds of Australia’s seafood consumption is imported, which costs $1.7 billion per year, yet satellites measuring chlorophyll concentration, which is associated with plankton—fish food—indicate Australian waters show similar potential fishing productivity to other nations.

Australia’s Marine Protected Areas (MPA) already cover 2.2 million square kilometers, which is 38 per cent of the total global protected area. Plans to expand MPAs into the Coral Sea, the Great Australian Bight and other areas will mean Australia alone accounts for one-half of the global total!

In addition, fishery quotas, access fees and license fees cost fishing businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars and are crippling the industry—especially (as usual) the small players. On top of this, the same governments which don’t regulate banks and financial speculators, deliberately smother the fishing industry in regulations—size limits, bag limits, boat limits, closed seasons and no-take species—which also serve to cut our food supply.

Many Australian fishermen have been driven out of the industry, and too many have been driven to suicide; as the industry shrinks, more are now giving up the struggle to remain viable.

Mr Isherwood continued, “Marine scientist Dr Walter Starck recently stated, ‘In current economic conditions adding more and more ill-conceived restrictions onto our food producers is tantamount to treason in a time of war.’

“And actually, we are in a time of war now—we’re at war with the British Empire, the Queen and her consort Prince Philip and their eco-fascist Green movement.

“These Marine Protected Areas have been forced on Australians by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and its Convention on Biological Diversity, which we signed at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. This is the IUCN formed in 1948 by Sir Julian Huxley, a Life Fellow of the British Eugenics Society from 1925 and its President from 1959-62, long after Nazi eugenics was known to be the evil racist pseudoscience that it is. The IUCN’s constitution was written by the British Foreign Office with the intent to further British imperialism under the cover of conservation.

“At the opening of the Rio Earth Summit, the Secretary-General, Maurice Strong posed the question: ‘Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialised civilisations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?’

“Fishing is a hallmark of civilization. As much as anything, it was the development of fishing as a reliable food source that led to civilizations developing along rivers and beside oceans, and allowed the first leap upwards in population growth. This British policy will send us back to the Stone Age.

“When considering the large-scale clinical and epidemiological studies showing significant health benefits from increased seafood consumption, it is genocidal to restrict this important food source.”

He concluded, “Australia has the world’s third largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) area and as an island continent we have a responsibility to foster a thriving fishing and aquaculture industry that can feed the world. Join us and make that a reality.”