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

Tourist operators running fishing charters into the Coral Sea and scientists conducting research merely need to apply for free permits, which will simply allow DEWHA to monitor the level of activity taking place within the area as part of the assessment process and the development of the bioregional plan for the East Marine Region. The affected area of the Coral Sea, which lies between the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and the boundary of our EEZ, is, people will acknowledge, a long way off the coast. In fact, this makes it difficult and expensive to get to. As a consequence there are, in fact, few recreational fishers and fishing charters operating in this area who are likely to be affected. The impost on them, we believe, is very small—particularly when you consider the conservation value and the environmental values of this area.

As we understand it, at the moment there are nine commercial trap and line permits operating in the Coral Sea. We believe that decisions about the management of our natural resources need to be made on the basis of the best scientific evidence available and with a view to ensuring the sustainability and long-term health of those resources and the industries that depend upon them. We need to be reasonable in balancing the demands of industry—who are often driven by the immediate commercial imperatives rather than the long-term imperatives and the need to protect these areas—with the long-term interests of management and maintaining these resources so that we can continue to maintain the health of the fishery and the environment on which it depends, to ensure industry productivity for the long term.

In other words, we need to be looking not just at the short term but at the long term. We believe that this is what this process is designed to do. We believe that we have a responsibility to make sensible decisions and not short-term populist ones. We also have the tools available to work with industry and the community to provide a fair and equitable process to support industry into the future, as has been demonstrated previously. We are well aware of the problems that have been experienced in the past—both on land and at sea—when public discussion and debate has taken place, about natural resource management and conservation management, without an effective interim process being put in place during this discussion.

When we look at the history of land caring in the country in recent years, we see that the greatest periods of clearing of private land have corresponded with a public debate around the possibility of introducing restrictions on land clearing. Much of this activity has been unnecessary and, in our opinion, ill-informed, and the result of the use it or lose it attitude. This is deliberate misinformation and attempts to whip up hysteria to oppose what we believe are sensible conservation measures.

We also need to not forget the contribution to Queensland and in fact to the Australian economy made by tourism, and the need to preserve and enhance the existing natural values of an area that, in the future, may draw increasing numbers of tourists to this area. Of course, we then need to put in appropriate management plans to ensure that those tourists do not damage the very thing that they have come to look at and love. There are possibilities for us, and for conservation, to promote this area that will lead to it being enjoyed by many people in the future. But we need to make the decision about which areas will go into the marine protected area and we will need to put in place appropriate management plans.

We believe that this proposal is a sensible proposal. We are concerned that there has been a great deal of misinformation about the impacts of this particular proposal. There has been a lot of hysteria in this debate and misinformation about what it actually means to people, about the impact of the conservation zone and about the compliance and enforcement mechanisms. There has been some misinformation that is simply not substantiated by the law itself about the likely consequences for recreational fishers and charter operators operating unknowingly in this area.

DEWHA’s paper states the compliance process and what will happen if people unwittingly contravene the Coral Sea Conservation Zone regulations. I draw your attention to the department’s discussion paper and the process it undertakes for compliance and enforcement policy. It sets out the framework for sensibly dealing with these sorts of issues and lays out a process of progressive and proportional response. The focus is on using communication, education, timely information, advice and persuasion to encourage and achieve cooperation, with legal enforcement very much an option of the last resort. That is in the discussion paper.

When collaborative approaches fail, the policy lays out a range of sanctions that escalate in severity in response to the lack of compliance and the scale of its impact. This policy lays out specific criteria for determining the appropriate level of response: cancelling permits, injunctions, remedial orders, fines and criminal prosecution. In other words, there has been some hysteria around this. The department clearly sets out what its process is for noncompliance. But the point here is: this is a conservation zone designed to enable the discussion of the consultation process to put in place the permanent marine protected area, which, I am quite sure, the broader community is very strongly supportive and in favour of.

I am deeply concerned that there has been this push to disallow this conservation zone. I am wondering what the motive is for getting rid of any appropriate conservation process to ensure the protection of the Coral Sea, because that has certainly been the rhetoric and the nature of the debate that has been occurring. The message that is being sent to the community is: we do not want any marine park over the Coral Sea; we do not want to protect the Coral Sea—it is doing very well thank you very much. They are trying to isolate the Coral Sea from the broader issues of the marine environment, whereas I have said that the marine environment in the world is suffering. Coral reefs around the world are declining, we have lost 75 per cent of our coral reefs around the world and 90 per cent of our big fishes have already been lost. One of the reasons for the need to put some conservation protection over this area is to protect those species that are left because we have so few natural, unaffected and virtually pristine areas left in the world and it is imperative that we protect these areas. The measures that have been put in place by this conservation zone do not impact on commercial fishers, recreational fishers or on charter boat operators other than requiring them to provide information for data collection that will enable a more informed debate over the marine protected areas. These people get free permits—they do not have to pay for permits—but they do have to provide information. As I understand, it was the previous government that put in place the process for establishing marine protected areas in terms of requiring extensive community discussion.