PETITION: Inquiry into Victorian Fisheries Authority workforce changes
ATTENTION: All law-abiding recreational anglers, sports fishing professionals, everyone connected with the seafood industry and anyone holding either a fisheries licence or permit!
Victoria’s immensely valuable fisheries are in grave danger of being fished out, poached and pillaged to extinction, following a Victorian Government decision to abandon its ecological sustainability regime and retreat from frontline enforcement of basic fisheries rules.
On 20 May 2025 (State Budget Day) the Victorian Fisheries Authority (VFA) announced it would sack 30 (44%) of the state’s 69 frontline Fisheries Officers: leaving just 39 uniformed officers to patrol Victoria’s 2,512-kilometre coastline, 10,000 square-kilometres of marine waters and 170,000 kilometres of inland water frontage along 85,000 kilometres of rivers and creeks.
Under an organisational restructure, the authority has also stopped those remaining officers from doing marine safety inspections despite their previous involvement in this work being linked to a 52% reduction in boat-related drownings over the 10 years to 2023.
The authority remains the lead agency for the prevention of “illegal or antisocial behaviour” on Crown land river frontage camping sites, but inland officers will (at inevitable risk to their personal safety) be expected to undertake lone patrols (no longer working in pairs).
VFA also retains, for now, its designated role under the State Emergency Management Plan, but with an obviously reduced capacity for rescues and other marine or wildlife crises.
Even worse, these decisions were made without any risk assessment and in defiance of a previous petition signed by 21,789 concerned Victorians.
The significance and gravity of these matters, while still at the proposal stage, were explained in the Parliament of Victoria by shadow Scrutiny of Government minister Bev McArthur on 18 March:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3119485041524153
They have since been further explored by veteran Herald Sun crime writer Andrew Rule:
The Community Advocacy Alliance is therefore petitioning the Legislative Council to hold a parliamentary inquiry.
Please support the CAA in this endeavour by adding your name to our online petition and calling upon every other Victorian you know to do so too…
This is total political insanity and Victoria will suffer. Our marine parks pillaged, seafood export industry destroyed. Recreational fishing decimated and lives put at very grave risk . Somehow the media is silent and the general population is asleep.
We must stand up