Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water and Population and Communities. Will the Minister update the House on what the government is doing to protect our oceans? What obstacles are there to this approach?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Corangamite for the question. There is a lot at stake today in terms of whether or not Australia continues to be the world leader on protecting the oceans and whether or not we continue a process which has been going for 20 years, and had been supported under the Howard years but has had a complete backflip under this Leader of the Opposition.

On the weekend I saw a big article in The Australian that told me that there were going to be up to 1,000 people rallying in Torquay who were going to be very angry about this process. After The Australian article—and I will table it—there was no media coverage of it at all. Then I discovered the reason must be the funny way 1,000 people was calculated. Those numbers were in some way short—they used the shadow Treasurer to do the figures, clearly. Why would so few people turn up to the rally?

What the shadow minister for the environment did not tell them was that when they were making their speeches from the tinny they were speaking from—they spoke in a tinny, though admittedly it was on land—they did not let people know that if you wanted to go from that rally to an area where you are not allowed to fish, you would have to go out, turn left, go across the Bass Strait and, after 460 kilometres, you would get to the first place where you could not fish, a place where the no-fishing zone was put in place in 2007 when the member for Wentworth was the minister for the environment. The nearest restriction on recreational fishing was put in place by the Howard government when they were in charge.

This is a process where the science it has been based on was commenced under the Howard years. Some of these plans on the inside cover have the happy smiling face of the member for Wentworth and the member for Dawson for science. As for the process of consultation when they say, 'No consultation happened at all,' there were five separate rounds of consultation and three-quarters of a million submissions engaged—in a process that works. What we found for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park work which has now come back with restrictions put in place by the Howard government that they now conveniently forget, is that fish stocks do improve. Coral trout numbers are six times what they used to be. Crown of thorns starfish are at a quarter of the levels in the protected zones that they are in the rest of the park. It is a process which for 20 years had had bipartisan support, and which the opposition are hoping will come to nothing tonight.

Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have a supplementary question. Further to the minister's answer, could he explain the impact if marine parks management plans are disallowed?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks for the supplementary question. I notice that the shadow minister is not the one who has moved the disallowance. He has deferred it off to the member for Calare. The member for Calare in a piece of organisational brilliance has not only moved disallowance for the Coral Sea, for the North-West Zone, for the North Zone, for the South-West Zone and the Temperature East; he has also moved disallowance for the South-East Zone, which was the Howard government's zone. So they are actually attempting in the vote tonight to abandon the exact plans that had been called on by the Howard government.

This shows exactly how far the negativity has gone. It is not enough to outdo and to try to wreck conservation attempts by this government; they have got to attack what little environmental legacy there was from the Howard government and get rid of that too. Make no mistake, if disallowance goes through tonight it begins to become legal for oil and gas drilling to happen in the Coral Sea. It then becomes legal for oil and gas drilling to happen off the Margaret River area. Areas like the Diamantina Fracture Zone and areas like the Perth Canyon that are up for protection now with 20 years of science and all consultation—and what is their approach? In the power of wanting to say no, just like they did with the super trawler, if it is about protecting the ocean, this opposition has no interest.