Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I read a very disturbing set of newspaper articles in the Australian press several months ago under the title 'The ocean is broken'. It was an account by a very experienced Australian sailor, Ivan Mcfadyen from Newcastle, who had done a number of sailing trips across the ocean. He retraced his journey from Melbourne to Osaka in Japan—a journey that he had done 28 years before. When he spoke to the Australian media he said that 'the ocean is broken'. He talked about his journey and said

IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it.

Not the absence of sound, exactly.

The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.

…   …   …

What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.

He said that over 28 days they had been fishing, as they always did catch the daily food and they caught two fish for the entire trip.

This got me thinking about how bad the state of our oceans is. Then I saw another evocative title only recently and that was a report called, 'The world's oceans are dying'. That is actually something that Paul Watson had said in a letter, which I passed onto the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Paul Watson's appeal to the Japanese Prime Minister not to kill whales in the Southern Ocean. But this is the exact title of a report from the Global Ocean Commission, which is chaired by David Miliband, the leader of the opposition in the UK. It is also championed by John Kerry, who of course we are all very familiar with in US politics.

But the Global Ocean Commission reports on the state of the world's oceans. Sadly, the report was very depressing. They actually said in the report that the ocean is dying. It is dying because of overfishing, it is dying because of marine pollution and it is dying because of the effects of climate change—ocean acidification, changes to winds and changes to currents.

In the context of what is going on around the oceans, which has been recognised internationally—this is a side point but I think it is an important one to make—it seems as though other countries have very high profile ocean champions in their political spheres. I am not sure who fills that gap in Australia. Of course, it should be Greg Hunt given that he is the environment minister. It seems that politicians have taken this very seriously in other countries—as have celebrities. They have stood up in the limelight and said, 'I'm going to champion the cause of protecting the world's oceans.'

I do not think anyone in this country who knows anything about fishing would disagree that we have seen significant problems with the overfishing of our global oceans. One very obvious point is that supertrawlers, huge industrial factory fishing vessels, have been fingered by the same experts—and this is well accepted—for a lot of the destruction and overfishing in the world's oceans. This occurs in not only the territorial zones of different countries but also on the high seas, which are very hard to police. When the world's largest supertrawler, the Margiris, arrived in Australian waters it was no surprise to me and others that it caused significant controversy in this country. When the Veronica, an Irish based supertrawler, came to Australia in 2008 there was a massive campaign right around the country. That supertrawler was banned by individual state parliaments from entering their waters. So when the Margiris arrived here—it was brought here by Tasmanian company Seafish—it was no surprise that it caused similar controversy.

The issues around supertrawlers are well understood. They are able to stay out at sea for potentially months and catch fish and put them in their freezers. Freezing capacity is everything to these industrial scale vessels. That is the reason they can catch so many fish and that is the sole reason recreational fishers in this country have a significant issue with supertrawlers. Environment groups, who worked hand-in-hand with rec fishing groups to stop the supertrawler, had other issues around local depletion and the impacts on ecosystems in areas around the supertrawler and of course issues related to bycatch. The nets these trawlers use are enormous and bycatch is an issue that has been identified by the Australian government as a problem that needs to be fixed in our fisheries—and I will get onto that in a second with one of the recommendations of the Borthwick review.

Local depletion was the key reason that this supertrawler was stopped—nobody could even define what it meant. And there was no science around these vessels going to an area whose ecosystem and ocean life is rich—for example, off Pedra Blanca in Tasmania—and spending months there catching small pelagic fish. And that is what this vessel had come over to do—catch low value small pelagic fish. And when I say 'low value' I mean low economic value. But the environmental and ecosystem value of these fish is enormous. Small pelagic fish like jack mackerel are what larger fish and seals eat. Any impact on these iconic species would be really obvious if their food source disappeared. This was the problem that rec fishers had.

