Does this mean future transparency in what the money is spent on?

At least its going to go back into the cause and not fixing potholes on the nearest highway that needs fixing!!

I have just watched tonights edition of Stateline on the ABC, have to agree with Kane Moyles comments,I do feel for the Charter Boat Operators. As for the Fisheries Minister, I dont believe, he is being very realistic with his comments,especially his comments, about the Cod off Newfoundland Canada, there is no creedence there, that was a commercial fishery, and he still does not discuss the fees, which is the contentious issue.

Jim.

Its almost like a kind of privatisation of the fishery management...where the Govt doesnt fund enough from core funds to manage it or research it enough, and then us, as kind of shareholders, have to chip in to make up a shortfall. I thought I had heard it explicitly said that the funding would increase the money available for research and such. I would prefer that the money IS spent on core functions if they are under-funded as there is such a dire lack of operational funds for officers and scientists. These are core things that I would certainly be happy to pay for if for whatever reasons they are not already from core funding.

So who runs the corporation? The shareholders or the CEO and board members...? I guess shareholders have a bit of a say in it, and make a big noise and can make no-confidence votes on the performance of the company if it's returns are not up to scratch. But the board and the CEO are the ones who decide on the actions of the company...

In this case a privately owned business started to slide - it had been under-resourced for a long time, and customers had become unhappy as the product and service had deteriorated. The company decided to float on the stock market in order to raise more revenue, with the promise to use that revenue to re-build the company by restoring a quality supply chain.

The shareholders don't necessarily have the expertise to run the day to day operations or to restructure the supply chains and other elements of the business - but they do certainly hold the right to have regular reports on how their corporation is progressing and what actions are being done and on what basis.

The shareholders association are able to be a focal point for liason between the board and the shareholders, and can convene meetings and call for independant reports and audits. If things are unsatisfactory, shareholders mobilise either through the shareholders association or independantly to make noise to let the board know that they are under scrutiny and are able to be voted out.

The company will succeed best by listening to their shareholders, who are also their customers, but also by taking some risks that might not be immediately palatable, like a new flavour or some new packaging. The company needs to be able to attract and retain the best experts to make the decisions to direct the company in the best interests of the shareholders and customers.

For example - What if there was some research or program that needed funding from these funds, that might result in more restrictions or more closed areas to rec fishing, for the better long-term sustainability of the fishery? If rec fishers had a casting vote, or too much influence, then there may be a risk that this research was not done, or that the management action was not taken, with the result of continuing the status quo whilst the fishery gradually declined...if it was the case that they needed to be cruel to be kind, but we had the chance to say no to the cruelty...what would happen?

Just some general thoughts...

Cheers,
Ewan

Thanks Terry for showing us, and to Recfishwest for this work - the business rules look great and are obviously the result of some hard work. A set of strategies against which the funding is to be spent is required for efficient expenditure.

But one would assume the Dept of Fisheries would already have some pretty extensive wishlists for additional funding? For example, could the creel surveys not be more routinely done, in more places? Could we just get a few more fisheries officers? These two projects alone would eat up alot of the expected revenue, and we constantly hear from the DOF that they dont have the money from core funding to do these things enough. These two things alone would provide direct immediate results without having to create another level of beaurocracy to administer the money...not to mention more general scientific research...which is expensive. The requirements are pretty well known...what is lacking is the coin.

My concern is that the administration of project grants from the RFF across so many different potential projects, and assessing the results of approved projects through annual reporting, etc, requires a whole lot more beaurocracy and expertise in such kinds of auditing. Such reporting and auditing is important, don't get me wrong, but it also costs a very significant amount of money. And then what happened if a grantee failed to deliver? Do they get less funding in the future? No funding? There would be limited numbers of potential grantees out there...

I think the business plan should be incorporated into DoF plans, but that it can be administered through existing frameworks and under-funded programs through the agency responsible for fisheries research and management, rather than creating new ones which will eat into the money...

