Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I have to respectfully disagree with you on one point there, Senator Tyrrell. The nature-positive laws were not intended to harm the salmon industry—quite the contrary. Those laws came from a report, commissioned by the former government, by Graeme Samuel, the former head of the ACCC, which found that our existing environmental regulation under our existing laws hurt business, by providing a lack of certainty and lengthy approval timeframes, and also hurt the environment. So we were trying to cure rather than to hurt any particular industry.

Senator Urquhart in particular and our government in general have been strong supporters of the salmon industry. It's why we're investing in those oxygenation trials. It's why we're investing in the captive breeding program. Senator Farrell and I, when I held the portfolio, worked very hard on increasing our trade of salmon and other fisheries exports around the world. That's the way we want to see things continue, going forward.