Initial discussions between SIA and FRDC have established that the need that this project addresses is to gather the information required to support the Australian fisheries and aquaculture industry to "tell its story" of its contributions to the national, state and regional economies and communities. This story is part of the broader suite of initiates the FRDC is supporting to enable the commercial sector to demonstrate its contributions to the economic and social dimensions of sustainability. Furthermore, this information can be used by the Australian fisheries and aquaculture industry and government agencies for: improving current understanding of industry contributions and future analysis of impact; reporting and accountability of flow-on effects; engagement with surrounding regional communities; and advocacy activity.
In order to generate the information that sits behind this story, the immediate technical need is for:
- a review of existing studies and available data;
- development of a national framework for measuring and evaluating economic and social contributions; and
- estimates of economic contribution using the above framework (phase 1, and therefore undertaken as part of this project); and
- design of studies to measure a wider array of social and non-traditional economic contributions, to be undertaken on a case study basis (phase 2, and therefore planned for but not undertaken as part of this phase 1 project)
A future need to be addressed in Phase 2 (not in this project) is for a systematic approach to prioritising the measurement of contributions to fit within the available resources. Priorities include the need for a national story for fisheries and aquaculture industries as a whole, while at the same time, given the variation in fisheries and aquaculture industry activity across Australia, the need to highlight those significant contributions of various types to regional community well-being. A further priority includes the need to recognise the potential re-purposing of the data for a variety of purposes (including to support subsequent impact studies).
Report
This report presents estimates of the economic contribution of Australia’s fisheries and aquaculture industries to the Australian community for 2017/18. It forms part of the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Industry Contributions Study (FRDC project 2017-210) which was funded by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) on behalf of the Australian Government to produce evidence of industry’s contributions. This study is an exciting step forward that lays the groundwork for the Australian seafood industry to celebrate its economic and other contributions and to showcase these to its communities and to Australians in general. The project was undertaken by the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), University of Tasmania, with BDO EconSearch commissioned to provide the estimates presented in this report.
This is the first time the economic contribution of the Australian seafood industry has been reported. This report demonstrates a nationally consistent approach to estimating the industry’s economic contributions and supports the ability for individual industries and jurisdictions to monitor trends in the size of contributions over time.
The estimates reported include economic contributions of: commercial fishing activity; aquaculture activity; associated processing activity. These estimates are for economic contributions of these activities in the State or Territory in which they occur, as well as to the national economy. The contribution of Commonwealth fisheries to the State or Territory in which catch is landed are also included. Commercial activities by Indigenous fishing and aquaculture businesses are included in commercial fishing and aquaculture activity. Commercial charter fishing activity is excluded. Fishery and aquaculture sector management activity (other than where these costs are recovered through licence fees) is excluded. Seafood processing of locally produced seafood is included and is attributed to the state/territory economy in which they occur. Inter-state trade flows (e.g. contribution of South Australian-produced aquaculture to the Victorian economy) are captured and reported.
Limitations of the estimates are due to data gaps and issues with data quality for some sub-sectors and for seafood processing. These were identified in the process of building a national data framework which supports the estimation of contributions and which is intended to help guide future data collection. Addressing this by collecting data on these sectors presents an opportunity to produce more comprehensive estimates in future.
These estimates of contribution can be used to compare the level of contributions of the fisheries, aquaculture and processing industries in different states or territories. Comparisons of these estimates can also be made with other productive industries (for example, beef or sheep). These will be less reliable due to differences in the number of sectors included (this study included only the catch/production and processing sectors), data availability and quality, and modelling across various studies.
Use of these estimates to predict impact of changes in the level of activity of fisheries and aquaculture industries is not advised. While results can be used to highlight the possible size and nature of impacts, further analysis would be required to estimate the actual impact on the economic measures of such changes.
Comparisons of the economic contributions of commercial fisheries and recreational fisheries (made as fishing-related expenditures generate direct and indirect economic impacts) need to be made very cautiously. The two activities are fundamentally different and require different input-output modelling approaches, and comparison can only be made where estimates are comprehensive. For commercial fisheries this requires that estimates include backward and forward linked sectors (for example, boat building sectors, as well as seafood retail sectors). For recreational fisheries this requires that only expenditures that are directly attributable to fishing are included in the estimate.
Use of estimates of economic contributions to predict the impact on a state or territory economy of changes in resource allocation between commercial and recreational fisheries can complement economic benefit or efficiency analysis. However, it will require further knowledge to determine how inputs would be redeployed in the economy by other sectors were commercial fishing no longer occurring, and how recreational fishers would spend their discretionary income on substitutable activities were they not able to recreationally fish.
We would like to acknowledge the input of the project’s Technical Advisory Group whose members were as follows: Sean Pascoe (CSIRO); Robert Curtotti (ABARES); and Alistair McIlgorm (University of Wollongong).
