Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As Peter Dodds McCormack wrote in our national anthem Advance Australia Fair, 'Our home is girt by sea'. But it is a sea much larger than he could ever have imagined in the 1870s. Thanks to international agreements, Australia now has responsibility for oceans double our 7.7 million square kilometres of land. Only the oceans of Canada and France are larger. Australia's oceans are big but their size is not all that matters. They are special for many other reasons. The area of our marine environment brings together three of the world's most important oceans—the Southern, the Indian and the Pacific.

Different depths, temperatures, salinities, light, circulation and seabeds create habitats that support unique and globally significant ocean life. According to the 2010 International Census of Marine Life, Australia has the most diverse oceans in the world with 32,889 plant and animal species, and scientists believe this may only be 10 to 20 per cent of the species that call our oceans home.

Australia has the world's largest area of coral reefs, the largest single reef—the Great Barrier Reef—and the largest seagrass meadow, in Shark Bay. We also have the third-largest area of mangroves and more than half of the world's mangrove and seagrass species. Our oceans provide life support for six of the seven known species of marine turtles, 45 of the world's 78 whale and dolphin species, and 4,000 fish species, which is 20 per cent of the global total. Most countries with a coastline have one or perhaps two climate zones that influence their ocean life. Here in Australia we have the lot—tropical, subtropical, temperate, subantarctic and antarctic. In the tropical north, coral reefs, extensive tidal flats, seagrass meadows and mangroves fill the seascape, shelter the shoreline and provide critical habitats for Australia's rich tropical ocean life. Moving south, the water temperatures gradually decline. Subtropical waters are wedged between the tropical and temperate zones, where they are shaken and stirred into a remarkable living cocktail. Ocean life is very different in the cooler temperate zone along Australia's southern coast. The biodiversity in this area is found nowhere else in the world and at unmatched levels. This includes 70 per cent of macro-algae such as seaweeds, 80 per cent of fish and 90 per cent of animals like sea stars and molluscs. Way down south, the cold restricts most ocean life to subantarctic islands, the coast of Antarctica and nearby waters.

Our big oceans have a broad range of water depths down to more than 7,000 metres. Great mystery surrounds the ocean life in Australia's deepwater mountain ranges and massive submerged canyons. Some, like the Perth Canyon off the coast of my Fremantle electorate, are larger than the Grand Canyon in the United States. Perth Canyon is one of only three feeding grounds in Australia's oceans for blue whales, the largest animals ever to have lived on the planet. Much of Australia's ocean life is found nowhere else; most of it we are yet to discover, and there is a great deal to be learnt from what we have and have not found. Over the millennia, Australia's oceans have become the lifeblood of the nation, pumping oxygen into our lungs and water into our veins. They are a constant force within our lives. The future of the ocean and of our way of life and our economy are inseparable.

Our oceans provide us with food. In Australia 500 ocean species are commercially harvested and worth more than $2 billion each year. Seagrass meadows and mangroves in estuaries, where our oceans meet our rivers, are critical for commercial and recreational fishing. In Queensland up to 75 per cent by weight of the commercial fish catch is estuarine. Of course, we know our oceans are good for our health. Why else would we call the summer afternoon ocean breeze that cools down Fremantle and Perth the 'Fremantle Doctor'? Australia's oceans are also at the forefront of the fight against human disease. Drugs derived from sponges, cone snails and bioluminescent bacteria are helping battle cancer, HIV-AIDS, chronic pain and bacterial infections.

Where our oceans meet the shore mangroves, it is the beaches, sand dunes and coral reefs that protect coastal communities from wave attack and storms, while seagrass meadows process wastes. Australia's oceans store 'blue carbon' in seagrass meadows, mangroves and seaweeds. If the world's nations stopped the loss of blue carbon from oceans and 'green carbon' from forests and woodlands, they would mitigate up to 25 per cent of greenhouse pollution. Our oceans are in many ways the foundation of the Australian lifestyle. Most of us choose to live by the seaside—indeed, 85 per cent live within 50 kilometres of the coast—all of us would visit the coast at some point for holidays or recreation and about five million of us fish. And of course Australia's oceans drive the economy. The annual oceans based industries of fisheries, petroleum, shipping and tourism were estimated by the Australian Institute of Marine Science in 2008 to be worth $38 billion. So, rather than just 'girting' our home, Australia's oceans are part of its foundations and fundamental to our economy, culture, traditions and lifestyle.

