Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

If you go to the Coral Sea declaration, the eastern boundary of the declared closure adjoins waters that are heavily finished by foreign fishing vessels. We know that the presence of Australian vessels is something of a deterrent to this fleets targeting our fish in our own waters. That has to be the case because the government has so downgraded surveillance of our fisheries that there is going to be no-one there to actually supervise and ensure that other countries simply do not take up the fish that we are seeking to preserve. With the level of surveillance we have on our waters at the present time, the only vessels that will be fishing in these new marine reserves will be those who are not Australian. Other vessels will simply come in and take the fish that we have nicely fattened up for them in our reserves and they will sell them on around the world. The government cannot have a credible reserve policy unless it also has an appropriate surveillance policy.

For as long as I can remember, I have been listening to claims by environmental extremists that the Great Barrier Reef is being destroyed, it is being ruined. They claim the crown-of-thorns starfish destroyed the whole Barrier Reef at least five times a year, if you listen to the media. The coalmining is going to destroy the reef, the ships running aground have destroyed the reef—all 2,000 kilometres of it. Captain Cook ran aground there. That must have destroyed the reef as well. The farmers, of course, are always destroying the reef with chemicals and fertilisers. The tourists destroy it, the dams and the urban development destroy it. The droughts, when there is not enough water for it, destroy it. When there are floods, it gets destroyed again. If you listen to the environmental groups, the Great Barrier Reef has been destroyed every year. You know, when I visit the reef, it is just as beautiful. magnificent and awe-inspiring as it has ever been—a true wonder of the world that needs to be looked after and needs to be carefully managed. But what this government is doing is in fact damaging the capacity to manage that area rather than enhancing it.

We all know that the Coral Sea declaration is not about protecting the environment; it is about green votes. In May 2009 the former Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts used emergency provisions in the EPBC Act that gave him the ability to declare a conservation zone.

The conservation zone provisions are meant to provide emergency protection over an area—protection from some sudden, unexpected, emergent threat—to give the minister some breathing space to consider what long-term protection might be needed. This move was a clear and obvious abuse of the act. There was no emerging threat. There was none. There were no applications for new fishing licences, no applications for mining. There was nothing. The minister did not even try to make one up. He just abused the act.

According to marine scientist Professor Ray Hilborn, from the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, the motives for non-government organisations going into denial about the fisheries management in Australia are deplorable. He recognised our fisheries management as the best in the world. I have heard the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities proudly boast that our fisheries management is the best in the world and I agree with him. But Australia has been subject to a relentless antifishing campaign that is causing the doom and gloom myths from misrepresentations of overseas examples of inadequate fisheries management.

Hanging up a 'no-fishing' sign over so much of Australia's coastline is just another stunt so the Prime Minister can laud herself at the United Nations Rio Plus 20 conference in Brazil this week. She is now tired of lecturing Europeans on economic management. After all, with her $174 billion deficits, she does not have much to boast about. On fisheries management we do have a lot to boast about, but the Prime Minister is going to overlook that and instead look to the massive increase in areas that are being locked up around Australia's coastline.

As I said before, we import 72 per cent of the seafood we eat, despite having one of the largest fishing zones in the world. In 2009-10 Australia produced 171,000 tonnes of seafood from wild catch. These statistics are stunning. By comparison, New Zealand's catch was 441,000 tonnes, from an area half as big as Australia's. They caught three times as many fish in an area half the size. Thailand catches 14 times more fish than we do, despite having a fishing area 10 times smaller than ours. So it is not hard to see that the government's marine park declarations have nothing to do with environmental management of our seas. We are exporting our demand for seafood to countries less concerned about marine management than we are. Australia harvests fewer than 30 kilograms of fish per square kilometre of its ocean territory, compared to a global average 20 times greater than that, at around 750 kilograms per square kilometre.

So we are not raping and pillaging our fisheries. There is no-one in the world that can match our management record, but there is a human cost. About 100,000 people are still left directly employed in the Australian fishing industry and 3.4 million people engage in recreational fishing each year. Senator Conroy confirmed in the Senate on Monday that these parks will have a significant impact on the recreational fisheries. In fact, recreational fishermen, in an area inside 100 kilometres from shore, will be shut out of a staggering 63,000 square kilometres. So the reality is that this will have an effect on fishermen, their families and their communities.

Labor is penalising the wrong people. Australian fishers have been doing the right thing, going about their business in a sustainable and environmentally conscious way. Now, all they are going to be offered is some more compensation. Some of these people have already had several lots of compensation. They have been moved from place to place. I acknowledge that sometimes it was at the hands of our government. But at least under our government $250 million worth of compensation was supplied—not that that was much comfort to the families who had been so adversely affected.

But this government is now offering only about a third of that amount of compensation—we are told $100 million—and yet the area to be affected is vastly greater. It is clear that there will not be decent compensation available to all those fishermen affected, let alone to the communities around Australia which have been adversely affected.

This is a policy response that is in search of a problem. The problem is not that Australian's waters are overfished. We harvest only 30 kilograms of fish per square kilometre. The global average, as I said before, is 20 times greater. We import so much of the fish that we eat. We are now going to import it from fisheries that do not have the standards of management that we have in this country. So, please, Minister, do not respond flippantly. Many families and businesses are affected. Some have already been hurt many times. The majority of fishermen have already left the industry, but there are many who will want to continue to work in this industry. We should certainly not be expected to continually increase our reserve areas just because environmentalists demand more and more and more.

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