Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Brown, I do not have the specific information here with me about whale travelling distances, sonar travelling distances or the rate of fall-off, for that matter, of sonar sounds. I can undertake to get that for you on notice and I am quite happy to do that.

In relation to marine parks and marine protected areas, my understanding of a marine park is that it is essentially a whole of water environment with floor to surface protection of that environment around the marine park. As to the key fundamentals of marine protected areas, particularly those that are being proposed at the moment in the south-east of Australia as the first of a range of MPAs proposed around Australia, the principle objective is protection of the benthic environment—in other words, the ocean floor and the immediate environment of the ocean floor: the floor itself and what is growing on the floor.

That brings into play the capacity for different methods of operation of fishing, particularly, that are determined to be of low impact within those zones. That includes recreational fishing and, in other areas where there is no impact on the benthic environment, commercial fishing. There are other classification areas that under the proposals are no-take zones, which are protected completely. There is capacity for exploration through those areas but, as I said during my presentation earlier, any formalised application for those issues needs to go through an application under the EPBC Act in accordance with the regulations of 1999.