Dr WOODRUFF – Minister, the government has committed to limiting salmon production to 40,000 tonnes in Storm Bay and that’s come from negotiations between the Secretary of NRE and the CEOs of the three salmon companies. There is an enormous biomass difference between whole fish and head-on-gutted or hog. Is that 40,000 tonne figure for whole fish or head-on-gutted?
Mr PEARCE – That’s an excellent question, Dr Woodruff. I might refer that to the secretary.
Mr JACOBI – Through you, minister, could you please just table for me the reference to that? Were you taking directly from the [inaudible] report or –
Dr WOODRUFF – Sorry?
Mr JACOBI – What’s the document that you’re referring to?
Dr WOODRUFF – The negotiations that are in the public domain, they’ve been discussed before, between the secretary of NRE and the CEOs of the three salmon companies, is that the government has committed to limiting salmon production in Storm Bay to 40,000 tonnes. I can find it for you later if you want. I don’t have them at hand
Mr JACOBI – So you’re not referring to as – that’s a previous secretary who committed to that?
Dr WOODRUFF – The previous secretary committed to that, yes. Not you, secretary. There’s a big biomass difference between whole fish swimming around in the water and head-on-gutted. What is that 40,000 tonnes referring to?
Mr JACOBI – Thank you. Through you, minister, we’ll take that on notice.
Dr WOODRUFF – Thank you. Minister, the Greens have received heavily redacted documents under right to information (RTI) that were produced by NRE relating to salmon farming in further offshore areas. One document was a report titled ‘Offshore Aquaculture Tasmania Background Scoping Paper’ and the other was some title slides for briefings that were provided to the Deputy Secretary and the EPA on a Storm Bay and south‑east Tasmania offshore aquaculture planning project. My question is which pens in the Storm Bay and south‑east region were identified as being suitable to be moved further offshore? What are the industry incentives that were mentioned in the document to encourage that to happen? Can you table that background scoping paper and tell us what the status of that project is?
Mr PEARCE– I appreciate the question. I will refer that to the secretary.
Mr JACOBI – Through you, Minister. That was a scoping project. There is nothing more to provide or to table, and there were no pens identified as part of that scoping project to move offshore.
Dr WOODRUFF – Can you table the background scoping paper?
Mr JACOBI – Through you, minister. The background scoping papers as I understand have already been actively disclosed on our disclosure log through the RTI process.
Mr PEARCE – Subject to RTI and then made a commitment to pause and there’s nothing on there.
Dr WOODRUFF – There was nothing on there. It was heavily redacted. There was no information. Can we get the information about what the department was considering about whether to go further offshore and whether there were industry incentives and what further offshore would look like and all of those matters which are pretty important?
Mr JACOBI – Through you, minister. I would be happy to go back to our RTI delegate and discuss with them what the reasons were for not disclosing that information to see whether anything more can be provided.
Dr WOODRUFF – Okay. Can you tell us why you’re not progressing to go with that move to go offshore?
CHAIR – Dr Woodruff, you’ve had plenty of scope. Prof Razay.