I have worked under grant-type programs before, and I would estimate that the administration of the grant took away maybe 20%, if not more at times, of my capacity to actually do the task at hand. Multiply that over say 20 or 30 different grants and you can quickly see how much it costs to do it this way...an alternative would be to align the priorities of an existing agency (DoF) to the required goals, pour the money in and boost the capacity of that agency to deliver those goals. Delivery of them still needs to be scrutinised by groups like Recfishwest and the general public, but the actual guidance of them can just be done through normal management practices, as in the manager looks over the employees work and ensures it is up to scratch rather than the employee write a 5 page financial report every year or every quarter that someone else being paid from the very same fund has to then externally review and critique. Once written and read once, it is never read again! Yet this may have cost 2 or more weeks of valuable project work to prepare...and another person has to be employed to read the thing!! Both of which take money away from the project work...

Cheers,
Ewan

Dept of Fisheries already gets $12.5 million from Consolidated Revenue to manage recreational fishing.



Recfishwest (and the public should) want to know where that is spent and make sure that the money from new licences is properly allocated and accounted for.



Dept of Fisheries would like to have complete control over where ALL the money goes, ALL Consolidated funds and ALL licence revenue.



Is that what you people want?



If you want some say in how the money is spent, then support Recfishwest.



TerryF

=====

Beavering away in the background.......





You need Recfishwest to look after your recreational fishing future.



Who else has time, knowledge, professional approach, realistic alternatives, willingness and contacts?



Become a member www.recfishwest.org.au/MembershipDet.htm

if this does happen to my thinking the CEO's will get all the money RE: Salaries, & privileges that goes with the position, that would eat up about 30% of the funding. Or am I reading this wrong?

Dept of Fisheries already gets $12.5 million from Consolidated Revenue to manage recreational fishing. Recfishwest (and the public should) want to know where that is spent and make sure that the money from new licences is properly allocated and accounted for. Dept of Fisheries would like to have complete control over where ALL the money goes, ALL Consolidated funds and ALL licence revenue.

So would it be possible for the public to retrieve where expenditure of their recreational fishing funds went in the past through the freedom of information act?

For sure roberta - except in this case, the CEOs and the board are already being paid from normal CF - they are already there, and working on these issues, so wouldnt necessarily need to be paid from the RFF which comes from our licences...it's only a hypothetical of course and way oversimplified, but a model.

Govt agencies are audited all the time and have systems in place to track expenditure through specified projects, it is the normal way to do things. i gather from what Terry says that in the past it hasn't been a priority to track the money from licences closely - but if you want to know where the money that marron or crayfishing licences goes - you only need to see how much more fisheries officers patrol at these times to see, not to mention the research programs that go into both of these fisheries being quite alot more comprehensive than for, say whiting. They atually budget their time across the different fisheries and management actions, partly by where the money comes from. No money from general rec fishing means less effort managing or policing that fishery. More money from marron licenses means you might get checked at 2am in the morning in marron season, and there is alot of aquaculture research going on to keep them around.

Should we have a say in how it is spent - well yes, but the Fisheries department being the agency with the actual statutory responsibility is where the buck stops, and so should be where the buck is spent.

Not saying that there shouldnt be some kind of scrutiny or oversight, with some more money provided to assist that, but setting up a whole another system to track the money will be where alot of the money would be spent. So in this case, the CEO and board, and all of the people to do the overseeing WOULD be being paid for out of the RFF.

I for one want it spent on direct action. Everyone, including the DoF know what that action is, they just need the money to do it. They don't get the money from the Govt because we also need schools and hospitals and police and there are more votes in that than in more fishing compliance patrols. So we the rec fishers have been directed to kick in more money to do what needs doing.

Should DoF have control over how money for recfishing management is spent - of course! That is what they are there for, and have to do by law!

Should we scrutinise it? Of course!

Should we use the money from RFF to scrutinise it how the RFF is spent? Or use it entirely to do the things that need doing?

