Troubled waters: Tasmania goes to the polls for the ‘salmon election’

Every night, industrial lights from salmon farms on the horizon cast a harsh glow over the Tasmanian home of former Greens senator Bob Brown. Some nights, he can see his own shadow.

Brown – who burst onto the national consciousness in the early 1980s leading the campaign to save the Franklin River – is now embroiled in what he says will be another election-defining environmental brawl: salmon farming.

Across Tasmania’s south-east and west coasts salmon pens proliferate, run by eight companies including foreign-owned giants Huon Aquaculture, Petuna and Tassal.

It’s only when you get close that the industrial scale of the $1.3 billion operation reveals itself: the enclosed pens have a circumference of up to 240 metres, and stretch some 20 metres towards the ocean floor. Tens of thousands of fish thrash in each pen.

Our boat races over the frigid waters of the Huon River towards Huon and Tassal pens where, months before, a bacterial outbreak of Piscirickettsia salmonis spread like wildfire. But we can’t get too close: our skipper warns that entering a 50-metre exclusion zone carries the risk of trespassing charges, and workers are watching our approach.

Farmed Tasmanian salmon has increasingly been on the nose. There have been mounting concerns about pollution, the looming risk of the Maugean Skate extinction, and a “mass mortality” event this summer. In February, chunks of salmon carcasses washed up on nearby beaches from the bacterial outbreak, which killed more than 1 million fish.

Footage released by the Bob Brown Foundation showed Huon Aquaculture workers putting still-writhing diseased fish into containers with dead fish, and sealing them shut.

After the footage was released, the RSPCA revoked its certification for Huon Aquaculture salmon. No Tasmanian salmon is now certified as meeting the authority’s animal welfare standards.

Six days later, the Coalition and Labor joined forces in the Senate to pass amendments to federal environment laws, designed to end Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s formal reconsideration of the 2012 expansion of salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour – which sits in the electorate of Braddon.

The amendments mean environment ministers cannot now be asked to reconsider past decisions to approve projects – like salmon farms or coal mines – when new information about environmental harms emerges.

Having come to power promising to strengthen federal environmental laws, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ended his first term in office by weakening them.

Instead of neutralising the politics of salmon, Brown says, Albanese has galvanised large sections of the Tasmanian community against the industry.

“They made it an election issue,” he says. “They left us with less environmental protection in Australia than under the Morrison government.”

Independent, Labor, Liberal, and Greens candidates acknowledge the outsized influence this $1.3 billion industry is having on the contest and, perhaps, who forms government in Canberra on May 3.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has described the ultra-marginal Tasmanian seat of Lyons – held by retiring MP Brian Mitchell on just 0.9 per cent – as a must-win for the Coalition.

It’s a view supported by Tasmanian Liberal senator Jonathon Duniam.

“Peter’s right,” he says. “It’s a must win. If we are to have any pathway to government, Lyons is a part of that pathway.”

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie says he would flip this logic.

“Labor can’t afford to lose seats anywhere … Tassie could well be the make or break for the government.”

There are five federal seats in Tasmania: Bass, in the northeast; Braddon, along the west coast; Franklin on the southern tip; Clark, which covers Hobart; and Lyons, stretching from the centre of the state to the east coast.

Two of them are ultra-marginal and very much in play: Labor-held Lyons, on a wafer-thin 0.9 per cent, and Bass, which Liberal MP Bridget Archer holds by 1.4 per cent.

But Labor also has its sights on Braddon, held by Liberal Gavin Pearce on 8 per cent. Fisheries Minister Julie Collins holds Franklin on 13.7 per cent, while Wilkie holds Clark with a commanding 20.8 per cent margin.

Inside his central Hobart office, Duniam says poor access to healthcare, the cost of living, and tensions between the environment and jobs are key issues for voters.

“We are more susceptible to the ebbs and flows of what’s going on in the economy [than mainland states],” he says.

“If there’s a downturn in demand for a certain commodity that we produce here, that then has a massive hit – which is why for example the salmon debate has been so fiercely contested.

“If you take that [industry] out of the regional economy in Tasmania, then that will have a huge impact.”

Salmon Tasmania chief executive Luke Martin – who represents the industry – says Albanese’s legislative changes have given certainty to the industry (after the election, Martin will take up a role with the Tasmanian branch of the Labor Party).

“As far as the industry is concerned, the matter with Macquarie Harbour is settled, and the workers can get on with their lives.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Tasmanian salmon worker Adam “Salty” Saltmarsh, a 23-year veteran of the industry who lives in Strahan, the port town on Macquarie Harbour.

“We’ve all got houses and commitments here in Strahan. So knowing that the legislation was passed, and our jobs were safe and the work’s going continue obviously makes us feel better.”

The number of jobs at stake varies wildly, depending on who you ask.

The federal environment department relies on 2021 census figures indicating 20 people in Strahan are employed in offshore caged aquaculture. Salmon Tasmania, meanwhile, says there are 395 salmon jobs in Macquarie Harbour, and 5103 full-time equivalent jobs across the state. The Tasmanian government in 2021 estimated the industry accounted for 1734 full-time jobs, and 199 casual jobs.

