Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to speak on the Scaling-Up: Inquiry into the Opportunities for Expanding Aquaculture in Northern Australia report of the Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia. I open with the first paragraph in foreword by the chair, the Hon. Warren Entsch, my friend and neighbour in Cairns, where he says:

With an ever increasing global population, seafood has become a more popular source of protein. Consumption has been largely serviced by the aquaculture industry, which has increased its share of the total global food fish supply from nine per cent in 1980 to 48 per cent in 2011.

That is the essence of what this report is trying to achieve. This report talks about the opportunities that we have in Northern Australia to develop these industries. Coming from a city like Townsville I share, with the member for Leichhardt coming from Cairns, some of the most beautiful waters in the country, in the world. All around the North, if you look through the Torres Strait and around Darwin, there are pristine waters there. It is ripe to do this. But we must get the science right. We must ensure that we do the science correctly. We must ensure that we stop the diseases which can be endemic, we get the run-off right and that sort of thing. In Townsville, my university—James Cook University—is partnering with Seafarms in tiger prawn farming along the North Queensland coast. With the restrictions placed on them to protect the Great Barrier Reef, we can, if we get the science right and if we make sure it is affordable, create a model which can go anywhere in Australia—because there is no area of greater environmental sensitivity and importance than the Great Barrier Reef.

The Marine and Aquaculture Research Facilities Unit, or MARFU, at James Cook University in Townsville works in conjunction with organisations such as the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science to make sure we get the basics of our science right. It is key to making sure that what we do in this space does not impact unduly on our environment. Everything we do in this world impacts on our environment. It is how we manage those impacts that is important, and that is why getting the science right is so vitally important.

Those of us who are lucky enough to live in North Queensland and have friends who go out fishing know what it is like to taste wild-caught barramundi, wild-caught mangrove jack and reef fish. We know the difference between the taste and texture of those fish and the taste and texture of fish you get from a farm. The science that MARFU and Seafarms are doing—with their prawn farms on the coast near Cardwell—can improve the texture and taste of farmed prawns and fish. If we get the science right here then we can move on to help other places where aquaculture is being done, places like Vietnam and the Philippines. We can help make sure that they are improving their practices and managing their environmental impacts as well.

The MARFU in Townsville is quite a run-down facility—the science is fantastic, but the actual facility is quite run-down. What we are trying to do in Townsville is look at how we can expand into new premises and play in the space of educational tourism. We are seeing more and more cruise ships—last night we saw the cruise liners come here with the Friends of Tourism. Families are now taking to cruising; families are now going on cruises as a unit. When they come to a place like Townsville, they are looking for that unique Townsville experience—the same as when they go to Hamilton or any of our regional ports around Australia. If we can develop our MARFU into an interactive exchange so that parents and kids can come in from cruises, it will add another string to our bow. The pure science that these people are doing is fantastic, but to open it up to those other commercial angles around tourism and around interactivity with our greater community will also play into further development—when we have those kids coming through and seeing that this is what you can do when you are good at science, technology, engineering and maths. It is about how we move in that space and making sure that we are doing those things correctly. That is the most important thing we will do here.

I would like to congratulate the Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia for the fine work they have done on this report. It is a very good report and something that we should be able to act on. I thank the House.

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