I dont want to see significant sums of money going to a middle man. I may have misinterpreted the business case but that is how it seemed...
As I said before though - the items for action in the business case look by and large good and well thought through.

Cheers,
Ewan

I personally think a lot of what is going on is hogwash jmo, yes a licence is needed but not to the extreems that are going to take place ,even a $50 p/y p/angler will be sufficient to fund what is needed, i do hope we see a few more officers out there ploicing the ramps as i do the right thing myself in regards to the bag and size limits but there is many out there that dont. I feel you will get a lot more people doing the right thing if the fee is at $50 inclusive and the same amount of money will be raised as there will be less people running the gauntlet and not paying the large fees which are to be put in place. but i still feel why should the boat fishos have to pay up when the lb fishos get away without it, even if the lb fisho was to pay a a smaller amount(even on a family licence) as i know a lot would not be able to afford big amounts and this would still allow the family trips fishing as we all have done weather its down to the beech or local jetty.

Saltatrix.



You could try the Annual Reports http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/docs/ar/index.php?00 and State of the Fisheries Reports http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/docs/sof/index.php but you won't find the details you might want. I don't know much about Freedom of Information.



Do you like these costs per hour? From 2007/8 Annual Report  page 32.



Service 2 – Management of the State’s Recreational Fisheries



Figures 2007/08 Target

Average cost per hour for community education and compliance Target $113 Actual $140 Variance $27 = 23.8% over budget.

Average cost per hour for management Target $106 Actual $139 Variance $33 = 31.1% over budget

Average cost per hour for research Target $98 Actual $131 Variance $33 = 33.7% over budget



The proposed business rules http://www.recfishwest.org.au/RecFishingFundBusinessRules.htm include

The interesting thing I have noticed since this entire Fishery Proposal was announced, is, the amount of boats going fishing. I live near Woodman Point Ramp, was there yesterday for a look around and the carpark was overflowing with all types cars and trailers. For the last good few weekends when there has been good weather, there has been a "mass exodus"to go fishing. In my opinion, there appear's to be a general thought, have to go fishing, must go fishing, before these proposals are legislated.
Its almost "obsessive" fishing behaviour, at the moment I am sitting back, waiting to see what the outcome is going to be after the proposal has been legislated. No point spending money on fishing gear or bait, when the recreational fishing is going to be suffocated by new legislation.

Jim.

Thanks Terry for getting back to us with that info.

saltatrix - I think DPI, DoF, DEC and Water Police share the powers that they are allowed to share already...like the Police/DEC/DPI can check and prosecute bag limits and minimum sizes and whatnot - but the actual realities of it are much more than that, cos each officer works under a different set of laws and legal pathways to a compliance bust...for e.g. if a copper busts a fisho, then they would have to do all of the paperwork from a whole other Department, go to court, etc...which is not a very good useage of a copper...etc, etc...the fines would rarely cover the costs of the process...

To be efficient, there would need to be one suite of marine laws under one Act, with one set of regulations and administered by a common body. Like a parking fine or a speedig fine both go straight to your drivers licence yet come from two different legal bodies - one is the local council, the other is the Police, but the fines and court proceedings would run under DPI who administer your licence (I think?). This is not the case with the marine officers I think...not positive about that but pretty sure.

I am not happy at the status of the fishery as my posts going back a few years now will show - but is it the DoF's fault...well...I don't think you could say that. The fact is that they have been under-resourced like most non-mining, health, police or development oriented Govt agencies, and also that necessary fishing restrictions have historically been very politically unpalatable. Also the research hasnt been around to back it up...

I have called a regional DoF office, and had the phone answered by a compliance officer. Why? Because that office didn't have the funding to employ a full-time clerical/receptionist employee. How can a compliance officer enforce compliance when they are answering phones and doing the photocopying?? What if they had to also administer their funding from the RFF??

I do get the desire and requirement for transparency and accountability, and I do commend RFW for pushing that. But I would like to be assured before such a plan would be taken up, that it wouldnt be siphoning too much money from the RFF for administration of the administration if you get what I mean.

