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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Education and Training (Senator Birmingham) to a question without notice asked by Senator Whish-Wilson today relating to policies to mitigate the risk of shark attacks.

The issue of shark encounters in this country is very sensitive. It always grabs headlines and people's attention. Australians love to go to the coast to swim, surf and recreate at our beaches. I myself am a very passionate surfer and scuba diver, and the issue of sharks is never far from my mind when I am in the water. But I think we need to be very careful that the sad number of shark encounters that have led to the loss of human life and damage, both psychological and physical, to surfers, swimmers and people in the community at places like the north-east coast of Australia, around Ballina, is kept in perspective and that we have a calm conversation about how we mitigate risks of shark attacks and shark encounters.

I want to make very clear that my personal opinion and the opinion of my party is that we need to be very cognisant of the fact that the ocean is not a risk-free environment. You go into the ocean at your own risk. It is good to understand those risks, and education and awareness are absolutely critical in that respect. To politicise this issue to get a headline in The Daily Telegraph or to respond in a way that actually encourages fear and misunderstanding is not productive. This is an issue about which we need to have a science based understanding as well as a community based understanding. There are a number of things we can do in this country to mitigate the risks of shark attacks. Those technologies are being trialled. I myself have been involved in a couple of mitigation strategies. Putting in shark nets at a place like Ballina on the New South Wales coast is a last-century solution.

Shark nets kill all marine life indiscriminately. They are actually designed to capture and entangle sharks—any kind of shark—and reduce their near-shore populations. But they also kill other protected species, such as turtles, dolphins, whales and of course hundreds, if not thousands, of non-harmful shark species and, of course, also protected and endangered species. There is no evidence that they make us safer in the ocean—no evidence at all. I do not want to see any Australians given the false impression that because there are shark nets along beaches on the North Coast of New South Wales that somehow they are going to be 100 per cent safe from the risk of shark attacks—they will not be.

So this is an issue that we need to take very seriously. The New South Wales government is coming to the federal government to seek approval on this issue, because under environmental protection and biodiversity and conservation laws, which are federal laws, we have a duty and an obligation—but it is also a moral obligation—to assess the impacts of things such as shark nets, which kill sharks and other species. This is something I expect the minister will take very seriously and that there will be a full assessment on the potential impacts.

I want to say, as someone who does surf and who is aware of the issue, that this is a deep issue to me. I understand the fear and loathing and the concern in communities around shark encounters—I understand that very well. But it is never going to be 100 per cent safe when you go in the ocean, especially as a surfer. When you surf different spots and different places all around the coastline, some will never be netted and cannot be netted. There would literally have to be thousands of nets linking this country together, if that is what we wanted to do, and that would not reduce the risk of shark attacks. There will still be that risk. Yet, in this day and age we should not consider culling species in the ocean—we should be protecting them. We should have a mature and calm conversation about how to reduce the risks and what devices and processes we can employ. We should understand that the ocean is where sharks live and that this is perfectly natural. We need to have an awareness of that when we take risks by going into the ocean.

Question agreed to.