“The 16 Indonesians rescued from their leaky boat in the Timor Sea by the navy this week are seeking economic asylum because they claim Australian laws have ruined their livelihoods,” reported the ABC yesterday.

They are unlikely to be successful — and the ABC always describes their boats as “leaky”.

This week’s events demonstrate the savvy of Indonesian fishermen. Indonesians have fished those waters for hundreds of years, but a deal struck between Australia and Indonesia in 1989 over oil and gas fields saw those fishermen lose their income, their way of life, their boats, and their freedom. Thousands have been arrested and jailed for months or even years after crossing to fish traditional fishing grounds inside the new territorial boundaries. Arrested and jailed in Australia, by our governments.

Australia followed New Zealand and effectively sold its fishing resources. They justified it by saying “all owner operator” commercial fishermen catch too many fish unless their catch is set. The trading of those catch “units” or quotas will enable market forces – aka those with the biggest wallets — to “own the fishery”. According to economic theory, only under such ownership will it be possible to have “responsible fishing”.

These Indonesian fishing communities from Roti to Papua are collateral damage from management that now sees all fish in its waters as “owned by Australians”. For a better characterisation of the previous Labor and current Liberal government’s attitude to the issue, you can’t go past Tasmanian Senator Abetz, who said yesterday that Indonesian fishing families:

… cry poor because they can no longer break into Australia … and no longer plunder rape and pillage that which belongs to Australia.

Rape? Plunder, pillage? Boats are commonly built by hand and run by three people using hand held fishing gear. The catch is dried and every bit of the shark, the fins and flesh, is used — unlike the licensed Australian northern shark fin fishery. Their catches are often smaller than that from amateur groups in Australia. Abetz was possibly confusing them with what he endorses as forest management in Tasmania – the pillage and plunder parts at least. Forest management also has a severe impact on the marine environment.

Australian contracted marine scientists, academics and managers have created hundreds of jobs and a multi million dollar bureaucratic and research empires by exploiting and exaggerating the threat of Indonesian fishermen in “our waters”. Other concerned academics and human rights lawyers are 100% loyal to this “science”, throwing their support behind inadequate aid programs to grow seaweed and other aquaculture.

It defies common sense that people handlining and snorkelling from small wooden boats are a threat to the marine environment compared to pollution from massive mining projects flowing into the same waters. Even human rights lawyers and sympathetic academics can only call for additional aid — not the restoration of fisheries at the risk of contradicting fellow academics.

Both Australia and Indonesia could save hundreds of millions of dollars in this pointless enforcement and create thousands of jobs by licensing Indonesian fishing in what was their waters. Then both nations could distinguish the rarely caught large boat corporate poachers from the locals — rather than returning company boats for a small “bribe like” fee as they do now.

Some common sense, please.