What we Heard – Perspectives of Ocean Users

The Blue Economy CRC, with support from FRDC, ODA, CEC and ER, hosted a closed-door discussion with a subset of participants drawn from a cross-section of Australia’s ocean user community who attended the Australian Government’s ‘Ocean Dialogue’ 10 October 2024. The discussion included ~20 people working in recreational fishing, offshore wind, wave energy, the seafood industry, the seafood retail sector and oil and gas.

The purpose of the discussion was to hear and understand ocean user perspectives on both the draft Sustainable Oceans Plan and the Ocean Dialogue held after the Global Nature Positive Summit.

This is what we heard.

1. Ocean users are essential partners for the Australian Government to build a balanced, practical, and prosperous sustainable ocean economy. Their contribution is grounded in practical experience, accountability, and shared goals. As such, they are calling for a more inclusive approach to recognising and balancing the range of values and participants in oceans, including balancing the framing of ocean use and nature positivity in the Plan.
2. The characterisation of ocean users as ‘problems to be managed’ must be replaced with recognising and valuing their contributions to advancing Australia’s food security, renewable energy, national defence, and public wellbeing. These sectors are vital to Australia’s ocean economy yet have been underrepresented and misunderstood in this process. This includes a lack of understanding of the complexities and pressures encountered when you operate offshore, compared with operating on land.
3. Ocean users are facing real challenges and opportunities. Many of these are absent from the draft Plan, limiting its practical value. They include addressing declining access and rights to resources, loss of trust in both government and industry, needless duplication of effort across industries, cumulative impacts and risk retirement. All of these impact investor certainty and innovation. If the Plan is going to focus on sustainable growth, then it needs to encompass clear and responsible economic growth targets consistent with a focus on production, not just environmental targets consistent with a focus on protection.
4. The final Sustainable Ocean Plan should be owned by the Prime Minister and delivered across the public sector by a central agency. The Government should establish an oceans leadership and ministerial portfolio to strengthen coordination across related portfolios and ensure a more inclusive and balanced approach to managing competing interests, values, and uses of the oceans while reducing the fragmentation and associated risks that ocean users face today.
5. The Government should further ensure the Plan is properly funded and supported by adaptive work plans, with clear governance arrangements and strong administrative accountability. It should specify cross-portfolio, integrated pathways for delivering real actions that have measurable outcomes and associated milestones and KPIs. Clarity of the Government’s funding commitment, roles and meaningful deliverables will better support consideration of investment of time and funds by non-government stakeholders to achieve shared objectives.