Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Surely any reasonable person listening to that must start to query a situation where a marine protected area is not a marine national park because it is the sea floor that is being protected, not the waters above. You can fish in the waters above but presumably not drop your line—or whatever other equipment you have—to the ocean floor, or the area above it, unless you are a petroleum explorer. Then you can come in and set up your establishment on top of it and drill right through it. Could the minister explain the government’s logic in this?

The minister, Senator Colbeck, does not know how far whales travel and does not even know how far exploratory sound bombing of the ocean floor travels but says he will get that information for us. We, of course, need that information for these particular amendments which are to protect marine reserves and the associated ecosystem. So I ask the minister if he could give us information on, firstly, the logic of allowing petroleum exploration damage to the benthic zone and to the ocean floor and, indeed, below it, and the risk which goes with that of oil spills—the attendant risks that we all know about—while keeping it as a marine protected area from a fishing point of view. And could he please tell us when he will get the information which is essential to these motions—basic information which no minister should come in here without—about the movement of cetaceans and the distance in which sonar testing can be picked up.