Abstract
The objective of this paper is to examine fisheries management of the Commonwealth Government and to clarify its theoretical background from an economic perspective. It examines the recent situation of the Commonwealth fisheries, historical changes in the Commonwealth fisheries management (CFM) , and the present system of the CFM. It shows that the CFM is still in a transition phase, although the basic direction for the CFM in 1989 was established in the Fisheries Administration Act of 1991.The three overriding objectives of the CFM in the 1989 policy statement for the 1990s are:1) to ensure the conservation of fisheries resources and the environment which sustains those resources;2) to maximise economic efficiency in the exploitation of those resources; and3) to collect an appropriate charge from individual fishermen exploitng a community resource for private gain. This indicates that, by achieving these objectives, the CFM has been trying to create a sustainable economic situation, as well as sustainable biological environment for fisheries under the community ownership of the Australian Fishery Zone resources. This clearly implies that, from an economic viewpoint, the benefit principle is being appplied to the CFM, and therefore, the principles of welfare economic theory have been strongly reflected in the underlying philosophy for the CFM in recent years.
