Crowds fill Hobart’s Parliament House lawns to rally against salmon industry

Opponents of Tasmania’s farmed salmon industry filled the lawns at Hobart’s Parliament House on Sunday to protest commercial aquaculture in the state’s waters.

Organised by the Bob Brown Foundation, the ‘vote salmon out’ rally is one of a number of anti-salmon events that have been held across the state in recent months after more than 6,000 tonnes of salmon died in a mass mortality event in February.

The industry has faced much public scrutiny since then and became a political touchpoint in the build up to the federal election campaign.

Several political candidates and speakers addressed the crowd, voicing anger at the industry’s environmental track-record, its impact on the endangered Maugean skate, and on-going federal government support for the industry.

Independent candidate for Franklin Peter George said his path to victory was “narrow” but told the crowd, if elected, he would continue “fighting for the waterways of Franklin”.

Mr George — a former ABC journalist whose campaign has received financial backing by Climate 200 — also called for the industry to move from ocean to land-based farming.

Tasmanian director of The Australian Institute Eloise Carr also addressed the crowd, taking aim at the government’s recent amendments to federal environment laws.

In one of the last acts of parliament before calling the election, the Albanese government — with the Coalition’s support — passed legislation to reduce the rights of the public or environmental groups to request a review of previous federal environmental decisions.

The decision guarantees salmon farming can continue in Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s west coast.

“Australia’s environment laws are meant to protect nature, but in reality, they only enable extractive industry and development,” Ms Carr said.

Former Greens leader Bob Brown said the rally was a display of “democracy in action” and urged attendees to direct votes away from the two major parties.

The rally also included speeches by Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania representative Thomas Riley, Greens candidate for Lyons Alistair Allan, Greens Senator Nick McKim, Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan and Steve Sanders from community group Friends of the Bays.

Industry looks to future

Salmon Tasmania chief executive officer Luke Martin said the rally was a way to prop up Mr George’s political campaign.

Last week, Mr Martin said the mass die-off event had subsided and the industry remained resilient in the face of the stock losses, citing supermarket data by Circana MarketEdge showing domestic salmon sales rising in volume by 7 per cent from January to March at Coles and Woolworths compared to the same time last year.

The focus for the industry now, he said, was to “get ahead of vaccines and biosecurity” following the bacterial outbreak.

Salmon farms face scrutiny

Tasmania’s foreign-owned salmon farms supply 90 per cent of Australia’s Atlantic salmon and have grown to become a billion-dollar industry.

But it has also faced accusations of environmental contamination and grappled with mass-die offs.

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Last December, it was revealed about 10 per cent of salmon farmed in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour — which is home to about one fifth of the state’s salmon farms — died between September 2023 and March 2024.

The cause of the deaths was not disclosed.

Then in February this year, a mass mortality event hit Huon and Tassal farms in the D’Entrecasteaux channel, south of Hobart, following a breakout of piscirickettsia salmonis bacteria.

Pieces of rotting salmon and globules made of fatty fish material, along with low levels of antibiotics, then began to wash up on beaches south of Hobart.

Another controversy hit when secretly recorded footage by the Bob Brown Foundation showed live salmon being sealed in crates with dead fish, leading to Huon Aquaculture losing its RSPCA certification.

Labor in ‘damage control’

The federal government’s amended environment legislation to protect aquaculture in Macquarie Harbour has drawn criticism from opponents to salmon farming.

Political scientist at the University of Tasmania, Professor Richard Eccleston, said the 11th-hour legislation by the Albanese government was “about risk management and damage control” during the federal election campaign.

“As has been the case historically, Labor are often divided around environmental issues,” Professor Eccleston said.

Macquarie Harbour is in the electorate of Braddon and is held by the Liberals by a margin of 8 per cent.

The Liberal MP, Gavin Pearce, is retiring and Labor senator Anne Urquhart is vying to take the seat in a move to the lower house.

Professor Eccleston said although a Labor victory in Braddon was a longshot, he believed Mr Albanese’s support for the salmon industry was a calculated decision by the party to retain another Tasmanian electorate, Lyons — held by a slim margin of 0.9 per cent.