Andrews Government claim to hook a million fishers comes up empty

Questions remain unanswered on how a key report on recreational fishing estimated the state has 1.1 million anglers.

Political clout: Anglers from southeast Melbourne’s sand-belt seats are crucial to wining government in Victoria.

The Victorian Government claims to have recruited 1.1 million Victorians to recreational fishing, despite a major slump in angler licences.

In 2014 the-then Labor opposition made an election promise to spend $81 million on a Go Fishing Plan to lift the number of recreational anglers to a million by 2020, as part of its pitch to sand-belt seats of southeast Melbourne critical to winning Government.

But since then the number of recreational licences sold in the state has fallen from 315,182 in 2012-13 to just 250,760 in 2020-21.

The Government and its Victorian Fisheries Authority has ignored this drop, instead commissioning global consultancy Ernst and Young to report it had reached the target as part of its Economic Value of Recreational Fishing and Boating analysis.

“A total of 2991 individuals started the survey with 1000 individuals completing (it),” EY reported. “The survey reached 563 individuals who fished and 321 individuals who boat and 116 people who neither recreationally boat nor fish.”

EY has failed to include significant information in its reports.

EY failed to include any details of how it then calculated that “1,113,506 Victorian residents (juniors and adults) participated in recreational fishing.

However on the basis that about 18 per cent of those surveyed — 563 of the 2991 — were anglers it is possible to calculate that about 1.1 million of Victoria’s 6.4 million men, women and children were engaged in fishing in 2018-19. However using the same logic, with the finding 268 of the 563 anglers were female, would mean 520,000 of the state’s anglers were women and girls — flying in the face of VFA’s own Recreation Fishing Survey of anglers in 2018 that found 88.8 per cent were male.

The Weekly Times asked Fishing and Boating Minister Melissa Horne and EY to explain how they calculated the original 1.1m participation rate.

The Minister’s office stated the survey results should not be applied to assume the number of male fishers versus female fishers as the sample size was “not significant” and the results on statewide participation were based on the 2018 survey.

However the 2018 survey makes no mention of the participation rate, given it was limited to an online questionnaire of 14,121 people who held Victorian fishing licence between 2013 and 2018, supplied by the VFA.

Ms Horne backed the EY report stating “the study findings confirm that since 2013-14, there has been both an increase in the total number of Victorian residents fishing in Victoria and the total number of trips made.

“More than one million Victorian residents were fishing in Victoria in 2018/19. This demonstrates that the Government’s Go Fishing plan, both Phase 1 and Phase 2, have successfully achieved its aims.”