Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

It is interesting that the government talk about management of legislation through the place, yet today we have indicated that we will give up the hour that the parliament gives us to debate an urgency motion. We have already given the government some other time today—an extra couple of hours—so that they can get their own legislation debated. It is interesting that they bring their appropriations bills on late on the last night of the sitting. This is so that it is unlikely that people will want to speak to the appropriations bill, but that is going to happen tonight.

In relation to this piece of legislation, it is interesting that Senator Ludwig refers consistently to Senator Boswell. I do acknowledge Senator Boswell's passion for this piece of legislation, but it does happen to have my name on it, Senator Ludwig—as you leave the chamber. It is quite a simple mechanism. It is not an unusual mechanism to be seen in legislation. In my experience, it is very, very responsibly used. In fact, one interesting piece of evidence that came to the Senate inquiry was from a former Labor speaker in the Victorian parliament, whose view was quite strongly that this legislation should be supported, because one thing that a disallowance provision does is promote proper consultation. If the government is guilty of anything in the development of its marine protected areas it is its failure to properly consult. This has been abysmal to the extent where it was a major issue at the last election—and perhaps that is why the government does not want this piece of legislation debated. There were attempts through the committee stage to put this bill off to report without there being any opportunity for us to debate it in private members' business. I have to thank Senator Cameron for at least conceding that we could get it reported last week, but there were attempts to push it back beyond this week. It is quite an important piece of legislation. We are talking about impacting on a significant area of Australia's marine environment. Senator Siewert seemed to imply that we were against marine protected areas. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, after the evidence to the inquiry presented by the Pew Foundation, and after the glowing description of our efforts in protecting the environment, I was asking Senator Siewert to give me her preferences. Indeed, I had a personal involvement with the south-east marine protected areas. When we undertook a process after the draft maps were released, and the Greens and the media all said that we were going to try to shrink it, we actually delivered 20 per cent more area. We delivered 20 per cent more area than the department put up, but we actually reduced the impact on industry by 90 per cent.

Senator Siewert also talked of science. Some of the science that has been presented in this debate is what genuinely concerns people like Senator Boswell. We had a report provided by the Ecology Centre—used extensively by NGOs to promote the process. The report said that 50 per cent of the south-west zone needed to be locked up, based on the science in this report, to effectively protect marine stocks and ecosystems in the south-west. We then find in the fine print that 50 per cent is an input to the report, not an output to the model. That is the sort of thing that we need the opportunity to be able to investigate and have a look at. It is absolute rubbish.

We do support the process of marine protected areas. We support the process of them being done responsibly and with proper consultation. But we do believe that the parliament should have the opportunity if there are problems with the consultation process and within the system to deal with those problems. To that extent, when I discovered that there was an error and some concerns about the drafting of the legislation, I wrote to the committee before inquiry. I put that on the table before the inquiry so that the committee could actually deal with that. Yet during the inquiry it was very difficult to get the chair to actually focus on it. I think we have been really upfront about this all the way through, and I think it is reasonable that we get the opportunity to debate this properly and have it put to a vote in this chamber.