Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise and supp­ort my colleague Senator Colbeck and others who have spoken in relation to this matter, including Senator Boswell, in whom there is some considerable passion. Today I want to put on the record some of the background to the coalition's approach to this. I know that Senator Colbeck and others have already said it but I want to repeat that we support a balanced approach to marine conservation. It was our policy in the 2010 election, and we stand by that. But what is at the nub of this bill, which is being driven by Senator Colbeck, is the lack of consultation with those who have a legitimate interest in current marine parks or in the declaration of further marine parks. I am sure that many honourable members will remember the debacle of the mako shark issue, where fishers throughout the country rose up against a decision to ban the fishing of mako sharks. There was no consultation. At Torquay in the seat of Corangamite there were some 700 people at a public meeting complaining about mako shark fishing being banned. Of course, the local member was nowhere to be seen, but that is not unusual when it comes to the member for Coranga­mite; he would never dare to be seen when there are issues.

At the heart of this conservation debate is a lack of acknowledgement that the real conservationists in this country are the fishers, shooters and others. Anyone who knows anything about these areas and who speaks to and has grown up with the fishers and the shooters knows they are the true conservationists. These are the people whose sporting and recreational avenues are determined by the amount of fish and other species that are available to be taken. They actually own the conservation of this and have done for decades. Look at organisations such as Field and Game. Look at other fishing organisations. They are about conservation. For quite obvious reasons they want to preserve the species that they are shooting and hunting—if they are not there then their sport goes. They are the true conservationists in this country. They are never given appropriate credit for it, and they should be.

What these people want is consultation. The past process with marine parks has been completely bastardised by this lack of appropriate consultation. These people know when they enter these discussions that the decisions have virtually been made. They know that when they enter these discussions their voice will be heard but almost certainly will not be acted upon; and, on occasions, they cannot even get it heard. This bill is about enabling this parliament, when there has been that lack of consultation, to take on behalf of those people the right to make a decision about whether there has been appropriate consultation and whether, indeed, we should move to address it if there has not been.

I will very quickly read from the bills digest:

This Bill seeks to amend the Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) to require that declarations of new Bioregional Plans1 and Commonwealth Reserves2 be disallowable by either chamber of Parliament.

…   …   …

Currently, Bioregional Plans are not legislative instruments and are not subject to parliamentary disallowance. The effect of this amendment would mean that they would continue not to be legislative instruments. However, they would be disallowable under Part 5 of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003 as modified by section 46B of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901. Common­wealth Reserves are legislative instruments which are not currently disallowable.

If these people—this nation's true conserva­tionists—are not being appropriately consulted then they should be. That is why I fully support Senator Colbeck's bill and fully support the comments made by others, including Senator Boswell.

The interesting part of this whole debate on marine parks is that we get the most extraordinary comments from some of those on the other side. Senator Marshall, who has been in his office listening, is down here immediately to make some comments. I think he knows what I am going to talk about. There are, of course, some on the other side who believe that we will have increased marine national parks through global warming. They might not be declared at this stage, but the member for Coranga­mite thinks that global warming will inundate massive areas of his home electorate. This is part of his defence of the carbon tax. It beggars belief that this man is actually allowed to be a federal member of parliament. On 17 August 2011—