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

It is a privilege to follow the honourable member for Lingiari in this debate. I want to place on record my appreciation of the efforts of the honourable member for Lingiari and Senator Crossin, from the Northern Territory, who arranged for me and other colleagues on the maritime task force to meet a range of people in Darwin who are concerned about illegal fishing, including the Northern Territory Minister for Primary Industry and Fisheries and his officers. They also arranged for us to go out to Maningrida to meet the Indigenous community there so we could listen to and share their concerns about the current situation. I do thank the honourable member for Lingiari. My understanding of the problem has been increased immeasurably.

The Fisheries Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fishing Offences) Bill 2006 amends the Fisheries Management Act 1991, the FMA, and the Torres Strait Fisheries Act 1984, the TSFA, to provide for increased fines and custodial sentences of  up to three years imprisonment for persons caught fishing illegally in those parts of Australia’s territorial sea that are subject to Commonwealth fisheries jurisdiction. Currently there are custodial penalties in both acts but they generally apply only to non-fishing offences such as obstruction and providing false information.

The new penalties will apply to fault based indictable offences and not to the strict liability offences. The area covered by this legislation is a zone beyond the three nautical mile state and territory jurisdictional limit and the 12 nautical mile federal jurisdictional limit. Australia’s exclusive economic zone, which extends from 12 nautical miles to 200 nautical miles, has been excluded from these new penalties because Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and, as such, is prohibited from imposing custodial penalties on foreign fishing offences beyond the 12 nautical miles territorial sea limit.

As the honourable member for Lingiari and other speakers on this side have indicated, Labor supports this bill. It is a step forward but it is a minuscule one. I am very pleased to see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, the member for Flinders, at the table for this reason: when I was speaking on the Fisheries Legislation Amendment (Cooperative Fisheries Arrangements and Other Matters) Bill 2005 [2006] the honourable member for Flinders sought to intervene and asked me a question. I was happy to take it. He said to me:

I ask whether the member for Chifley endorses the agreement that the foreign minister has just come back with from Jakarta this very day in relation to joint cooperation between the militaries and joint cooperation between the two countries.

In other words, there was an agreement for joint patrols between Indonesia and Australia. Parliamentary Secretary, where is that at? Why have we no projections in the budget about the effectiveness of these joint patrols? Why can’t we be told—if not me, the people of Australia—when they will commence? How many vessels will be involved? Will we use the now unmothballed minehunters—the slowest of any naval ship; a vessel completely unsuitable for this task because of its slowness—as a joint patrol? Whilst I would welcome joint patrols by Indonesia and Australia, I think the parliamentary secretary knows, as I know, that that is years away and it is no solution.

The honourable member for Lingiari mentioned that in 2005 there were more than 13,000 sightings of possible illegal foreign fishers operating within Australia’s fishing zone. I will repeat that: 13,000.

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