Are there any preliminary estimates of what the administration of the RFF Business Plan might cost per year?

Correct me if I have misunderstood - for example if DoF wished to submit a 'project' that included the appointment of another dedicated rec fishing compliance officer using funds from the RFF - they would have to:

1) apply for that money at the start of the year, preparing an annual submission that includes strategic objectives, output based budgets and performance measures identifying areas in the Business Plan to which the grant is to be used;
2) At least annually, and at such other times as requested by the Minister, a special purpose financial audit of expenditure of RFF grants is conducted by an independent registered company auditor and a report provided to the Minister which indicates that the funds were expended for approved purposes and consistent with the terms determined by the Minister;
3) Create and submit an annual performance report is presented to the Minister, demonstrating achievements against outputs identified in the approved budget.

Now I would assume that in practice, DoF would put all of these things together as one package for all of the projects that they would seek grants for in a given year - e.g. an extra officer, a research program, an education program, etc would all be summarised in one set of applications, reports and financial audits. But each one of those seperate sub-projects would still need to go through the process of the proposal details, annual report details and financial report details. It is most likely that the officers involved would have to do this themselves, taking away effort from the work at hand. So e.g. a research scientist has to write the proposal and prepare the outcomes reports and financial statements etc. Or a compliance officer would have to do that, etc.

All of these things would be done already through normal DoF processes...granted it seems as though this information is hard to find - but then again it does seem to be in the annual reports isnt it? I know a few fisheries officers and the amount of paperwork they have to do already is far more than they should be, and it directly takes effort away from field work. I would hate to see them have to administer their year-to-year contract funding as well...they might quickly find themselves working for their grants rather than the other way around.

And then the DoF would have to:
• Provision of administrative support at an agreed fee for service rate as approved by the RFF committee;
• Reviewing audited annual financial statements for grants;
• Preparing a performance report to the Minister with respect to compliance with approved grant funding and performance;
• Establishing and maintaining an annual budgeting cycle relative to RFF funding, allocation and Ministerial endorsement processes;
• Timely reporting to the recreational fishing public; and
• Providing the RFF Advisory Committee with a quarterly report in table format on RFF allocations and expenditures.

All of this will cost alot of money at the end of a year - at the very least it would require an extra admin/executive officer type person (so no direct benefit to rec fishing management there, at a cost of say $50k + 40% HR loadings = $70k), extra financial auditing and performance reviewing costs (say another person, or full-time equivalent, in an office in Perth, say another $60k). Would also need some kind of communications officer to work on getting the results out in a timely fashion, maybe not full-time but still extra work so say $30k. Plus management supervision time for these people, computers and IT support, etc etc

So without actually doing anything on the ground there would be 2-3 people already being paid for out of the RFF, plus the remunerated Chairman ($?), travel and catering fees for quarterly meetings, stationary, printing and website set-up and admin costs, etc, etc.

Yes - we want to know where our $450 per year gets spent. But I would not want to pay more than say, $5-10 out of that $450 for this...

I want to make sure that I don't come across as being against this as theoretically it looks good - and the Recreational Boating Facilities Scheme looks good in that you can see where the money has gone, etc but in practice it is imperative that our licence fees are not being spent on more administration than is absolutely vital - in other words, no fluff, just hard facts and numbers, and tangible works on the ground.

The Fisheries Minister's statement
http://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx?ItemId=132159
said that the money was for research, education and compliance.

There are many of those project/program suggestions in the Business Plan that are commendable and desireable but in my opinion are not priorities for the RFF - like fishing clinics, rec fishing tourism promotion, safety, education and training (not sure who for, though) and so forth. Again, don't get me wrong these are good things, but we are so far behind the 8-ball on basic research and compliance that these should take it all I think, and for a long time into the future.

Just my 2-bobs worth! And I am sure that there are many others more experienced or qualified than me working on it.

Ewan