Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

As my colleagues have observed, the government seems absolutely disinterested in the Fisheries Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fishing Offences) Bill 2006, at least insofar as the backbench members of the government. I wonder what that says about them, frankly. I wonder why the member for Leichardt has chosen not to speak on this legislation, I wonder why the member for Solomon has chosen not to speak on this legislation and I wonder why the member for Kalgoorlie has chosen not to speak on this legislation. After all, whilst the member for Solomon’s electorate does not have any coastal water—that is all in my electorate—he is always someone who seems to opine on every other issue to do with Northern Australia, regardless of whether or not it has got anything to do with his electorate; yet he is nowhere to be seen on this piece of legislation. We do not see the member for Kalgoorlie, who has a huge coastline and has had large numbers of foreign incursions in terms of foreign fishing vessels caught off the Western Australian coast. We know the member for Leichardt has a great deal of knowledge about Cape York and the gulf, but again he is not here to advocate the government’s position on this legislation either. I wonder why that is. I commend the member for O’Connor, who did have the foresight to get up and make a contribution and, from what I heard of it, in parts a very worthy contribution—and I would not say that often about the member for O’Connor’s contributions.

This bill will provide for the first time detention and fines as penalties for people caught fishing illegally between three and 12 nautical miles from Australia. These, of course, are the waters in Australia’s fishing zone between the state and territory jurisdictional boundaries and the 12-mile limit of the federal boundary. Given the scale of the problem of illegal foreign fishing in Australia’s northern waters, this is only a tiny contribution to fighting the problem of illegal fishing. What it does do—and I note the contributions from my colleagues on this side of the chamber—is highlight the government’s abysmal failure to properly police Australia’s northern coastline and to deter foreign fishers from illegally plundering fish stocks. It is not—as I have had cause to talk about it in this chamber on a number of different occasions—as if these foreign fishers are just swanning around Australia’s northern waters, throwing their nets or lines out, taking the catch and then nicking off. That is not the case at all. What we know to be the case is that foreign fishers are using Australian shores, landing their vessels and in some cases setting up caches of food and even going so far as sinking wells for fresh water.

We know from observations made by Indigenous rangers and by Customs, Quarantine and, indeed, Defence that they are using sites across the coastline to deposit their catch, principally shark fin. We know from observations made on Groote Eylandt that they actually use the land to deal with the catch. We know from observations made by other Indigenous people across Northern Australia that these people may spend some considerable amount of time on Australian soil. Not only does foreign fishing raise major problems and concerns for us but clearly quarantine issues are of great importance to us all and, potentially, defence issues which go to the heart of the so-called war on terrorism.

We have heard a lot said by the government over the years since 2001 about the need to protect Australia’s borders. What they have demonstrated by their lacklustre performance and failure in the area of prevention, detention and deterrence of foreign fishing vessels is how porous Australia’s northern borders are. It is almost as if any Tom, Dick and Harry could get in a canoe or an outboard and just make landfall. That is about the sum of it.

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