This same fishery in south-east Tasmania that the Abel Tasmanformerly the Margiriscame over to fish went into significant decline 12 years ago where the small pelagic fishery was fished by a number of boats out of Triabunna. There is still debate as to what caused that collapse in the fishery. Some scientists say it was the changing ocean currents; others say it was overfishing. Either way, this fishery has not been fished for nearly a decade. Because of that, off the south-east trawl area or anywhere around this country, stock assessments of the targeted species of this supertrawler have not been done. So there was also no surprise that there was considerable uncertainty around the science. It was not about any lack of quality in the science. One report was done in 2012. From listening to Professor Meeuwig, a very good marine biologist at the University of Western Australia, we now know that fecundity and other parameters that were fed into this model in the study in 2012 were based on fish from the North Sea, not Australian jack mackerel. There was only one report. I do not think there is any disagreement now, in hindsight, that not enough science was done.

The Greens were the only party who stood up in this parliament to try to stop this supertrawler. There were some Labor senators—Senator Bilyk and Senator Singh, who are in the chamber today, and former Senator Thorp—who stood up for the Tasmanian community in relation to this boat. But there were very few voices. This boat was stopped because of an enormous campaign—a spontaneous campaign, a real campaign right around this country—to make sure it could not do any damage to a fishery that was very valuable to the marine ecosystems. This had potential implications right up the food chain—to the tuna that our rec fishermen catch and the salmon—and of course for divers and conservationists with issues around seals and the broader spectrum in the marine ecosystem.

The good thing that has come out of this is that we have now done more science and we have got the Borthwick review into how fisheries are managed in this country—and that is what I want to focus on. From my recent questions at estimates I know that, nearly two years after its report was handed down, none of the recommendations of the Borthwick review has been implemented yet.

I will go through those recommendations very quickly: giving clearer ministerial direction to AFMA by setting out an overarching fisheries management policy framework; changing the objectives in the fisheries acts to reflect more equally the range of commercial and environmental issues to be addressed; reaffirming the primacy of revamped fisheries management plans, with greater analysis of options and consequences; and leveraging off the above measures to accredit a new framework to develop fisheries management plans. One of the key things that review went into, in terms of recasting AFMA's objectives, was to give more equal weighting to ecosystem science rather than fisheries science. The review, in its redrafted objectives, proposed that AFMA be required to have regard to the interests of recreational and Indigenous fishers.

In a nutshell, the Borthwick review said: 'We do fisheries science. We do that well. We are one of the best in the world at our fisheries science. But that is commercial fisheries science. We look at sustainability issues in fisheries—of course, that has environmental implications—but we need a lot more science doneon the impacts on ecosystems of our fisheries plans and fisheries management plans.' That was looking at things like bycatch and local depletion.

What worries me is that this government has said that there will be no more supertrawlers. Apart from the fact that we have seen so many broken promises from this government that I would not hold them to account on the fact that we will not see another supertrawler in this country, what worries me is that this root and branch review, the Borthwick review, has not been implemented yet. In that environment, if we have not changed our approach to fisheries and learnt from the supertrawler campaign that other interests are critical in fisheries management, apart from just the fishing industry itself, then what certainty do we have that we will be able to stop these boats and potentially destructive fisheries' behaviour into the future?

Currently the government has no powers to declare a prohibited fishing vessel and implement a review. The aim of the legislation that is being debated is to remove the sunset clause, which means that the powers of the Minister for Environment to respond to new fishing operations do remain in place. But what this critically means is it gives the current environment minister discretion to declare a prohibited fishing activity and declare another sunset clause. So let us be very clear about this. This does not stop supertrawlers—it may temporarily put them up for review—and it certainly does not ban supertrawlers. It maintains the status quo and means that these boats can still come here and be assessed. But we need to be very clear about that.

The Greens have put up an amendment to ban supertrawlers and vessels with freezing capacity over 2,000 tonnes. That is a globally recognised tonnage of fish that is being looked at by groups right around the world. We consider that we need separate legislation for any size over that. This is a very serious issue and it has not been flushed out in this bill. We would ask that Labor, through Senator Ludwig, who brought this forward, consider a proper amendment that will ban this type of fishing activity in this country once and for all. This is what millions of rec fishermen across this country want. This is what people who are worried that the ocean is broken and is dying want. We want to see this type of destructive fishing activity stopped. We do not need it. We have not had supertrawlers in this country before. We are doing very well, thank you very much. We do not need to see them back. This government needs to hold to its promise that it will not allow supertrawlers back into Australian ports. (Time expired)