Melbourne Fish Market: Business as usual

Tenants, the current landlord and future owner of the site have come to a pragmatic agreement under which the new owner will lease the site back to tenants. This will allow all tenants time to develop new sites.

The market has been threatened with eviction for some time. The site's owner, the Melbourne City Council, had told tenants that the market was to close on 30 June. Although some tenants had worked hard to develop new sites, many had nowhere to go.

The Association was very concerned that if tenants were evicted the fishing fleet may have been forced to operate below capacity until wholesalers re-established themselves. The South East Trawl Fishery is managed under strict catch quotas and its fishing fleet is not over-capitalised. Any interruption to fishing may see quotas uncaught, higher fish prices and increased quantities of imported fish. Australia is a net importer of seafood importing $1.4b of seafood per annum.

South East Trawl fish is sustainably harvested under the Fisheries Management Act (1991) and the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999) and is a certified Wildlife Trade Operation. The fishery is Australia's oldest and has been fished for nearly 100 years. Although some imported fish is caught in sustainable fisheries, there is no guarantee that imported fish is caught sustainably like Australian fisheries.

SETFIA's CEO, Mr Simon Boag said, "We thank Mr Tim Bull [Member for East Gippsland, National], Mr Phillip Davis [Member for Eastern Victoria, Liberal] and the State Government for their work that led to this deal, without it there was a possibility that the south east fishing fleet may have been forced to reduce catch volumes. If this occurred imports would have increased and there is no guarantee that imported fish is sustainably harvested".