AUST: Is there a case to extend fishing rights to Indonesians?
Updated
Australian immigration officials expect to interview the group of sixteen Indonesians now in detention on Christmas Island over the next two weeks. The six adults and ten children from the island of Rote were rescued from a sinking boat by the Australian navy on Wednesday and are believed to be seeking asylum in Australia. The Australian government has dismissed suggestions it should be doing more to help.
Presenter: Karon Snowdon
Speakers: Dr Natasha Stacey, Research Fellow with the School for Environmental Research at Australia's Charles Darwin University
SNOWDON: Under Australia's strict asylum and immigration laws, its impossible to know the exact circumstances of the flight of the latest group trying to cross the Timor Sea or what their hopes are.
They wont have access to lawyers and the media can't travel to the remote Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean to find out.
What's not in doubt is they are members of the Bajo or Sama ethnic group from eastern Indonesia whose lives are based on the sea.
Some live in boats, others in houses built over the water and for more than one hundred years many have fished in what have become Australian waters.
Natasha Stacey is a recognised expert on the Bajo and has spent some time on Roti, visiting most recently in July.
She found a fleet of about 200 boats had been reduced to just 40 in the space of two years in two small communities including Pepela.
STACEY: The fishermen there and their families were struggling to make ends meet. Part of the reason for that is that over the last couple of years, hundreds of their boats have been apprehended for fishing illegally inside Australian waters.
SNOWDON: Some fishermen from the island complain the restrictions have ruined them, and the Australian Government should help more. Canberra says it has no such obligations.
Australia's crackdown has been aimed at illegal fishing in Australian waters outside a designated zone allowing for traditional fishing.
The designated zone stems from a 1974 agreement between Indonesia and Australia which despite its good intentions, has done more harm than good at least for the Bajo people according to Natasha Stacey.
She explains it lacked specifics, leading to a free for all and overfishing which force the Bajo further afield.
STACEY: One of the issues is that the agreement allows for any fishermen from Indonesia to fish inside a designated area as long as they comply with the definition of traditional and what you have in a sense is an open access regime which hasn't been managed and the resources itself in that area have become over exploited.
SNOWDON: So while the MOU allowed for fishing within a particular area, the weaknesses in the system have meant that that area has been over fished and that the legitimate fishermen have been forced into illegal fishing outside that area?
STACEY: Yes that's correct.
SNOWDON: In the past decade the development of Indonesia's second largest national park taking in all the islands and reefs in the region has added to restrictions on fishing. Many families have left the area.
So should Australia take more responsibility for people who for more than one reasons are becoming economic refugees in their own country?
Dr Stacey says there's no one solution.
STACEY: There ate discussions underway between Australia and Indonesia I understand to continue to develop alternative livelihoods. I think one of the things that needs to be done is to clearly recognise who these fishing groups are and make sure the projects and activities are being directed at the right people and trying to look at how some groups may be afforded some rights of access to continue to fish inside Australian waters.
