AARON PATRICK: The hidden agenda behind the bipartisan backing of Tasmania’s Maugean skate

There’s a tank at the University of Tasmania where scientists care for a fish with no name. The fish is precious, ecologically, financially, and politically.

There was a moment, which has passed, when it was possible Australia’s future might rest on this sole representative of a species few have heard of. A fish with a name as suitably primordial as its stingray-like appearance: the Maugean skate.

Last week, in the dying hours of the 47th parliament, the skates — whose natural and only habitat is a large harbour on Tasmania’s rugged west coast — were responsible for an unusual bout of bipartisanship.

If you believe the Greens and independent Hobart MP Andrew Wilkie, Labor and Liberal MPs conspired to condemn the species to extinction. Less biased observers think the warring parties had a bigger prize in mind: Lyons, Labor’s one vulnerable Tasmanian seat, which could be crucial in a close election.

Fish farming

The problem originated with another fish, the Tasmanian salmon. Politically, salmon farming is to Tasmanians as mining is to West Australians — a thriving domestic industry despised by environmentalists.

In the skate’s fate, activists saw an opportunity to strike a blow to the gills of Huon, Tassal and Petuna, the state’s fish-food giants. Their Macquarie Harbour salmon farms were sucking up so much oxygen, according to a federal environmental study, skates co-habiting in the waterway were going to be wiped out.

The Bob Brown Foundation used the warning to support a campaign to have the industry shut down.

After years of criticism, the pressure group, and others, have turned eating salmon on the island into a test of environmental purity. Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art refuses to serve it. Even Leonardo DiCaprio, who has recently taken to producing animal documentaries, condemned Macquarie Harbour’s fish farmers.

In November, the federal government allocated $29 million to saving the species, of which $5 million was to be used by the University of Tasmania to work out how to breed the fishes in captivity - creating a kind of public sector fish farm.

Visiting Davenport in February, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave another $3 million to the breeding program, a sum that suggests the skates have panda-like reproductive habits.

Not another Dodo

As the most visible creation of this generosity, Tasmania University’s oldest bred-in-captivity skate celebrated its first birthday in December. Video footage was sent to media outlets.

The university’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies swears the skate survives to this day, providing hope to fish aficionados around the world that its species will not join the Dodo.

But are salmon really killing skates? Tasmania’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment is not so certain.

While oxygen shortages are a problem, it says, so are fishing nets (which have been banned from the harbour), inbreeding, attacks from fur seals and changes to the flow of water from upstream hydro-electric dams, which are central to Tasmania’s efforts to prevent global warming.

Scientific research also delivered good news for the skate, although not the campaign to save it. In mid February, scientists from the Marine Studies Institute reported they captured 102 skates over 15 days last year, the biggest haul since the bountiful days of 2014, when they bagged 163.

Extra oxygen was given credit. Nature, in her own mysterious way, had brought the skate back from the brink.

Protecting salmon jobs

With the Tasmanian Liberal Party ready to make the skate/salmon trade off an election-differentiating debate over working-class employment, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stepped in. Salmon jobs are good jobs, he declared, although not in so many words, while spooning the fish into his mouth at a Tasmanian farmers’ market.

Last Monday, with Canberra’s political reporters locked in their offices for the budget, the Government changed the law to prevent environmental rules being used to challenge fish farms in Macquarie Harbour, where they have operated for over two decades.

In the Senate, Sarah Hanson-Young of the Greens pulled a real salmon out of a bag to demonstrate her disgust at the decision.

Given a choice between protecting Tasmania’s salmon industry or attacking the Government from the left, every one of the independents financed by Simon Holmes à Court’s Climate 200 fundraising company voted with the Greens. On Monday, the Bob Brown Foundation launched a legal challenge to the changes.

Mr Albanese’s support for aquaculture may not succeed, electorally. Opinion polls and betting markets show Lyons swinging Liberal, which would give the Coalition three of the state’s five lower house seats.

The Prime Minister has told wealthy donors in private he expects Labor to keep the seat. Either way, he has blunted criticism in the poorest state that the Labor Party has been captured by inner-city environmentalists.

Which means more fish for everyone.