The role of creating an environment for sustainable aquaculture development throughout Australia is critical in reaching the industries primary goal of doubling the value of the Australian seafood industry to $4 billion by 2017 and generating more than 2,800 new jobs in rural and regional areas. Enhancing a regions capacity to undertake sustainable marine aquaculture development from an initial policy driven perspective brings with it a heightened level of investor confidence and regional based skills development and acquisition.

A recent report undertaken by the Australian Productivity Commission (2004) found amongst others that:

• Aquaculture production is subject to an unnecessarily complex array of legislation and agencies.
• State aquaculture and/or fisheries legislation have multiple objectives and these are not always clearly defined.
• State government departments primarily responsible for aquaculture regulatory arrangements often have potentially conflicting
of policy development, implementation of regulation, industry promotion and development, and research.
• New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia have made limited progress with marine aquaculture planning. This may constrain marine aquaculture, or result in ad hoc approvals for individual sites, and conflicts over resource use.

The Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries have identified a number of areas that have to be addressed in order to develop a sustainable aquaculture industry in Queensland, two of these are Policy and Legislation as well as Aquaculture planning;

There is also an identified gap in aquaculture planning within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authorities own Position Statement on Aquaculture Development within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (2004) states that ‘Guidelines for the assessment of applications to conduct intensive aquaculture in the GBRMPA need to be developed’.