Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I did not wish to speak before the minister previously because I wanted to hear the minister’s answer. The Greens will be supporting the government’s amendment to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. I am just foreshadowing that. We thought the previous bill was okay but we think there was a lot of misunderstanding of the bill in the second reading debate and in committee, but the government’s amendments do clarify things so we will support it. We will not be supporting Senator Joyce’s amendments basically for similar reasons to that pointed out by the minister. We think you need more detail on the definition of ‘attempting to fish’ and the issues that Senator Macdonald was just talking about. I do think you answered your own question in terms of those activities having to relate to attempting to take fish or having the apparatus to take fish.

I also bear in mind the comments that the parliamentary secretary made—that is, that this has to be dealt with through the legal process. You have to provide evidence, and that was something that was also brought up during the committee proceedings. In fact, the briefing that the committee had prior to the committee proceedings was that all of this goes through the legal procedures. There are such things as being able to prove that people were in fact attempting to take fish or searching for fish for the purposes of taking fish.

We do not support the opposition’s amendments. We will be supporting the government’s amendments. We are also mindful of the fact that this is also linked to the issues around proving an aggravated offence, and we are mindful of the complexity of those issues. We will therefore be supporting the government’s amendments but not the opposition’s amendments.