The concern over lack of capacity for fisheries officers to respond to high level illegal fishing activities in East Gippsland has been raised in State Parliament.
Gippsland East MP, Tim Bull, said the recent cuts to staff numbers in Mallacoota and Lakes Entrance had opened the door for illegal activities to occur without any response from authorities.
“When investigating serious matters or conducting surveillance, officers must rightly work ‘two-up’,” Mr Bull said.
“However, with numbers at both offices being cut from four to two, in the periods of the year when one officer is on annual, sick or parental leave etc, there is simply no capacity to respond.
“The Minister’s response has been there will be a major crime unit, but it is four hours away from Lakes Entrance and seven hours from Mallacoota and will not have a presence in East Gippsland. Poachers and those conducting illegal activities will be long gone before they get to Warragul.
“It is clear no thought has been given to this situation, and they have simply removed the positions that were vacant at the time, where they should have been filling them to allow for responses. It is just a short-sighted approach.
“We hear from this government all the time about how good our recreational fishery is. What this has done is left us very vulnerable in the east to illegal activity.
“I have called on the Minister to, at the very least, reinstate one officer at each location to allow year-round response capability,” he said.
“We should not be handing out free fishing rods to every Victorian student while we are taking positions out of our local community and imploding the ability of our officers to respond to illegal activities.
“On the back of the recent cuts to Parks Victoria staff, they are removing our front-line services at a time when the public service in Melbourne has doubled over the past 10 years. It is simply not good enough.”
