Pauline Hanson can personally attest, as a former fish and chip chop owner, that Australians love their fish.

She grew up in an Australia where people thought nothing of getting out in a boat or heading for the local jetty to spend a day fishing with the family or their mates.

It remains a very popular pastime today. According to the National Social and Economic Survey of Recreational Fishers released in 2023, more than four million Australians are estimated to participate in recreational fishing every year, contributing to about 100,000 jobs and generating about $11 billion for the national economy.

Commercial fishing is also an important regional job provider. Commercial fishing and aquaculture are worth about $3.6 billion to the economy and directly employ about 17,000 Australians.

These are impressive numbers. Sustaining them means sustaining our fisheries. The vast majority of Australian commercial and recreational fishermen understand this completely: without a sustainable resource, there will be no fishing.

So most of them are fully prepared to fish within reasonable limits imposed on what they can take, like commercial fishing quotas and recreational size and bag limits, provided they are assured these measures are effective, fair, and evidence-based. For commercial fishermen in particular, this is critical to the long-term future of their businesses.

Unfortunately, fisheries management across Australia appears to be more based on ideology and activist demands than evidence. Large areas of water are completely forbidden to fishing of any kind, rather than being properly managed in a sustainable way.

In 2004,'re-zoning’ of waters in the vicinity of the Great Barrier Reef saw fishers locked out of 30% of them.

One Nation doesn’t support locking away vast tracts of ocean from fishing activity. One Nation supports the right to fish. We support investment in comprehensive research that determines actual fish stocks and sustainable quotas.

We support recreational fishing for the positive impact it has on tourism, especially in regional areas.

We also support commercial fishing. With one of the largest national fisheries on the planet, Australia should be more than self-sufficient in seafood, with a healthy surplus for exports. We are, in fact, a net seafood importer to the tune of more than $2 billion a year. Just three countries—Thailand, China, and Vietnam—account for more than half of our seafood imports.

There should be no need for these imports, which are not produced to the same strict quality and sustainability standards we observe here. We just need to let Australian fishermen do what they do best: catch fish.