Could a fish decide an election? The Maugean skate – an ancient stingray-like creature found only in Tasmania’s brackish estuaries – will be a mystery to most New Zealanders.
Just 36 years ago, it was unknown to the world, until its belated discovery. Today, mainland Australians would be hard-pushed to identify the unlovely, flat-bodied, bottom dweller whose lineage goes back to the era of dinosaurs.
Yet, the future of Australia’s Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, may well ride on the bony back of the threatened fish that supporters call the thylacine of the seas.
Populations of the skate have crashed since 2014 in their remaining habitat, Macquarie Harbour, a shallow fjord on the island’s wild west coast. The surviving skates are estimated to number fewer than 1600.
Intensive caged salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour, an industry employing thousands in an island state where jobs are scarce, is killing off the skates. Their water quality is degrading due to the low levels of dissolved oxygen, caused by the fish farming. Even the salmon aren’t immune – 1000 tonnes of farmed salmon died in Macquarie Harbour over seven months last spring and summer.
Therein lies the dilemma for Albanese and his environment minister, Tanya Plibersek: does their government shut down much of Tasmania’s salmon farming industry to try to save a fast-disappearing skate? Or does it sanction the world’s first modern-day fish extinction?
The issue is drawing uncomfortable global attention. Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, is seeking a “please explain” from the Albanese government, given that a third of the harbour’s waters – although none of the fish pens – lie within the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.
“The extinction of the skate would be a global extinction event and Tasmania’s reputation for clean and green produce will be tarnished forever,” says Leonardo Guida, a shark scientist at the Australian Marine Conservation Society.
Plibersek, who has warned salmon farming is contributing to the skates’ vanishing numbers, has infuriated Labor leaders in Tasmania – and some colleagues in Canberra – by ordering a drawn-out review into fish farming that threatens to curtail the industry. The uncertainty is bleeding votes from Labor in Tasmania where the Albanese government sorely needs to win back seats if it is to be sure of keeping or lifting its current two-seat parliamentary majority in the election, due by May.
That puts it under heavy pressure to resolve salmon farming’s future before the election is called – but Plibersek is no stranger to Albanese’s willingness to put votes ahead of his environment minister’s agenda.
In late November, Plibersek struck a deal with the Greens in the Australian parliament and the independent senator, ex-Wallabies captain David Pocock, on supporting her moves to establish the country’s first national environment protection agency.
Born out of the need to slow one the world’s fastest extinction rates – Australia has lost about 100 native plants and animals since colonisation – the new agency was to have wide powers to monitor harm to the environment and to enforce compliance. It would have been able to impose fines of up to $780 million on companies that breached environmental laws.
At the 11th hour, Albanese scuppered the bill – after being lent on by West Australia’s Labor government acting as a proxy for the state’s big mining companies, who don’t want more environmental oversight of their activities.
Although Albanese’s government has repeatedly promised no new extinctions on its watch, it has just delayed a decision on the future of Tasmania’s salmon farming for another year. Enough time to win an election before the skates are gone forever.
