Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts, Senator McEwen, I present the report of the committee on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2008, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to take the opportunity to speak on the report of the Environment, Communications and the Arts Committee on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. I am aware of the majority report that has been tabled, and Senator Ian Macdonald will be putting in a minority report, which I have signed. One of the reasons that we cannot support the report in question is that what is in it is just not correct. For instance, the report states:

The decision to prosecute was made only in cases where there was evidence that the person knew, or reasonably ought to have known, that they were breaching the zoning plan, and/or there were other circumstances suggesting prosecution was appropriate.

When we took evidence at the committee hearing, we found there were many people who received criminal convictions who were not warned. In fact, there were 324 people who received a criminal conviction. We were told, and it is repeated in the majority report, that people were warned. I questioned a number of people who received convictions, and none of them said that they were warned at all.

We took evidence from two people, and one was very moving indeed. He was a young man called Barry Garlick. He told a story which I thought was absolutely to the point. He said:

I went on a one-off fishing trip. I did not catch a fish or harm the environment. I made a mistake and I have paid a fine for it. I have learnt from what I did, and I have fixed as much as I can. When Australians make mistakes we fix them because it is the right thing to do. I now hold a criminal conviction. The law has been corrected but there is still a mistake in it. This will severely affect my life, my fiancee’s life and, most of all, my children’s lives. I love the environment. I would never intentionally break the law to harm it. My family and I plead with you not to change the law but to fix the mistakes in this law.

When we listened to this young man, we found he was a pest exterminator. He said, ‘When I leave this job, I will be very hard pushed to get another job—because I went fishing.’

Mr Garlick’s story was that he went up to Cairns or somewhere and came back to Ayr. He, his brother and another chap went out and decided they would go fishing. They said that it was blowing a bit, so they went behind an island, and they got picked up. He said:

I thought the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was where the Great Barrier Reef is ...

He said: ‘I had no idea. I came from Brisbane and I went up to Cairns. On my way back we decided we would throw in a line and I got fined.’ I think he was fined $2,000. He was happy to pay the fine—he was not happy, but he paid the fine—but his concern was what will happen when he goes to apply for another job and he says he has a criminal conviction. He said, ‘I will not get another job.’ I asked the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts whether they would consider putting anyone on in their department who had a criminal conviction. They were not too keen to do so.

There was another witness, Peter Aston. He was a man of 70. He said:

... I am proud of the fact that I am a citizen of this country. On having a criminal conviction, it is all very well to say, ‘Oh, it’s okay; it’s not really affecting you,’ but it is. It has changed my life very much. I have tried very hard to find ways around this. The fact is that, all through the process, I was not really believing it was happening—that it could happen here in Australia, that it could go this far without somebody saying, ‘This is silly. Let’s just give the man a fine and send him home,’ or something. For it to go on and on and then find that it is locked in—that you are a criminal forever ...

He is a man who sails around the world, writing stories. He says he will find it very difficult to obtain from any country a visa to enter that country. There was quite a lot of evidence about young people going out and getting convicted. One particular story was told about a grandfather who took his 12-year-old grandson out in a tinny. They were picked up and the grandfather now has a criminal record. Another case was told of a family that went out; now the whole family have criminal records.

We were told that people were given a warning. But none of these people were given warnings. I am not saying warnings were not given, but none of the people that had convictions and gave evidence were warned. The main point goes on to say that the people who are convicted should not worry about it because they can apply to the Governor-General or they can fight it out in the court. It would take $5,000 to fight it out in a court. There was an injustice caused to a number of people, somewhere between 324 and 116, depending when you take the time from. These people received a criminal conviction with no warning, which has affected their lives. Senator Macdonald and I have joined together in moving an amendment that these convictions be read as spent. I hope that the Senate will support us. I know that during the election campaign, as reported in the Townsville Bulletin, Senator Kerry O’Brien said:

The government—

we were the government at the time—

was holding fishermen’s vote to ransom and yesterday’s announcement was beyond the pale. Frankly, it is an indictment of the government that they are prepared to play politics about these issues.

Senator O’Brien said that those who had been convicted had had these convictions sitting against their names for some time. He said, ‘Why could the government not act before today?’ He also said:

An elected Labor government was also sympathetic to overturning the criminal records of the 324 fisherman convicted for the offence. This is about correcting the initial mistake and we should take a bipartisan position on that.

