Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I would like to speak about the Australian fishing industry. Gladstone was described as a fishing village long before a wide range of industries made their homes in the Port Curtis region. In fact, this applies right up and down the Central Queensland coast, including to towns like Bundaberg and Agnes Water. Fishing fleets, charter boats, local anglers and processing plants have long been a part of the scene on the Central Queensland coast, and in this respect it is similar to many other regions around Australia's vast coastline. We are an island nation—we cannot forget that.

More than 100 regional communities and many more businesses rely on the fishing industry for their livelihoods. The Australian fishing zone is the third largest in the world. Despite this, wild catch production in Australia represents just 0.002 per cent of wild catch production. Fisheries are the sixth largest food-producing primary industry in Australia. Seafood is the fifth most valuable source of protein. We export $1.5 billion and import $2.5 billion worth of product, which makes Australia a net importer of fish products. Australian seafood only makes up 30 per cent of domestic supply.

Our fishers operate to world's best practice. Imports from three countries make up the bulk of the 70 per cent of imported product: Thailand 26 per cent, China 14 per cent and Vietnam 12 per cent. In 2009 an estimation of adherence to the UN code of conduct put Australia fourth out of 53 countries, with Vietnam ranked 45th, Thailand ranked 42nd and China ranked 22nd. This is a major concern for the future. How will we feed our growing population both in Australia and worldwide? Australia is and will continue to be an important player in this regard.

Queensland already has a massive area of its waters under protection, which in itself is not a bad thing. However, there are no species of fish under threat in these waters, so it stands to reason that any increase in these protections must be based on scientific evidence. Current proposals are to lock up or extend our current 'no go zones'. Before these proposals are implemented, we must research the whole matter fully and any decision must be backed by solid scientific evidence.

The other major concern is: how do we police the extended protected areas? We do not have the resources to protect our current marine parks, so how will we patrol and police another 1.3 million square kilometres of protected waters in the Coral Sea? NORFORCE in Northern Australia is already overstretched in protecting Australia's fishing grounds. With cutbacks to our Defence budget, the situation has to be of growing concern for our defence forces in Northern Australia. Our Army Reserve is feeling the cuts, and our ability to increase surveillance of our marine parks is being severely undermined. The proposed marine reserves would take the overall size of the Commonwealth marine reserves network to 3.1 million square kilometres. That is an area bigger than Western Australia and Victoria combined and would mean by far the largest representative network of marine protected areas in the world.

We have to be smarter about issues such as this. Importing 70 per cent of our seafood makes no sense if we are serious about food security. We cannot forget that Australians are good at fishing sustainably and responsibly. We have to look after this industry. Anything we do must be clearly thought out. Common sense appears to be a rare commodity in the government these days. I urge the government to think very carefully about decimating our fishing industry.