Australian fisheries are based on a variety of private uses of resources that are communally owned. The separation of management and use from ownership means that there is a role for regular reporting of the performance of those fisheries. In this context, the use of appropriate indicators to report on how a fishery has performed is an essential part of ensuring the accountability of management. An important component of the management model that has been implemented for Commonwealth fisheries is the public accountability of AFMA.

The reporting of progress against AFMA’s economic efficiency objective has been poor. Information presented in the AFMA annual report has generally been limited to a discussion of changes in the gross value of production in Commonwealth fisheries — this provides little, if any, indication of changes in economic efficiency. The only other regularly published information relevant to the economic performance of Commonwealth fisheries is contained in the Australian Fisheries Survey Report, published annually by ABARE. For selected Commonwealth fisheries, these surveys provide information about the financial performance of the fishing fleet and estimates of the net economic returns from management. While net return estimates are a useful starting point for examining economic efficiency in a fishery, they do not account for the impact of exogenous factors such as changes in input and output prices, movements in exchange rates and variations in environmental factors.

There is a need for the development of suite of robust indicators of economic efficiency movements that can be effectively applied across Commonwealth fisheries. Once developed these indicators will provide a basis for reporting progress against the economic efficiency objective and, perhaps more importantly, provide fisheries managers with information to guide the development of economically efficient management policies. Management regimes, through controlling the total level of harvests (by whatever means) and contributing to the incentive structure that fishers operate within will determine whether a fishery is economically efficient.

This research is consistent with the Key Research Area 1.1 (b) identified in the AFMA Strategic Research Plan 1999-2004. It is also consistent with the Resources Sustainability: Status of fish stocks, environment and industry program of the Fisheries Resources Research Fund.