Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges that Australia has a world-class and sustainable commercial fishing industry which contributes to national food security and delivers significant employment and economic benefits, particularly in regional areas;

(2) notes that:

(a) commercial fishing in Commonwealth waters is already highly regulated to ensure sustainable resource management;

(b) the world-wide demand for seafood is increasing; and

(c) reducing the Australian wild-catch will result in the consumption of more imported seafood products; and

(3) urges the Government to:

(a) recognise the:

(i) long-term sustainability of the commercial fishing industry is an issue of national importance because of the social, economic, environmental and cultural benefits of the industry; and

(ii) pressures placed on the commercial fishing industry by environmental activism and plans to lock up more productive fishing grounds in marine parks or other activities including offshore wind farms; and

(b) undertake to consult and work constructively with the commercial fishing industry to ensure its interests are fully respected and recognised in any proposals to increase exclusion zones which undermine the viability of operators.

I'm a proud supporter of the commercial fishing industry right across Australia but particularly in my electorate of Gippsland. We have a world-class environmental and sustainable fishery based in my electorate of Gippsland. I'll concentrate my comments today on Lakes Entrance, but this does have broader implications when it comes to considering national food security and our trade imbalance when it comes to seafood products.

It should be bleedingly obvious in the terms of the motion before the House today, and you would assume that everyone in Australia would understand, how important commercial fishing is on a social, economic, environmental and cultural basis. But what I'm finding more and more is that there is a disconnect between our rural and regional communities and our metropolitan communities when it comes to understanding the work we do in rural and regional Australia to provide the food and fibre for this nation.

The motion deliberately refers to social impacts, economic impacts, environmental impacts and cultural impacts of the commercial fixing sector, because I think it's important to note that white fellas have culture as well. We quite rightly respect and recognise the thousands of years of Indigenous culture in this country—and we're getting better at doing that every day in my electorate—but white fellas have culture too. When it comes to the commercial fishing industry, there are multiple generations of more recent arrivals in my electorate, the European settlers to the region, who have been involved in the commercial fishing sector. They've passed on their skills, knowledge and culture to extended members of their own families. That generational culture is at risk of being taken away because of the way we approach the commercial fishing industry in this country.

We are under pressure in the commercial fishing sector in Lakes Entrance from: bureaucracy; an incredible amount of red tape; changing environmental laws, which change almost on an annual basis for our fishermen; the oil and gas fields, which have taken away some of the fishing grounds; and, more recently, offshore wind proposals. I wrote to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy in a joint letter with my state member in relation to the potential impact of the proposed wind farms on the commercial fishing zones. The special squeeze on the fishing grounds is undermining the viability of our commercial fishing sector, and it's something the minister must take into account when he weighs up how to apply the offshore wind zones and how they will interact with the commercial fishing sector and their generational importance to my community.

I'm concerned that not enough people in this building understand that there are two choices when it comes to something like the commercial fishing industry—when it comes to seafood. You either grow and use your own seafood in a sustainable way or you use someone else's. In many cases in Australia, when you're using someone else's, it's being imported from countries with less sustainable environmental practices, and, in my community, we feel that we are under siege. We feel that our lifestyles and our livelihoods are under siege because of decisions being made in Melbourne and in Canberra, which directly impact some of the lifestyles and economic generators in our region.

I could change the words from 'commercial fishing' in this motion to, say, 'native timber' or 'intensive agriculture', and the motion would read almost exactly the same, because those industries are also under threat from decision-makers who simply don't understand how these industries work in our community. You either use your own in an environmentally sustainable way or use someone else's. Quite often those other countries have lower environmental protocols than what we have ourselves.

There is—and I talked about this briefly in my opening comments—a huge divide and a disconnect in this country right now between people who grow our food and fibre and those who consume most of it in our metropolitan areas. We have to get better at sharing information and building the social licence for these critically important industries to continue to exist. The commercial fishing industry is just one of those industries that is under siege, under threat, in my electorate of Gippsland. Quite simply—and I say this with no disrespect to people in metropolitan areas—we've had a complete gutful of being told what jobs we can and can't have in regional areas from people who live in cities and have no intention of ever living in our communities. We have had a complete gutful of being told what jobs we can and can't have by people who don't even want to live with us.

When it comes to the commercial fishing industry, the purpose of the motion today is to raise awareness of our commercial fishing industry, to raise awareness of the social, economic, environmental and cultural importance of that industry and to urge the decision-makers and the minister to show some respect to the families involved in those industries when they're making their decisions. Their decisions affect people on the ground and at sea in rural and regional Australia.

See this speech in context