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

Let us go to what a globally recognised expert says in respect of marine protected areas. The senator has just gone through that process here yet again in his representations this morning. Professor Ray Hilborn is one of the most globally recognised marine scientists in the world.

Senator Whish-Wilson interjecting—

You say he is paid for by the fishing industry, but when he went to find out what was going on he put together a group of people from across the spectrum. He did not just go and science shop; he put together a group of peers from across the spectrum—from those directly opposed to his view of the world to those who have a more extreme view in the other direction. He did not just go and science shop. He did not find somebody who did not know anything or did not have any expertise in the area, which is what the Greens quite often do, and get them to comment on a scientific area in which they have no expertise and attack scientists who do have expertise.

He got a full spectrum of people to provide a report that put a very different picture than what one of the scientists, Dr Boris Worm, had initially indicated. He went to the person involved in that piece of science that said that the oceans could be empty of fish by 2047. That was the science that Dr Boris Worm had put together. Professor Hilborn went to Dr Worm. A group of 23 scientists put together a report that caused Dr Worm to step back from his initial statement. That was the work he was prepared to do. Senator, you should not just science shop and pick out a few people who will provide the answer that you want. You should go to the direct science, the real science and the credible science. Do not come in here with your claims.

I am proud of the record that the coalition has with respect to marine protected areas. Our record stands. The people who have been involved in working with us know that that is the case. Why are we taking the stand that we are taking right now? Not because we do not believe in marine protected areas but because in the development of these marine protected areas the science has not been used. That is why we have a concern about this current process. How do we know the science has not been used? Because the government has admitted it.

The Greens are happy to go along with lockups, because that is what they do. They live in the past. Before the EPBC Act came into being and before a whole range of other management tools came into being, the only way to protect some areas was to lock them up. I am happy to concede that that was the case. We in Australia have done some pretty average things to our environment—to our marine areas and our land areas—but we have learnt. As Senator Whish-Wilson has conceded, we do have among the best fisheries management systems in the world. We need to continue to improve those.

Rather than just lock up bits of the environment, which is what the environmental groups who still live in the 19th century would like us to do, we need to look after all of our marine environment. We should not just lock up huge swathes of the ocean and say, 'You can't go there.' That is not what we ought to be doing. We ought to be looking after it all. So do not come in here and tell us that we do not have any desire to look after our marine environment and we do not have any desire to protect areas. We believe that if there are areas that deserve to be protected then we should protect them, but we should not be making decisions based on representations by, for example, the Pew Foundation, which has run a campaign to lock up pretty much the entire Coral Sea.

Senator Whish-Wilson talked about economics. What really gets up the nose of my constituents, your constituents and other people here in Australia is that the Pew Foundation then admit that it is not going to pursue the same scale of lockups in the United States because it does not stack up economically, because of the negative economic impact on the American economy. So they are happy to come and lock ours up but they will not do it in the United States because of the economic impact.

Here we have Minister Burke admitting that there are fewer marine protected areas off New South Wales because he has locked so much up in the Coral Sea. Tell me that is based on science. What a load of baloney. Here we have an area that has huge potential in respect of meeting our future seafood needs—and they are significant as 25 per cent of the globe's protein currently comes from seafood. If you were to replace that with terrestrially based protein, you would have to clear the world's remaining rainforests 23 times over—so talk about a small picture view of the world from the Greens and talk about a small picture view of the world from the government!

Let us have a look at the broader picture. Let us look at the requirements to look after our environment and also to feed ourselves and those of us on the planet. Let us not lock ourselves out of a huge swathes of the ocean when we have a whole series of other management tools. Let us not lock ourselves out of our oceans and our fisheries because somebody else is raping and pillaging theirs. What a sensible move that is! How ridiculous to suggest that, because fisheries management is unsustainable in other parts of the world, we should close down ours. Give me a break!

What we should be doing—and, in fact, this is what Australia is doing—is participating in improving fisheries management in other parts of the world. We are acting in a whole range of fisheries, through a number of fisheries management systems and through a number of international agreements, to improve fisheries management in those regions. You talk about small pelagics; we are involved in looking at the South Pacific small pelagic fishery and improving that, an area where the fish stocks have collapsed because of overfishing, not because of supertrawlers—as would be implied by the Greens and their environmental group friends—but because the fishery has been overfished for years long before the advent of large freezer vessels. The fishery has been overfished for years and it has not been improved by the fact that there have been no fisheries management systems in place and there have been no quotas in place, but fortunately there now will be. That fishery will have the opportunity to recover because there will be fisheries management put in place and there will be quotas put in place. The decision to do that is already having an effect on the amount of effort that is put into that fishery.

So for Senator Whish-Wilson to come in here and misrepresent where the coalition sits in respect of fisheries management of marine parks is quite dishonest because we have a strong view about utilising the science and about believing the science. And this was coming from a person who said, 'We don't care about the science. We just don't want the boat.' I have to say it is quite hypocritical of him to come in here and lecture us about science.