Our oceans have given us a life and a lifestyle, but what have we given them in return? Polluted estuaries, bleached corals, underwater waste dumps, reductions in fish numbers, broken coastal habitats, introduced marine pests, the ongoing loss of mangroves, seagrass meadows, salt marshes and kelp forests, and now climate change—the list goes on. Whether we are politicians, conservationists, oil producers, commercial and recreational fishers, scientists, teachers, divers, ship owners, tourist operators or beachcombers, we must acknowledge that the oceans belong to each and every one of us. We all have a stake in creating a better future for them.

Science tells us our oceans are in trouble but it also shows us what has to be done—the charting of a new course that can recover our ocean life in this generation and protect our marine ecosystems for the generations to come. The first big step in this journey is the establishment of a network of large marine sanctuaries in Australia's oceans. Evidence is building in Australia and around the world that allowing some ocean areas to be free from fishing and other extractive uses is an essential conservation tool. This is not only true in the tropics but in temperate waters too. Marine scientist Ben Halpern reviewed 112 studies and 80 marine protected areas and discovered that fish populations and fish size all dramatically increased inside reserves and that that ocean life spilled over to nearby fished areas. In another study, sanctuary zones around the Palm and Whitsunday islands in Queensland were shown to contain around four to six times the density and abundance of coral trout compared to similar fished areas. Within Jervis Bay Marine Park, red morwong have shown a significant increase in abundance and size distribution in sanctuary zones relative to fished areas. In my own electorate of Fremantle, the sanctuary zones around Rottnest Island have densities of spiny lobster 34 times higher than in fished areas. They also have higher lobster size and egg production than the fished areas contain, while numbers of Western Australian dhufish are five to 10 times greater and breaksea cod three times greater.

Marine sanctuaries can also become sites for scientific research and help build understanding of ocean ecology, fishing impacts and how to improve fisheries management. It is without question that they help stabilise fisheries that exist beyond their boundaries. Marine sanctuaries can aid overfished and threatened species recover their populations and create jobs in their management and encourage increased tourism, recreation, research and education. Marine sanctuaries can store blue carbon where mangroves and seagrasses are protected and they therefore build the resilience of ocean life to climate change.

To help protect and recover Australia's ocean life, it is critical that we establish marine sanctuaries in our oceans. Their size, number and location should be based on solid science and the proper consideration of the region's social, economic and cultural values. It is critical that sufficient funds are set aside to ensure that those commercial fishers affected by an increase in the protection of our oceans are given the necessary assistance and support.

Polling indicates that the creation of marine sanctuaries will receive support from most Australians, even from recreational fishers. Two years after the 2004 rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which increased the percentage of the park free of fishing to 33 per cent, James Cook University surveyed the views of recreational fishers. Most thought the rezoning was a good idea and that it had either no effect or a positive effect on their fishing. When Recfish Australia recently polled recreational fishers it found that, if they were no longer able to fish in an area that had become a sanctuary, they would feel comfortable about simply finding somewhere else nearby to fish. In survey results released just last week by Patterson Market Research it was found that almost two-thirds of West Australians support protecting at least 30 per cent of the waters that constitute their big blue backyard in the form of marine sanctuaries. In the same poll, six out of 10 West Australians who regularly fish believe marine life is in decline and an even greater number, 72 per cent, support the creation of marine sanctuaries to protect fish stocks and other marine life.

But resolving the issue of too little protection in our oceans goes further than simply creating marine sanctuaries. We must also tackle the other threats that are facing our ocean life, including loss of habitats, introduced marine pests, water pollution and climate change. As well as protecting ocean life, this will also protect those elements of our economy and lifestyle that depend on healthy oceans: our beach and oceans, our recreational and commercial fishing, and our ocean based tourism. Having well-protected and healthy oceans that are sustainably used is, I am sure, a desire of all members of this House, and I urge everyone's support for a network of large marine sanctuaries in Australia's oceans.

See this speech in context