Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Ten long years! The boats are faster, and today they are coming in starbursts. What that means is that they come in groups of 30 so that if they are intercepted they can disperse and escape. The best the government can do now, 10 years on, is to say that we are having talks with the Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs and that we might be able to have an Indonesian patrol boat and an Australian patrol boat trying to intercept 13,000 illegal boats coming to this shore. This is an absolute scandal and disgrace.

I will talk about the pearling industry, which is at risk. Why is it at risk? It is the last wild harvest pearling industry in the world. What we have there in Broome and on our north-western coast is unique in the world. Every federal member, not just those who come from that area and are supposed to represent it, should take pride in the pearling industry. Darwin Harbour has already had a strike of black stripe mussels. It cost the authorities $3 million to clean out Darwin Harbour. I say to the parliamentary secretary and the officials: what are you going to do if black stripe mussels hit our pearling industry? It is a world renowned industry, and Australia, through great entrepreneurs, is adding value to the industry as well. That industry can be wiped out because of your indifference to the threat that these 13,000 boats represent.

The honourable member for Chisholm mentioned One Arm Point and the Bardi people. Their entrepreneurial spirit, I thought, was refreshing. They said—not as eloquently, perhaps more bluntly—that they just wanted to be free of government interference. They wanted to be able to get on and manage their own lives.

Like the honourable member for Chisholm, I wanted to bring home a trochus shell, because I had never seen a trochus shell before. I did not have any idea of its size or, when polished, its beauty. I agree with everything that she said. This community at One Arm Point, with not one lousy dollar out of the environment budget, are re-seeding the reefs that the Indonesian fishermen are completely stripping of trochus shell, whether full sized, medium sized or undersized—and anything else that is on the reef, such as clamshell or turtles. They are stripping everything bare. They have wrecked their own reefs. But there you have an Aboriginal community investing their CDEP money, $30,000 each year, in hatching trochuses and re-seeding the reefs. Not one Commonwealth dollar is going to that, which I think is an utter disgrace. But congratulations to the community.

It takes three years, once you put it back on the reef, for a species to regrow. We and the Bardi people cannot keep up with the way that the shells are being ripped to pieces. Sooner or later there is going to be an international incident. The community is not going to put up with it. If the government refuses to protect Australians, Aboriginal communities on the coast of Western Australia will take matters into their own hands. This is not a prediction; I regret to say that it is a promise. That is why I appeal to government members: do not be indifferent, do not be lethargic and do not be inert. Please do something to protect our heritage and their heritage.

I concur with what the honourable member for Chisholm has reported to the chamber. We heard a fisherman saying, ‘I fought in World War II so that we could have safe workplaces all over Australia.’ He was an ordinary sort of a guy. He was pretty impressive because he was a genuine Australian. He said that there is going to be a shooting incident, because Australian fishing boats are already being boarded. I am not predicting that they are going to be boarded; they are already being boarded. Wouldn’t you think that that would ring alarm bells amongst the coalition? Sadly, no. He said that it will not be a case of if; it will be a case of when. I think that that is really terrible.

It is true that the government does intercept some of these boats outside the coastal waters. Do you know what they have? They have what they call a ‘catch, kiss and release’ policy. I think it is dedicated to Rex Hunt, who has really pioneered it! What they do is catch the boat and they say: ‘You naughty fellows! We’re going to take your fishing gear off you. Off you go, and do the right thing.’ You could not send a bigger and clearer message to these people: ‘Come back.’ You could not say more clearly to those people who are financing this international organised crime of illegal fishing: ‘It’s risk free. All you’ll lose is your gear’—and sometimes that gear has actually been pinched off Australian boats. What is the policy, Mr Deputy Speaker Lindsay? I know you take a great interest in defence and national security matters. Let me repeat it for you. It is ‘catch, kiss and release’. It is an utter disgrace.

Sometimes your political party develops a policy and occasionally you have a couple of doubts. That is the case for me, I must say, in relation to the coastguard. But if anything has convinced me of the utter need for an Australian coastguard so we have boats available to intercept these illegal fishing vessels 24/7—that is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, not just on some random defence exercise or having one Indonesian patrol boat and one Australian patrol boat—it is this issue of illegal fishing. Of course we want to get the Indonesians to pressure those fishermen who are coming. But I say with great respect to the parliamentary secretary: you really need to crack down on the financiers. You will always be able to source cheap Indonesian fishermen. I do not mean that pejoratively, but they are very poor and of course they are only too willing to try to earn a dollar or two. If you really want to close it down, go for the financiers; and the first thing you need to do is stop this ‘catch, kiss and release’ policy. You actually have to make it difficult for those who are financing these boats. The loss of the gear is utterly and completely inadequate.

There are a couple of other things I want to say. If you are an Indonesian fishermen unhappily incarcerated in Broome and you have any medical problems that cannot be solved locally—and they do put great stress on local health systems—you will be flown to Perth, where a medical problem will be attended to. Or if you have a dental problem—some problem with your dentures, for example—it will be attended to. If you are a local Broome resident you might not be able to get those fixed. But if you are an illegal fishermen, don’t worry; the Commonwealth will fly you down to Perth with a guard, get your dentures fixed, get a tooth pulled, get a filling done and then bring you back. I am not saying we should not have humane treatment of these people who are paid to crew these boats. It is just a pity that some of the dollars that you are prepared to put there you will not put into detecting and capturing more, and killing the trade off.

In conclusion I want to make these points. There are issues for Aboriginal communities in terms of the trochus shells. They have been doing this for hundreds or thousands of years—and, gee, they are doing a good job and it would be nice to see an environmental dollar out of the Commonwealth’s purse going to encourage what they are doing in the hatchery. There is the trade in sharks and also the illegal fishing of fish. There are three separate issues. Not all of them do the same thing.

One of the scariest things that was said to us was that, if you are successful in cracking down on trochus shells, if you crack down on the sharks and if you are able to crack down on the fishing, then, because this is international organised crime—and that is what it is—they will move into your pearling industry. They are flexible, they are adaptable and all four are at stake. It is an absolute blight on this country that this government has ignored the problem and will not do anything. As the honourable member for Chisholm said, the most distressing thing in going to Western Australia and listening to those people was this sense that we do not—

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