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

I will bring the evidence in here, Senator, and I will table it. I sat down and had conversations with Professor Forteath so I can tell you that very well. In fact, the Greens were censured in this place for what they did to him, so go back and have a look at the Hansard and you will find your own history.

This is a very simple piece of legislation. We know because the government has admitted that these zones that are being proposed by Minister Burke at the moment are not based on science. I have already given an indication as to the zones that were declared off New South Wales. I was in Queensland at the beginning of the year. I went up to have a talk to some of the fishermen in that region about the proposed declaration of the Coral Sea. Unfortunately, they could not meet with me on the day because they were meeting with the department to talk about the proposals for declaring the Coral Sea. One of the questions that they went into the meeting and asked of the department was: can you put on the table for us the science that supports declaring the entire Coral Sea a marine zone? When I met with them at morning tea directly after they had had that conversation with the department, I found the answer was: 'There is none.' The only thing that there was was a campaign by the Pew Foundation and environmental groups here in Australia. That is the basis on which Tony Burke has closed off the Coral Sea.

I go back to the discussion I had a moment ago about our seafood needs. As I said, 25 per cent of the globe's protein comes from seafood—a full quarter. The broader environmental impacts of having to replace that with terrestrially based protein do not bear thinking about. As I said, if you were to replace it with grass-fed protein, you would have to clear the globe's rainforests 23 times over. It just does not add up. The health of our marine environment and the capacity to achieve and maintain a level of protein from wild catch fisheries is absolutely vital. In fact, if you look at the wild catch fishery you will find that it is the most environmentally friendly form of gathering protein of the lot. It is much more environmentally friendly than any form of terrestrial farming. It is the most environmentally friendly because you can take out your quota, based on sustainably set quotas with proper management tools, and the natural environment does the rest for you. It is the most environmentally friendly form, so it is vitally important that we maintain it as part of our overall protein task.

Australia's potential demand for seafood will grow by 850,000 tonnes by 2020. I am not talking out to 2030 or 2040 or 2050 but by 2020—that is, in eight years we will need an extra 850,000 tonnes. The potential fishery in the Coral Sea alone is of that magnitude in two species.