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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 314 asked in the Legislative Council on 9 May 2018 by Hon Michael Mischin

Parliament: 40 Session: 1


SHARKS — HAZARD MITIGATION — DRUM LINES
314. Hon MICHAEL MISCHIN to the minister representing the Minister for Fisheries:
I refer to the minister's media statement of 9 May 2018 wherein he uses figures provided by his department to claim that to install drum lines at certain locations and surf breaks would cost an estimated $50 million to $75 million a year, and ask him to provide a breakdown of those costs by line item, and the information and data on which those costs were based?
Hon ALANNAH MacTIERNAN replied:
I thank the member for the question. The Minister for Fisheries has provided the following information.
The following has been used to estimate the cost of SMART—Shark-Management-Alert-in-Real-Time—drum lines at certain locations and surf breaks in Western Australia from Geraldton to Esperance, based on information provided by the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries. The following costs have been applied across a number of different deployment scenarios, including patrolled beaches, 31; locations where incidents have occurred that are not patrolled; other popular tourist locations; and surf breaks.
      (a) Individual contractor costs of between $1 300 and $1 800 a day. Note that during the Barnett Liberal government's shark cull, in which drum lines were used, the cost of contractors was more than $5 000 a day.
      (b) It is estimated it would take eight contractors to patrol 10 locations.
      (c) The capital cost is $5 000 a drum line, inclusive of infrastructure costs such as buoys, anchoring and telecommunications.
      (d) As the estimated number of drum lines at each location varies between five and 10, an average of seven drum lines a site has been used.
      (e) Figures are regarded as conservative as —
          (i) there are increased logistics at surf breaks. In order for a contractor to access the drum line within 30 minutes of an animal being caught, many surf sites would require a vessel to be in attendance all day, given that these sites are often near rocky or remote coastlines and are not near boat ramps or harbours;
          (ii) estimates do not include costs for administration, contract management or project evaluation; and
          (iii) estimates do not include the costs of obtaining environmental approvals.