We sat through, I suppose, four hours of listening to people giving explanations of how their lives had been affected by having a criminal offence. One guy, we were told, coached a soccer team and had a great deal of difficulty getting a blue card. I think he did eventually get one. Another guy could not get insurance. We heard that Peter Aston, who sold his home, writes stories and goes around the world in a yacht, cannot get a visa. So I ask everyone in the Senate to be reasonable. This is a total injustice. I will admit that it was caused by legislation the coalition government brought in. In 2006 I spoke to Senator Ian Campbell, who was the environment minister at the time, and he was able to stop the criminal convictions and make it an ordinary offence like a parking ticket. But that did not cover the people who had previous convictions. I pleaded with the Prime Minister of the time six or eight weeks before the last election. I was given a set of words and we told the people we would remove the convictions. I see some injustices in the parliament from time to time but this would be one of the greatest. (Time expired)

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to apologise for my absence from Senator Williams’s maiden speech. Today started at 5.30 am waiting at an airport, and the plane never turned up because of fog, so I could not leave. We then drove 550 kilometres to catch another plane, which could not land here in Canberra because of inclement weather, and we just sat on the tarmac in Sydney waiting. So it is not because I am a factional warlord against Senator Williams; I am really sorry I missed his speech.

There are a range of things that need to be addressed about the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 and will continue needing to be addressed. I note that the report on the bill by the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts talked about the description of the crime of fishing, which is something that we really have to look at. The description now is that you are creating a crime or an offence on consideration of an act—a consideration of an act that may or may not happen. That is open to conjecture, and that is a very dangerous thing for us to have on the law statutes, even if you take away the word ‘fishing’ and think of another type of act. An arbitrary decision to make a law about what you may or may not be deciding to do is a very dangerous premise, especially when most Australians would see fishing as something minor. That needs to be dealt with.

The next issue, obviously, that needs to be looked at seriously is the precautionary principle. I understand that you have to be guided by what may happen. But this is yet another statement which takes you forward to a position where you do not have to prove it economically, nor do you have to prove it environmentally; you just have to wish it. People wishing things changes with the person. If the person wishing for a certain outcome cannot prove it on environmental grounds or on socioeconomic grounds then I think it should remain unproved. That also is something that needs to be looked at.

The other issue is the criminality of those who have had certain convictions recorded against them and these things have not been dealt with and put aside. That issue also needs to be dealt with. Because of those three issues, I will be signing the dissenting report. There are other issues on top of what is outlined that also need to be further considered. In its final position, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has to take into account that people live adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef. It is the major mechanism for recreation and for the earning of income. If we completely exclude people who live proximate to the Great Barrier Reef from any real engagement in it—apart from looking at it—then we are doing something terribly unfair. Nobody in the Sydney beach suburbs would tolerate it if you stopped such things as surfing.

I hope that the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority goes back to what it was initially supposed to be: something that took into account the environmental aspects, the economic aspects, the social aspects and the outcomes that would be desired by the people of North Queensland especially. If this type of legislation—especially with the definition of ‘fishing’ and the precautionary principle—goes through, it will become a premise for further fishing areas having exactly the same outcome. Thank you very much for your indulgence on that, Acting Deputy President Bishop. I will leave it at that.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure that my colleagues have discussed the report of the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts at some length. I am still trying to get a copy of it so that I can make a useful contribution. By and large, the coalition members on the committee—and of course they all speak for themselves—thought that the broad thrust of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 was appropriate. The Great Barrier Reef is one of the very significant natural icons of Australia and needs to be well managed in changing circumstances and with new and more modern administrative arrangements. This bill is a complete look at the whole issue of management of the Great Barrier Reef. It is a bill that had its genesis in the days of the last government. There was a long consultation period in the time of the previous government. A lot of the material in the bill is material which the coalition guided through its formative stages. This does not mean to say that it is perfect; in fact, a number of issues have come up, which I am sure my colleagues have raised in the chamber.

In the brief time available to me, I want to concentrate on the two issues on which amendments have been submitted by the coalition and which were considered by the committee in its report. There was a third issue, the definition of ‘fishing’. Some of us in the coalition had some concerns about that; I know that Senator Boswell and Senator Joyce did. But I was relatively satisfied after hearing the explanations from the department and the lawyers that the term ‘fishing’ was not the term used for breaches of the green zones, if I could put it that way. The evidence given to the committee from the experts took us through how that was determined. The term ‘fishing’, so far as green zones are concerned, is contained not in this bill but in some regulations. Those regulations provide that ‘fishing’ means the actual taking of a marine animal or a fish or attempting to take fish. Some of my concerns about issues that senators rightly raised were to a degree allayed by the evidence before the committee.

The majority report does, however, clearly point out that the terminology and the placement of that term ‘fishing’ is rather convoluted and the majority committee has suggested at recommendation 2 that the government review the manner in which fishing is defined in the act. The coalition senators would certainly support that, and in fact we do in our dissenting report.

