Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

If I were the Manager of Government Business, the last person I would put up to defend the carbon tax would be Senator Ursula Stephens. She is held in high regard on this side of parliament because we know she would not lie. You saw that today when she was trying to defend something that she did not have her heart in. She knows that the impact is going to be on the people that can least afford it. To ask Senator Stephens to get up and defend the carbon tax is picking the wrong horse for the wrong course.

But today I want to talk about the announcement about marine reserves, which will now circle right around Australia, creating 1.3 million square miles of marine parks—between 50 and 70 per cent of the world's marine parks around Australia. We are a country of 20 million people and we now have 70 per cent of the marine parks. How did we get there? We got there because Pew, an international green group, came here and decided to fund a campaign right across Australia, spending millions of dollars of American money, putting out propaganda that it would be good to have this wonderful world marine park—70 per cent of the world's marine parks.

But it is going to lock out commercial fishermen, it is going to lock out amateur fishermen. 'Oh, but Ron Boswell is a scare merchant.' They say it all the time. So today I quoted Mr Allan Hansard, who is the director of the Australian Recreational Fishing Foundation. Mr Hansard says that mums, dads and the kids will be banned from trying to catch fish. It is not Ron Boswell who is saying that, it is the man who represents five million amateur fishermen. Mr Deputy President, you are a fisherman yourself and you know that the majority of the people who go out there in their 16-foot boats with their 60-horsepower motors are not office workers or solicitors or brain surgeons; they are blue-collar workers that rely on the Labor Party that has so badly let them down. When the Labor Party come to voting for the blue-collar worker, when they come to deciding whether to look after the blue-collar worker or the environmentalists and the soft green groups, it is the poor old blue-collar worker that always cops it in the neck.

They have copped it in the neck this time. They have had their fishing areas reduced. It is not Ron Boswell, it is not Barnaby Joyce, it is not Senator Brandis saying that; it is these guys that represent the recreational fishermen. Recreational anglers have been locked out of vast tracts of Australian ocean and a number of inshore iconic fishing spots such as Osprey Reef, Geographe Bay, the Perth trench and Dampier. What is the point of them saying it if it is not true? Why don't you listen to the blue-collar workers? Why have you let them down so badly time and time again? When Pew comes out here and tells the Greens what a wonderful idea it would be to take 70 per cent of the marine parks of the world and put them in Australian, locking out the commercial fishermen, locking out the amateur fishermen and locking out the charter boats that take fishing people out, why do you follow them? They lead you around by the nose and you do not ever learn. If you never learn you are always going to end up in the same spot. Why do you think the Queensland election was an absolute wipeout for the Labor Party? I will tell you why it was a wipeout. You could see, as you went out further into the working class areas, that the vote had left the Labor Party. I will tell you why. The blue-collar worker has worked out that the Greens-Labor alliance has nothing in it for them. It may look after the progressives of the Labor Party but it does not look after the blue-collar worker and they have worked it out. (Time expired)