Macquarie Harbour sits in Braddon, which straddles some of the most beautiful and wild landscapes here, including sections of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area that covers almost 25 per cent of the state.

Here, Liberal MP Gavin Pearce is retiring and Labor senator Anne Urquhart has given up three remaining years of a Senate term to run for the lower house seat, reportedly at Albanese’s urging.

Tasmanian Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson argues Albanese’s salmon law amendments – which were opposed by the Greens and senators David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie and Fatima Payman – were delivered largely to advance Labor’s prospects in Braddon.

He is equally scathing of the government spending $37.5 million on a trial to pump oxygen into Macquarie Harbour, in an attempt to increase dissolved oxygen levels in the harbour – which experts say are chiefly caused by salmon farming.

“They’re basically using taxpayers’ money to win Braddon, support the salmon industry and support the union,” Whish-Wilson says.

“I think what was really remarkable about the salmon debate in the last week of parliament, and it’s still running in the campaign, is how much it’s galvanised the environment movement around the country. They are all 100 per cent furious and active on this issue.”

In Franklin, former ABC journalist and foreign correspondent Peter George has become known as the anti-salmon candidate, taking on Fisheries Minister Julie Collins.

He has a well-resourced campaign team behind him, bolstered by hundreds of volunteers, a $30,000 donation from Climate 200, and an endorsement from popular independent Wilkie.

While he’s expecting to pick up votes from the Greens, George says his strategy team also includes people who have worked with the Liberals, Labor and independents (George’s campaign chair is Neighbours of Fish Farms public officer Paul Thomas, who is married to Bob Brown).

George rejects the charge he’s a single-issue candidate, arguing the major parties have failed Tasmania on hospital funding, infrastructure and housing.

“If you’re a cross bencher, you go up [to Canberra] and you hold the bastards to account,” he says.

“Almost every question for me is about salmon. But salmon is an example of how we sell out everything to the top end of town … This has been a systemic Tasmanian problem for decade, upon decade, upon decade.”

Collins said healthcare, housing, the cost of living and education were the issues most consistently raised with her by voters.

Labor’s five urgent care clinics were reducing pressure on Tasmanian emergency departments, she said, and another three had been promised.

“Health has been the biggest issue that I’m hearing when I’m talking to Tasmanians and that is my number one issue,” Collins said.

Duniam says the withdrawal of the Greens candidate in Franklin, 19-year-old Owen Fitzgerald (who last week discovered he holds dual citizenship), tightens the contest between Collins and George.

“I think that this has really changed the way Franklin will go,” Duniam says. “Salmon has galvanised a whole range of voters, in a way I’ve not seen for a very long time … everyone who would have voted Green will now vote Peter George. That will make him very competitive.”

That’s not to say the Liberals plan to stand by mutely.

Last fortnight Liberal senator Claire Chandler released a statement confirming the party had made the “principled decision” to direct preferences to Labor above George in Franklin.

“While Labor are bad, Mr George and his anti-salmon views are worse, and we want to ensure that in any potential contest between the two that Mr George is not successful,” Chandler said.

“I found it extraordinary, that they would regard preferencing their arch enemy, in order to benefit three foreign salmon companies, as principled,” Wilkie says.

“And that’s a really big blow to Peter because he’s going to have to get a thumping big primary vote [to win]. So it’s now a very big hill to climb.”

Aside from salmon, every candidate interviewed by this masthead nominated the proposed Macquarie Point AFL stadium as an important issue for voters.

The proposal has already blown out to more than $1.2 billion, according to a draft assessment from the Tasmanian Planning Commission, which predicted the Tasmanian government would need to borrow $992 million to complete the project.

The stadium isn’t a federal issue, but Wilkie says the sheer expense of the project – in a state that experiences disproportionate economic hardship – has become a lightning rod for voter anger.

Polling reported by the ABC showed 63 per cent of voters in the federal seat of Lyons were opposed to the stadium. Encompassing the regional and rural heartland of Tasmania, Lyons takes in almost half the geographical area of the state.

At the 2021 census, the median personal income for residents was $652 a week, compared with $701 in Tasmania, and $805 nationally.

Aside from the cost of living, health is a big concern here: the Australian Medical Association’s Tasmanian branch has been scathing of government investments in the state system, where average wait times for category 2 “semi urgent” surgeries have blown out to 289 days – well above the recommended 90 days.

It’s on these issues former Tasmanian Labor leader and Lyons candidate Rebecca White wants to focus.

“It’s certainly a tight contest, but I get the impression that Tasmanians don’t want Peter Dutton to be a prime minister,” she says.

“There’s a lot of support for the announcements Labor’s made around healthcare and strengthening Medicare … And people are beginning to understand that if they want to keep these things, they have to vote Labor.”

For Brown, the fight against the salmon industry is personal as much as political.

The Franklin River, which he fought so hard to save more than 40 years ago, flows into the Gordon River, which then empties into Macquarie Harbour. Brown believes the Albanese government’s decision to protect salmon farming here will hurt Labor at the election.

“People are angry. I haven’t seen that since the Franklin campaign … statewide, people are angry about what’s happened with these fish farms.”

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