Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of very great importance to the public. The widespread proposals for locking up millions of square kilometres of Australia's waters by the environment minister, Tony Burke, is yet another grand-sweeping statement—one of those grand gestures from Labor. In harness with Christine Milne and the Greens, Tony Burke has decided that he, the minister, is going to single-handedly save Australian waters from the marauders.

He has a bit of form in this area. He was previously the minister for agriculture and four years ago he led a delegation to discuss Australia's southern bluefin tuna quotas, along with that other great green warrior, the now education minister, Peter Garrett. He meekly surrendered almost 30 per cent of Australia's tuna quota. He was out of step then and the science was out of step. It was later proved tuna numbers were well and truly on the increase already. Some of that quota has been returned already. This minister was on the wrong side of science then and he is on the wrong side of it again.

We do not know as much about our deep waters in Australia's care as we would like to. In fact, this grand statement has the possibility of becoming another monument to the government like the Building the Education Revolution or even perhaps the Prime Minister's own favourite, Medicare Gold—you might remember that one—or pink batts. In fact, there are many in the industry who maintain that this park declaration is the new live cattle dispute.

The focus has been on the Coral Sea, and I will briefly touch on that before I get to South Australian waters. Walter Starck, from the Townsville based Australian Environment Foundation—and, according to Keith De Lacy, the former Labor Treasurer of Queensland, one of the foremost proponents, one of the greatest experts in this area—has said:

... well-managed reefs around the world can sustain an average seafood harvest rate of 15,000kg per square kilometre per annum. The average harvest rate for the Great Barrier Reef is 9kg. That's right, 9kg, or if you like a minuscule 90g per hectare.

That is really walloping the waters, isn't it? He says further:

Australia has by far the largest per capita fishing zone in the world yet we import two-thirds of our seafood—

In fact, he is not quite correct; I think it is 72 per cent. So we are underperforming in a major way in our Australian waters. We import 72 per cent of our seafood from countries that are overpopulated and are probably overfishing their waters. If the government were really serious about saving fish in the world, they would ban seafood—but I do not see them sticking their hand up for that.

I will turn to South Australia, my home state. My electorate of Grey contains around 70 per cent of the coastline. So, consequently, we have a fair bit of the fishing. The South Australian marine industry and our aquaculture industry are centres of excellence. They are well managed by anybody's standards and, in fact, are recognised around the world for their fisheries management.

The wild catch in South Australia is worth around $300 million per annum and the aquaculture contribution is around $200 million. You might think that is not linked but it is, because the bulk of the aquaculture comes from farmed tuna; in fact, initially wild caught tuna—something I spoke about before with respect to the minister's previous decisions.

It is a very interesting industry. They steam hundreds of kilometres into the Great Australian Bight, where a very sophisticated surveillance system identifies the schools of tuna. The fishermen net them and then drag the tuna hundreds of kilometres back to Point Lincoln where they are grown out in tuna farms. That industry was developed because that fishery, during the seventies, was fished to the point of extinction. At one time fishermen were catching around 40,000 tonnes a year and then it crashed. The fishermen, the industry and the government recognised that we had a serious problem and that is when serious fisheries management was put into place, the farms were established and the industry has recovered. In fact, we have never fished any species in South Australian waters into extinction.

At the same time as the Commonwealth is planning its new parks, in a related matter, the South Australian government have been on the same boat. They have been out there declaring marine parks willy-nilly all over the place. In fact, they wanted to lock up 40 per cent of state waters in marine parks—19 marine parks, 16 of which are in my electorate of Grey. I can tell you that there has been absolute public outrage, and it is being reignited by the Commonwealth's grab for an enormous patch of water around Australia. The public outrage has forced the state government back to the renegotiation process—back to the drawing board. The Australian Marine Alliance CEO, Dean Logan, has said South Australia will be hit by a double whammy with state and federal marine parks joining up.

I told you a bit about the tuna. Let me tell you about another fishery on my patch, and that is the South Australian Spencer Gulf prawn fishers. There are 39 boats operating in this industry and they turn around about $40 million a year. They are in state waters, but this is one of the best managed fisheries in the world. I have been on board these prawn trawlers. With every drag of prawns they deliver on deck, they report back to the fleet commander on the size and the quantity they have managed to fish in that area and, as soon as the size drops, they pull out of the area; as soon as the quantity drops, they pull out of the area. This is incredibly sophisticated and well managed, and it has industry backing. This is the kind of management we see across South Australian waters, and the fishing is not under pressure at any point. The rock lobster industry is well managed and the abalone industry is well managed.

The minister was just on his feet a few minutes ago telling us that the new parks are not about fish; this is not about fisheries management. Well what on earth is it about? Once you get into these off-coast waters, no-one else goes there. It is only the commercial fishermen. These are the industries that sustain Australia.

I do not think in many cases we fully understand what is in these waters. Let me tell you another thing about the tuna industry: the tuna's food once in the fish farms is pilchards. We import most of our pilchards, for crying out loud. A pilchard industry has been established near Point Lincoln. Because of the price of imported pilchards, they can only afford to steam around 150 kilometres before they return to Port Lincoln. Going further—to 200 kilometres—it starts to become too expensive to harvest them.

Around 10 or 12 years ago we had an enormous kill-off of pilchards. They virtually disappeared from our waters. This was a great calamity. No-one knew what caused it, but there was this enormous kill-off of pilchards and we wondered how quickly stocks would recover. It recovered in about four months. You could not find a pilchard in the water, and four months later they were back again. There is only one explanation for that: it is actually part of a far, far bigger fishery than was previously understood. That has not led to a greatly expanded pilchard fishery as yet because of the economic concerns that I outlined. But it shows us that we do not fully understand what fish species and what numbers are in these areas that the minister wants to now lock up and make sure that no-one ever even finds out. When it comes to compensation, the South Australian industry has lodged a claim against the South Australian government for $500 million worth of damage for losses due to the state marine parks. The federal minister has said, 'Well, $100 million will be enough for all of Australia.' In fact, the estimate is—this is Dean Logan again—40 times that amount, around $4 billion.

I would like to read a little bit from Brian Jeffriess, who fronts up the tuna fishermen's association, but is a good spokesman for a lot of South Australian fisheries. He said:

… The Government has acted very logically in fisheries management up until now - this was never required, … What is symbolic about this is in the minister's statement itself - all this about the biggest and best, the biggest and best in the world and you have to believe that's what it's about, beating your chest in front of the rest of the world rather than good ecosystem management.

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