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

Senator Abetz is quite right: Senator Campbell is doing a marvellous job. Even those of you who do not appreciate Senator Campbell’s skills would have to accept that he is doing a magnificent job in trying to gather support against the Japanese. I do not think that anyone can criticise Australia in relation to our approach to whaling internationally.

There are always these sorts of comments, ‘You send gunboats down to protect Australia’s waters insofar as fishing is concerned; why don’t you do it with whaling?’ The simple answer is: where we protect patagonian toothfish with gunboats, we do the same for whaling because it is within Australia’s exclusive economic zone. Once outside that zone, we cannot help with patagonian toothfish and we cannot help with whaling either. It is the high seas, and it concerns the issue I mentioned before that really does need to be addressed at an international level. It is something that Australia has actually started that 50-year journey to try and address.

Senator Siewert mentioned regional fisheries management organisations, and I think she mentioned that Australia is at the forefront of activity to establish regional fisheries management organisations in our sphere of influence. The most recent has been the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Management Commission, chaired, I might say, very well by an Australian official, Mr Glenn Hurry. That is an organisation into which we and some of the environmental NGOs have put a lot of effort. We are now getting that new RFMO across the southern Pacific Ocean. There is work being done in the south-west Indian Ocean. Australia has been instrumental in getting the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission operational—I have often described it as being dysfunctional. We have actually achieved something along the line of getting that organisation functional and operating as it needs to operate to stop the huge overcatch of tuna in the Indian Ocean that will see the destruction of the species if the IOTC cannot address the issues.

There are a few other areas about which I want to take particular issue with Senator O’Brien. He talked about information sharing with the states. I wish Senator Abetz well in dealing with the states. He seems to have got off to a slightly better start than I did. I invited the Western Australian minister here on three occasions. On two occasions, he made the agreement to come but just did not bother to turn up, and then he criticised us for not sharing information with them. And information which did go to some of the states ended up in the newspapers, particularly that rag from Western Australia, the West Australian, where secret operations were printed on the front page. Why would you share information with these sort of people?

We have come a long way, but there is still a long way to go. This particular bill before the Senate today is another step in the journey that the Australian government is taking to beat illegal fishing whenever it occurs and to look after the marine environment. I certainly commend the bill to the Senate.