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

With respect to document No. 2, the report of the Environment and Communications References Committee's inquiry into shark mitigation and deterrent measures, I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I'm incredibly proud of this committee report. I initiated this inquiry and I chaired this inquiry. The Environment and Communications References Committee did a fantastic job as a bunch—all of us together. We went around the country for nearly 15 months—seven hearings—collecting evidence on how we manage the risks of sharks and shark encounters in this country. No parliament in this country—in fact probably no-one anywhere, any stakeholder—has collected a body of work and put it together in a report like this. I think it's very timely, and it's a significant matter of public interest.

A lot of people know I'm a passionate surfer and I spend a lot of time in the water, and friends of mine ask me, 'Why?' They seem perplexed why I would want to protect sharks, especially potentially dangerous sharks, like white sharks. And I tell them the truth: shark bites or shark encounters are rare. They're always tragic when they occur—and they always will occur—but they're rare. And I tell them that the mitigation that we're currently using—the last-century mitigation methods of nets and drumlines—without a doubt kill protected marine life. In fact, they're weapons of mass destruction for protected marine life in this country. Tens of thousands of different marine species—dolphins, turtles, whales, protected sharks and other marine life—are caught in these shark nets, and they're unnecessary.

I support a phase-out of these lethal methods—and I mean lethal to sharks and marine life—because I also know, as was proven in this committee with the evidence we received, there is no evidence that shark nets and drum lines around this country make you safe. Nearly half the incidents involving sharks in this country occur on the inside of nets, and a number of sharks are actually caught on the inside of the nets. I think there were 27 different encounters with sharks on the inside of nets in this country. Luckily, none of them were fatal. That was, predominantly, from the evidence we heard, because they occurred on patrolled beaches where there were surf lifesaving clubs. In fact, the evidence we heard across the board was people don't necessarily die from shark encounters or shark bites; they die from loss of blood because there's no-one there to administer first aid.

I think a lot about the risks of sharks. My stance as a Greens senator, a surfer and a person is borne from years of being in the ocean and thinking deeply on this issue. I was out surfing with my son just a couple of weeks ago in Tasmania. We'd had a fairly flat summer. We hadn't had a lot of time in the water, but we had this amazing swell. It was a big easterly swell generated by a big low off New Zealand. The winds were right. I had to go down to Hobart that day for a press conference, and my son was really peeved with me, but I got home at 6 o'clock and said: 'Grab your board. Let's go for a wave.' We went for a wave, and it was the best surf I've ever had in Tasmania with my son. I won't say where it was, but we were sitting out a couple hundred metres offshore. It was a good-sized swell, and we surfed until it was nearly dark. My son paddled up and said, 'Dad, it's getting a bit creepy out here.' I said, 'Yes, you're right; it is,' so we went in. Two days later, just a couple of beaches up, a young boy—the same age as my son—was surfing and had a big white shark, nearly five metres, breach right next to him. It literally showed the surfer his fangs. Of course, the father witnessed this. The young kid's been traumatised. He may not surf again for a while. But we always know they're there in the water.

This report talks about how we can better manage the risks of encounters, but it makes it clear the only way we can totally reduce the risk of shark encounters in this country for all beachgoers—and not just beachgoers, but rivers and canals and other places where we have shark encounters—is to kill every shark in the ocean. That would be an absolute catastrophe for our ecosystem. Sharks play a very important role in keeping our ecosystems healthy. So what do we do? This report has a series of recommendations. It's a couple of hundred pages long. It has dozens of recommendations on how we could better mitigate the risk, but we heard enough evidence that we can phase out shark nets and drum lines in this country and replace them with other technologies. I would urge all senators who have an interest in this—in fact, all stakeholders around the country—to have a look at this report. It makes it very clear that there is no evidence at all that these nets that we spend millions of dollars on every year, that kill untold marine life and do so much damage to our ocean, work at all. They've simply been in place since the mid-1900s, and no-one can be bothered looking at new-century solutions.

One of the best things about this Senate report is, in the back of the report, there's a four-page summary of shark myths in this country. As the committee went around the country, we found nearly all the evidence we heard from—I will say—those who wanted to see sharks killed or culled or to have lethal mitigation measures in place were myths. This committee debunked those myths. I understand where those myths come from. There hasn't been good information at all in the media, which is something else the committee encountered. Media coverage of shark encounters and shark bites in this country has largely been abysmal. In fact, it's been dangerous and counterproductive and has helped politicise the issues. It even shocked me the other day when Donald Trump made comments about sharks and how he wanted to see sharks killed. We've heard the former Prime Minister Mr Tony Abbott talk about killing white sharks. Sadly, our environment minister—our so-called environment minister—has continued to politicise this issue of killing sharks in this country. He's even suggested to the West Australian government that they apply for exemptions under the EPBC Act, under our federal environmental laws, to put lethal methods in place to kill white sharks or tiger sharks in Western Australia—methods we know don't work. It's an absolute disgrace.

And the great white's protected species status is up for review very shortly. It really troubles me that, from what I've heard from the Liberal National Party, this protected species status will be removed. A population study by the CSIRO is absolutely critical to any decisions we make about shark mitigation in the future. That hasn't been released. However, I note with disgust that, around Christmas time, Josh Frydenberg leaked to the media information in this report about the population of white sharks in Western Australia being bigger than that on the east coast of Australia, without the full report being released—just in time to scare people for Christmas to serve his own short-term, self-serving, dangerous and counterproductive political goals.

This debate shouldn't be about human life versus marine life or nature; it should be about how we can get a balance between both. And I will say here clearly that every attack—as someone who thinks about it whenever he's in the water—every bite, every encounter we have between a human being and a shark is natural. It's understandable but it is tragic. The toll on communities—and we heard good evidence about this—can be highly traumatic. In fact, some people in these communities probably need counselling more than anything else, and that's understandable with any loss of human life. But the probability is very low. If you go into the ocean, you must understand the risks, and this report goes a long way to actually show what those risks are and what you can do to mitigate your own personal risks such as wearing shark deterrent devices like I do wear sometimes on my surfboard, which we know significantly reduce the risks of an encounter with a dangerous shark. But you'll never totally reduce that risk unless you don't go in the ocean or you kill every shark in the ocean. For those of us who love the ocean, neither of those options are acceptable.

We actually need to take a mature approach to this. I'm confident that, in the next 20 years, we can develop technologies to remove shark nets and drum lines to better protect human beings and to look after our marine life. It's long overdue that we moved on from this debate about killing sharks and whether that's necessary. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.