Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I respectfully but strongly disagree with the member for Brisbane. I want to urge the ministers for transport, fisheries and the environment, who each have a role in this matter, not to approve the supertrawler Margiris fishing in Australian waters. I regard it as very significant that yesterday the Tasmanian parliament passed a motion opposing the operation of the Margiris in Australian waters, and that each party—Labor, Liberal and Greens—voted in support of the motion. This very clear statement by the Tasmanian parliament should carry weight with us here, and it no doubt reflects public concern in Tasmania, just as there is public concern in Victoria.

On 11 August, I attended a protest rally against the Margiris at St Kilda Beach in Melbourne. In Victoria there is concern not only from marine conservation groups but also from recreational fishermen. In the western Victorian city of Warrnambool, following a public meeting of recreational anglers, two Warrnambool city councillors said the federal government should 'ban these trawlers raping our oceans', and said there was potential for the trawler to take most of the food supply for fish targeted by recreational anglers. Councillor John Harris said Victoria has a $1.2 billion a year fishing industry and in the south-west region it is worth $200 million.

The object of concern, the Margiris, is twice the size of other commercial trawlers. It can stay at sea for 60 days and can catch, automatically sort and pack 250 tonnes of fish a day. It can carry 6,000 tonnes and is in effect a mobile factory.

I am concerned that globally we have been overfishing, that many fish stocks are dangerously depleted as a consequence, and that supertrawlers, which scoop up whole schools of fish and leave nothing behind, are a major part of the problem. Supertrawlers from Europe and China, and the Margiris specifically, have been accused of plundering the fisheries of developing countries, especially in West Africa. Senegal has banned them from its waters. In December last year Margiris and other EU trawlers were ordered out of Western Sahara waters. As recently as March this year the Margiris has been fishing off Mauritania and Morocco, where most targeted fish stocks are considered fully exploited or overexploited and local fishermen find it increasingly hard to catch fish. European supertrawlers were responsible for the collapse of the South Pacific mackerel fishery, where fish stocks have collapsed to less than 10 per cent of original estimates.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation concluded in 1998 that global fishing capacity was 2½ times greater than global fish stocks could sustain. As recently as June, at the Earth Summit in Rio, Australia reaffirmed its commitment to work towards cuts to fishing subsidies, which the Margiris is a beneficiary of.

The Margiris is planning to come to Australia to fish a quota of 18,000 tonnes of jack mackerel, blue mackerel and redbait. A key issue in this debate is the role of redbait, jack mackerel and blue mackerel in the marine food chain. They are the food source for larger fish such as tuna and dolphins, and the food source for sea birds and sea lions and fur seals. Not only does the supertrawler threaten these larger species by taking away their food source; it also threatens dolphins, seals and sea birds by catching and drowning them in its huge nets. People in Warrnambool have expressed concern that southern bluefin tuna stocks off Victoria's south-west coast could be affected—the annual tuna run there is a major drawcard for anglers.

The jack mackerel quota has been doubled, at the request of the fishing company Seafish Tasmania which wants to bring the Margiris here. I think that using the Margiris to catch these fish brings with it a real risk of localised depletion of these species, with ongoing negative consequences for both recreational fishermen and the marine environment, and I urge the ministers concerned not to allow this to happen.

In saying this let me make it clear that I am not against fishing, and this is not some plot or conspiracy to put an end to commercial or recreational fishing. Some of my family members are very keen fishermen. I think the description Tim Winton gave to MPs in May of his happiest moments, his most vivid memories, as always involving standing on a beach, beside an estuary, on a jetty, holding a fishing rod or a net, was a cracker. He also says, 'We all know we're pushing the ocean too hard'. I want to be true to his vision that one of the things we in this parliament will be able to quietly let slip to a granddaughter as she reels in her first flathead, or our grandkids after they have been snorkelling in a marine sanctuary, is that we, in this parliament, helped saved Australia's oceans.