Ms Karin Dubsky:

More than 500. We do not know because we cannot extract the exact figures. These farms had licences that have since expired. My colleague, Mr. John Wilde Crosbie, is a barrister and has taken a court case on this matter. Perhaps he will be able to elaborate on the details of this situation. Basically, people are functioning without licences but as though they had licences. This means that there is no democracy. For several years, they have continued to operate on the foreshore. One cannot control anything because they do not have licences. One cannot refer to a breach of a licence. Under a change in the fisheries Act, they are allowed to operate in Natura 2000 sites as though they had licences. This is an example of where there is no access to justice or public information.

The Department is trying to improve this situation. In recent months, it considered Castlemaine Harbour and the Minister supplied more than 40 licences in one go. We examined the cumulative impact of these. Each licence was checked separately by the Marine Licence Vetting Committee, MLVC, which has never published a report of any kind and the members of which are selected by the Minister. We were told that cumulative impacts had not been taken into account. This was in breach of the environmental impact assessment, EIA, directive and we appealed to the Aquaculture Licensing Appeals Board, ALAB. When we asked for the conditions applying to the licences that the Minister had just granted, we were told that we could not get them. An ALAB appeal is costly and we can only afford one or two. This situation is as bad as if someone was given planning permission on land and someone else was not allowed to see the conditions applying. If the committee wishes to know the legal specifics, my colleague will provide them.