Fisheries management attempts to maintain fished stocks above stock depletion levels that increase risks of over-exploitation and potential on-going damage to recruitment. This is rational for maintaining profitable fisheries and retaining ecosystem services provided by such stocks. However, once determined to be sustainably fished how often should formal stock assessments be conducted, and how expensive do they need to be? An array of relatively simple assessment methods are available capable of providing determinations of stock status, providing management advice (catches or effort), and are simpler to explain to stakeholders. Should one continue to use sophisticated stock assessments that can synthesize the implications of a wide array of different data and provide robust solutions to fisheries management problems? Or should one save financial and other resources by not collecting such an array of expensive data time-series (for example ageing data is very expensive) and restricting oneself to relatively simple stock assessment methods? Given the shrinking resources being made available for stock assessments right across Australia this is not a trivial question. This presentation summarizes the case on both sides and puts forward an answer designed to increase the general understanding of this issue and stimulate more informed discussion of this problem.