Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

That is just factually untrue. The whole concept of multiple-use zones is that various forms of fishing are allowed and some things are excluded. So that was fundamentally untrue—and he is holding up the map where you will see the different colours. I should ask him to table the iPad! If you go through the map there you have a situation where you have large multiple-use zones. Don't forget as well that as a result of the consultation, where the charter industry in particular wanted to make sure that where there is that line of reefs—starting north at Osprey, down through Shark Reef, down to Vema Reef—they got better access to that. What did we do? We made sure that, once you got south of the major dive sites, the contours of the boundaries went right into very closely matching the contours of the reef itself. Shark itself got recoloured from green to gold so that it came in as an area open to recreational fishing. But, according to those opposite and according to this debate, none of these changes happened. According to those opposite, every detail, every part of consultation that I have gone through, every part of the scientific research that has been happening for more than a decade—none of that ever occurred.

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