OPINION: The state government may have hooked itself with what looked like an easy political decision.
Political power is death by a thousand cuts.
Whether it be a democracy or a dictatorship, each decision is likely to alienate some portion of the population and erode overall support.
Even Iran’s mullahs, brought to power by a popular uprising in the late 1970s and subsequently entrenched in that position through intimidation and violence, are learning that their grip on the country is increasingly tenuous.
Thankfully, in a democracy like ours, the cuts (aka blowback) required to shift the equilibrium between government and opposition are less drastic, as are the results of such a transition.
It is rare for governments to reverse the effect of these cuts, each one chipping away at the majority they hold, forcing them to compromise more often, accelerating the likelihood of change.
The post-pandemic election win by then-premier Mark McGowan is an example of such an unusual event: a sitting government healing its self-inflicted political pain.
Premier Roger Cook inherited that strong position and did well to maintain a very solid majority at last year’s state election.
The challenge is to keep the electorate happy, such that the cuts inflicted by each policy, law, regulation or ministerial pronouncement are not individually significant and don’t accumulate enough to result in electoral loss.
The decision to ban demersal fishing along much of Western Australia’s coast – temporarily for those who fish recreationally, permanently for the commercial sector – looked like it might be a safe decision in terms of political damage.
Demersal fish are deep-ocean species, which in WA waters include dhufish and snapper.
Pushed by conservationist activists – often funded from offshore, when you dive deeply into this world – the bans followed a path well-marked by animal liberationists who had successfully led a campaign against the live sheep trade.
Commercial interests based in the regions struggle to be heard above the noise of modern urban views. Farmers struggle to fight for political hearts and minds when the battleground is TikTok and Instagram.
Despite all the Keep the Sheep stickers on utes and trucks, and protest convoys through the Perth CBD, the cuts received by the government from the electorate over that issue were superficial, and arguably votes Labor knew it would lose one day, no matter what.
It was much the same calculation with the fishing ban.
Although recreational fishers – whose numbers, in my view, are greatly exaggerated – might have to suffer a bit of short-term pain, the whole demersal fishing playground would be theirs in a couple of years without those pesky professionals hindering the plunder.
By and large, small numbers of regional people would bear the biggest burden of this change.
Professional fishers tend to be self-sufficient and isolated. Their geographical spread challenges collectivisation, not that they are natural affiliates of the union movement anyway.
Such a cut ought to be pretty painless, electorally.
However, just as the lamb-eating public may be swayed that sheep being trafficked to the Middle East were not being treated well, so might the broader public be wondering about the fairness of this permanent fishing ban.
That is the danger of a thousand cuts.
Some people feel pain when the cut wasn’t meant for them. Very suddenly, the state has ended livelihoods of people who have made a living from the sea, often for generations.
And the implications are not just a short-term feeling of sympathy for a small group that is hard done by.
Overnight, those who eat fish – a lot more, I reckon, than catch them either recreationally or commercially – are seeing prices rise exponentially as their choices are narrowed and the local product disappears.
Even the more ecologically minded must balance the benefits of a local ban with the air miles required to fill the gap it has created in the market for arguably the most sustainable primary industry we have.
And even the recreational fishermen are revolting.
Many Western Australians own a big boat, a four-wheel drive to tow it, freezing capacity that would match a commercial kitchen and leisure time once reserved for the rich.
Lots of them are fly-in, fly-out blue-collar workers, supposedly heartland for Labor.
The irony is that these people, the longer-term winners from the ban, could be a big part of any overfishing problem is a bit lost in the rising anger around the policy.
Or maybe they worry they might be next … to be cut.