The other issue is the issue of representation on the board—and I should not say ‘representation on the board’ but rather ‘appointments to the board’. The board increases from three to five. There was always a provision for an Indigenous person to be on the board, but the previous government thought that it was not a representative board and therefore different people and different interests did not need to be represented as such and that the board would and should be appointed on merit. So the previous government removed the requirement to have an Indigenous person on the board. The current government put that back in. The opposition supports that.

But the opposition also thinks that it should be mandated that there be someone on the board who has some experience in either the tourism industry or another industry associated with the Great Barrier Reef, so we have put in an amendment that has been supported by many—and I particularly mention the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators—who think that that would be appropriate. I make the point again that it is not a representative board, so you are not there representing anyone; you are there looking after the best interests of the Great Barrier Reef and all of the many people and industries who have an interest in the Great Barrier Reef.

We would certainly be urging that the Senate include in the bill a requirement that one of the five appointees to the board be someone with experience. We do not want a board made up of, for example—lovely people though they are—Brisbane or Canberra bureaucrats. We do not want it made up of one particular sector that might have an interest in the reef. We want a broad based board to look after the interests of the reef, and that is why we think that there should be someone with experience in the industry on the board. So we will be moving that amendment, and that is referred to in the minority report, and I would take issue with the majority committee report insofar as they oppose that.

The other issue that I do want to dwell a little on is the amendment that we intend moving to try to bring some fairness and justice to those people who were convicted of offences between 1 July 2004 and 30 September 2006, who were penalised for fishing in the wrong zone or fishing illegally in the green zone and who were fined substantially and who have paid their fines. They found out as an almost unintended consequence that the conviction leaves them with a criminal record. This then makes it very difficult for them to get visas to enter some countries and it is on their records.

Before the last election Senator Boswell did a lot of good work on this and others argued the case so that the then Prime Minister, Mr Howard, made a commitment that if the then government was returned we would legislate to remove the criminal convictions from those who had been breached during that period. That period is significant because 1 July 2004 is when the new green zones came into being, and 30 September 2006 is the day when by regulation the then government provided that rather than criminal convictions, if you were doing the wrong thing and it was not a particularly serious thing, you would get an on-the-spot ticket, a breach notice. You would pay your fine just the same but you would not have the criminal record. We are thinking that, if those people who, subsequent to 30 September 2006, would have got a ticket but not a criminal record, then those who were convicted between 1 July 2004 and 30 September 2006 should be treated in the same way insofar as the recording of a criminal conviction.

It is very important to understand—and I want all senators to understand this—that the then opposition spokesman, Senator Kerry O’Brien, repeated the promise that John Howard had made, and quite rightly he should have because it was a fair arrangement: bring them all back into the same category. One of the troubles that the coalition members on the committee had was then working out how, legally, you arrange to remove those convictions after they have been through the court process. Relying on the Crimes Act, which is mentioned in our report, we are trying to legislatively treat those who were convicted in that period as having what is called technically ‘spent convictions’ and that means that the criminal record would no longer show. There are different elements of that that require some attention and explanation, and unfortunately I am not going to have time tonight to explain that because I only have 30 seconds left. We will have to do that during the moving of the amendments. (Time expired)

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would just like to address a few remarks to this report on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2008, if I may, and I note that I have only got a few minutes. As Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts I would just like to thank all the people who participated in this inquiry, including opposition senators. It was a difficult inquiry. We heard from people who had criminal convictions recorded for fishing in that period 1 July to September 2006, as Senator Macdonald said. I have to say that the committee had some considerable sympathy for those persons. However, I urge people who are listening to this debate to read this report and in particular read the parts of the report that deal with that very difficult issue of how you go backwards and try to deal with people who have got convictions. It is not an easy thing to take to the parliament something that either legislates for pardons or legislates to spend a conviction. I urge people to have a look at those comments before they condemn the report out of hand.

I also caution people that this bill has been claimed by some senators to impose a definition of fishing on fisher people that will see them convicted for fishing illegally if they so much as have an echo sounder on their boat or look at a fish. I think that some of those suggestions are a little bit outrageous and a bit of moderation in this debate would go some way to allaying fisher people’s concerns about what may or may not be applied to them in terms of the legislation. It is important, though, that there is some clarification in the bill as to what a definition of fishing is and how it should be applied. All of us in this chamber, I am sure, would want to see legislation that is easy for people to interpret and difficult for people to misinterpret. So I am pleased with the recommendations in the report and I would seek leave to continue my remarks on this report at a later date.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.