Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Protection of the Sea Legislation Amendment Bill 2018. Australia's neighbouring waters are home to beauteous, biodiverse ecosystems of unparalleled wonder. The Australian government has always encouraged the protection of our marine parks, and a recent announcement by our government supports that. Only a few weeks ago, we announced the largest-ever single investment in the protection of the Great Barrier Reef, totalling $500 million.

However, one Google search made me realise that there is still work to be done in protecting the Great Barrier Reef. The statistics are certainly alarming. Each year, 180 million tonnes of toxic waste is dumped into our oceans. In waters around Australia there are, on average, 4,000 microplastic fragments per square kilometre, although some hotspots have concentrations of around 15,000 to 23,000. Further, 100,000 marine creatures die every year from plastic entanglement, and these are only the ones that have been found. Finally, scientists have declared 200 marine areas, amounting to the size of the UK, as dead zones where no life organisms can grow.

Australia's beaches and coral reefs have been detrimentally affected by this futile dumping of waste. Contrary to popular belief, our beaches aren't littered with plastic dumped a million miles away and brought here by ocean currents; our beaches are littered with the plastic remnants of our own consumption. What litters our waters isn't merely solid plastic waste. Large amounts of toxic liquids, including dredge materials, industrial waste, sewage sludge and radioactive waste are illegally dumped in waters near our island home. Moreover, operational discharges from ships, such as sewage, galley scraps and cargo residues, are also tipped into our bordering oceans. Given the fact that five to six million shipping containers are sailing the world's oceans at any one moment, these operational discharges amount to a vast proportion of waste.

The International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, or MARPOL, in which Australia takes part, aims to reduce the amount of dumped operational discharges through six annexes which respectively regulate the following pollutive substances: oil, noxious liquid substances in bulk, harmful substances carried by sea in packaged form, sewage from ships, garbage from ships and air pollution from ships. These annexes are made Australian law via the Protection of the Sea (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Act 1983.

The amendment bill suggested today aims to implement in the act alterations to annex V. The existing legislation outlines several conditions to be met before the discharge of cargo residues is permitted. For instance, with exception, the discharge must occur in seas outside a special area of Arctic waters, and the discharge must occur while the ship is proceeding en route and is as far as practicable from the nearest land. The amendments to such conditions are as follows: if the cargo residues are residues of solid bulk cargoes, the discharge will only be permitted if the master of the ship has a written declaration that the solid bulk cargoes have been classified in accordance with the criteria in appendix I of annex V of MARPOL and found to be not harmful to the marine environment. Essentially, this amendment will make it mandatory for shippers to classify and declare their solid bulk cargoes as harmful to the marine environment or non-harmful and inform the master of this classification. The master will thus be able to determine the appropriate manner of discharge for the residues of these cargoes according to whether the ship is located outside or within a special area of Arctic waters.

There are additionally a couple of minor amendments included in this bill. If legislated, the bill will alter provisions of the act to allow regulations and orders to apply, adopt or incorporate relevant documents or instruments. This change parallels provisions in other existing legislation that implements MARPOL and allows Australia to keep up with the frequent amendment and adoption cycle of the International Maritime Organization. The bill will also alter the Protection of the Sea (Shipping Levy Collection) Act 1981, removing the need for regulations to prescribe the manner in which a protection-of-the-sea levy notice may be served in particular circumstances. This will allow obsolete and now pointless regulation to be repealed. Just like any other Liberal policy, these two amendments will enhance efficient practices in this industry.

In my electorate of Mackellar, almost every suburb is bordered by a beach—a beach where children build sandcastles, bury themselves in the sand and swim until the sun goes down. I'm therefore focused more than most on the health of our seas. We must ensure that our water, in which our children—and my daughter—swim, remains free of toxic substances and grimy waste.

Scientific research has shown that polluted oceans potentially engender hormonal and reproductive problems, nervous system damage, kidney failure, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and heart disease. Of even greater significance is the fact that 70 per cent of the oxygen we breathe is produced by marine plants. If we continue to dump toxic waste in the ocean, our sources of oxygen will diminish.

Those who do not care for the environment should at least care for the health of their own children, not to mention themselves. I want my daughter to be able to play on a beach as clean as those in my youth. We should aim to be the first generation that can say we left our children a better environment than we inherited. Through Australia's participation in the international marine organisation, we have taken steps to count back the years and bring our oceans to the state they were in 50 years ago. We have enacted legislation to prohibit sea dumping, conserve our biodiverse marine ecosystems and protect our waters from the adverse effects of shipping.

We have made great progress, but there is still a long voyage ahead. The fact that it takes 400 years for plastics to degrade in the water, the fact that we have spilt 1½ million tonnes of oil in the past 30 years and the fact that our millions of crates of cargo are producing tonnes of ocean-dumped waste are ringing alarm bells, reminding us to take action for our sake and for the sake of future generations.

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