Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

And you do too; you live much closer to the Indonesian capital. We have to be good neighbours to the Indonesians, and they have to be good neighbours to us. I am sure they want to be. In my visit with the foreign minister, Mr Wirajuda, and the fisheries minister, Mr Freddy Numberi, before Christmas to discuss these issues, both these quite senior ministers indicated that they wanted to be good friends with Australia across a wide range of areas. If the fisheries issue was a needle in that relationship, they wanted to fix it up. They were both very keen do to that. A number of initiatives arose from that meeting and from a previous meeting between Mr Downer and the foreign minister. It is perhaps too much to say that we got a signed agreement, but there was a general understanding that we would have to have joint patrols along the EEZ line and, more importantly, we would have get the Indonesians on side to look for the Mr Bigs and do the sorts of things that Senator Bartlett and Senator Siewert have been, rightly, saying we need to do.

We need to track where the money is coming from to support the transport of the fish once it is brought to shore. We need people on the ground in Indonesia following those things through, seeing where the money is coming from and going to. We cannot do that. It is a sovereign country, so we can only do it if we have the Indonesians on side. I am delighted to say that in those general discussions there was a broad agreement that Indonesia would help.

We also raised the issue that I think Senator Bartlett referred to, that UNCLOS prevents the jailing of people on the high seas without agreement—I emphasise the UNCLOS terminology of ‘without agreement’. I think it is essential that we get agreement from the Indonesian government that we and they can both—it has to be a two-way street—jail in the first instance illegal fishermen apprehended on the seas between the 13-nautical mile and the 200-nautical mile area. If we got the agreement of the Indonesian government and we were able to form a treaty along those lines, we would be able to jail in the first instance.

As I said before, jailing probably is not the best outcome; prevention is the best outcome. Again, I think Senator Siewert or Senator Bartlett may have raised this issue. If they have not, others have said to me over a number of years: ‘These Indonesians are poor. You bring them in and put them in an Australian jail. They get a fresh set of clothes. They get the best toiletries. They get a health check they’ve probably never had in their own country. They actually get paid in some of the state jails and they actually go home having had a good look at another country free of charge and perhaps with more money in their pocket than they have ever had before.’ There are people who doubt the effectiveness of jailing.

We have to prevent them from coming and we cannot do that by ourselves. All the money in our budget would not provide us with enough gunboats and warships to do that. We have to get the Indonesian government on side and we have to work very cooperatively with them at the marine border, the EEZ line. We also have to get the support of the Indonesian government to do the work in the fishing ports in Indonesia.

We are doing a lot of work. We are doing it with the Indonesians and we have done some of this in the past. We have sent out a lot of information to Indonesian fishermen advising them what is permitted and what is not permitted, but more needs to be done. It can only be done if the Indonesian government are totally on side. I think there is a desire for them to do that and it is something the Australian government should be pursuing very forcibly.

At the estimates committees I asked the officers from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade whether this action was proceeding, and they assured me that it was, although I was not overly confident at the tone of their responses. I am sure that the wheels move slowly but—and perhaps Senator Abetz may be able to update us on this; my information is a little dated these days, although it is dated back to estimates committee insofar as that is concerned—it is essential that we work very closely with the Indonesian government.

I want to challenge a couple of the issues raised by other speakers. Senator Siewert, again, in spite of what I think are your party’s crazy ideas in many areas of public debate, in the area of fisheries management and fisheries protection, we have been fairly closely aligned. Your knowledge and interest in this area is something that I have appreciated. You should be aware, however, that Australia was one of the first signatories to the international plan of action on sharks. We have a plan of action and we are carefully pursuing it. Some of the state governments were a little recalcitrant coming into that plan. We eventually got them there. We are doing a lot of work in international trade measures and, in many instances, we have done that in very close cooperation with some of the environment NGOs around the world. Australia, as you rightly say—