TL;DR

• Supermarkets Coles and Woolworths source salmon from Macquarie Harbour (Tasmania). Salmon farming here threatens the only home of the endangered Maugean Skate.
• Businessman Geoff Cousins yesterday alleged Woolworths was 'colluding' with Coles on this issue, as reported in the Australian Financial Review.
• SIX and our campaign partners have now had two consecutive years of globally significant shareholder votes calling on the supermarkets to stop sourcing salmon from the harbour and help save the skate.
• In response to this board failure, SIX will focus our 2026 efforts on director elections - including Woolworths Chair Scott Perkins if he stands for re-election.

Yesterday businessman Geoff Cousins alleged Woolworths is ‘colluding’ with Coles on salmon sourcing from Macquarie Harbour, the endangered Maugean Skate’s only home. The news was splashed across the front page of yesterday’s Australian Financial Review.

We have now had two consecutive years of globally significant votes against the Woolworths board on this issue.

Yet instead of responding with the urgent action that the skate and their shareholders need, it seems they’ve responded with sideline chats with their biggest competitor.

In response to this board failure, SIX will focus our 2026 efforts on director elections - including Woolworths Chair Scott Perkins if he stands for re-election.

‍You can find me talking about this in today’s AFR article, which explored the escalating calls - from SIX, from author Richard Flanagan and from the Bob Brown Foundation -  for a probe into these alleged talks.

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In recent meetings with Woolworths, our team at SIX had continually encouraged the supermarket to respond to these demands from shareholders. We urged Woolworths to be proactive and set a plan, including a timeline, to transition away from sourcing salmon from the Harbour.

They told me that it was ‘inevitable’ their supply of salmon from Macquarie Harbour is going to be reduced. Given the inevitability, it makes no sense for Woolworths to cling onto these unnecessary nature and extinction risks. We had high hopes the supermarket was just about to share a meaningful plan! Instead of real action, they are merely removing the ‘responsibly sourced’ labels from their Tasmanian salmon (as Coles did in 2025).

But the supermarkets putting an end to their blatant greenwashing of Tasmanian salmon is not the same as taking real action to stop the likely extinction of the Maugean Skate.

So it’s time to turn our attention to the directors who have failed to listen to more than two years of shareholder concern (and the many years of broader community concern raised by those in the Tasmanian community and beyond before that!)

Please help amplify the news on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. The supermarkets are feeling the heat and we need to keep up the pressure.

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• Loussikian, K and Kwan, C. (2026, 16 April). Geoff Cousins accuses Woolworths chair of 'a kind of collusion' with Coles. Australian Financial Review.
• Kwan, C. (2026, 17 April). Richard Flanagan joins calls for probe into supermarket salmon talks. Australian Financial Review.
• Bob Brown Foundation (2026, 16 April). Bob Brown Foundation says Coles-Woolworths salmon talks are 'environmentally unethical if not illegal'.‍
• Colitco (2026, 16 April). Woolworths Coles Collusion Claims: The off-the-record salmon talks that could shake Australia’s retail duopoly.

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