Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table a revised explanatory memorandum relating to the bill and move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Over recent weeks and months there has been heightened community concern surrounding the potential introduction of a new style of large scale fishing operation in Australian fisheries.

Of particular concern has been the likely introduction of a 143 metre long vessel that has an onboard processing facility and is capable of storing more than 6,000 tonnes of fish, thus enabling it to remain fishing in Commonwealth marine areas for extended periods.

Management of fisheries is the responsibility of the relevant state, territory or Commonwealth fisheries management agency.

Fisheries are assessed under national environment law – which is the Australian Government's principal law for protecting the environment.

Fisheries management is underpinned by the best available science and there is a good process already in place which allows my environmental responsibilities to be properly factored in to these decisions. However, the nature of this vessel and in particular it's capacity to remain in the same area of ocean for extended periods of time creates new environmental issues which had not been fully contemplated when the scientific work was last done.

I sought advice from my department to determine the extent of my legal powers under current environmental law.

The advice that came back said the powers under Part 10 of the Act were not available to me on the evidence before us but legal powers under Part 13 were.

On 3 September 2012, I accredited the relevant fishery under Part 13 of the Act, for an interim two week period and subject to conditions. These initial conditions impose stringent requirements on the fishing operations of the vessel. The conditions are intended to ensure that all reasonable steps are taken to avoid interactions including mortalities of protected species, particularly seals, dolphins and sea birds. They also provide for public reporting to inform community and enable scrutiny of the operations.

These conditions were a significant improvement on the environmental standards immediately prior to me making the decision. However, they still fell short on the cautious approach which I believe was important to adopt when considering our marine resources.

As a Minister I cannot go further than the legal authority which I have but as Members of Parliament we are free to change the law to extend those powers and that is what I propose to do today.

My concern to have a cautious approach has been shared by a large number of stakeholders. Environmental groups have an understandable interest in the potential impact on by catch. Those who love to fish for recreational purposes have expressed concerns about depletion of the fish they target and commercial fishing operators have an understandable interest in making sure that any take is both sustainable and retains community confidence.

Australia's environmental law is one of the few Acts anywhere in the world that provides a comprehensive national approach to environmental protection and that deals with such a wide range of environment and heritage issues.

Experience over the last couple of months has however shown that the Act does not provide sufficient powers to suspend a fishing activity where there is uncertainty as to the potential environmental, social and economic impacts of the activity and an assessment of those potential impacts needs to be undertaken.

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Declared Fishing Activities) Bill would create just that ability. It would enable a process that would not only ensure ecological sustainability for our marine environment but also raise community awareness and understanding. It is important that there be mechanisms that enable community concern to be addressed and allayed. Community confidence in the legislative and administrative processes of government is a foundational pillar of civil society.

Proposed changes

The amendments propose to incorporate a new Chapter into the EPBC Act that will allow the Environment Minister to prohibit a declared fishing activity while an independent expert panel undertakes an assessment of the potential environmental, social or economic impacts of the activity.

The provisions would only be activated if the Environment Minister and the Fisheries Minister agree that there is uncertainty about the environmental, social or economic impacts of the identified fishing activity and that further assessment is required. A final declaration would provide for prohibition of the fishing activity for no more than twenty four months.

Prior to making a final declaration, I would be required to consult with fishing concession holders who may be detrimentally affected by the prohibition of the declared fishing activity over an extended period. An interim declaration will prohibit the activity for no more than 60 days while I undertake this consultation. This will ensure procedural fairness for affected fishing operators.

The expert panel would need to undertake the assessment against terms of reference and their report, once made to the Environment Minister, would be tabled in parliament.

Closing

In conclusion, the changes to the EPBC Act proposed by this Bill will ensure matters of national environmental significance continue to receive the highest possible level of protection whilst affording an opportunity for significant community concerns to be addressed. The proposed changes will strengthen the EPBC Act's environmental protection regime and increase its effectiveness by facilitating more expert review of new fishing activities prior to their commencement.

The government has a strong commitment to the protection of the oceans. We have shown this in our commitment to creating national parks in the ocean, in our treatment of the great barrier reef and our approach today.

This is important for those who love the environment, love our oceans, love to fish or rely on fishing for their livelihoods.

Australia's oceans are some of the most magnificent places on earth and we will not risk them.

We cannot allow there to be a view that Australia would manage our oceans only with an eye to immediate commercial opportunities.

On issues like this the Government has formed a pact with the Australian people, with those who love our oceans, who love to fish in them or rely on our oceans for their livelihood.

That pact and the obligation that comes with that does not only apply to this generation but for generations to come.

Marine environments once wrecked take generations to recover, if they ever do. A precautionary approach isn't just good policy, it is the only decent option.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Declared Commercial Fishing Activities) Bill 2012 we are discussing today should be a concern to all Australians because of the very dangerous precedent that it sets. What is more, whilst I have not seen the minister's new second reading speech, you can bet your bottom dollar it is substantially different to the one that he gave to the House less than seven days ago on 11 September 2012. Make no mistake, this is a minister who claims no knowledge of the Commonwealth harvest strategy, which enticed a trawler to Australia for business purposes. Minister Burke was the minister who tabled a Commonwealth harvest strategy in both houses of parliament which included these important words:

there are considerable economies of scale in the fishery and the most efficient way to fish may include large scale factory freezer vessels—

These are the words of Minister Burke's own harvest strategy. That was in 2009. On 3 September this year, exactly a fortnight ago, Minister Burke accredited the relevant fishery under part 13 of the act for an interim two-week period and subject to conditions. On 10 September, a week later, the science was still robust.

On 11 September, we got a piece of legislation and, in the minister's second reading, we were told a number of things, and I seek to go through those because what it shows and highlights is the complete duplicity and dishonesty of this government and its shambolic approach to public policy. There he was in 2009 advocating a large-scale factory freezer vessel, and indeed 'vessels' plural, in the strategy—he was contemplating not only one such vessel but a multiplicity of such vessels.

On 11 September in his second reading speech, he talks about concern of a new style of large-scale fishing operation in Australia. Funny that. I wonder who made the suggestion of a large-scale fishing operation? It was the minister's own harvest strategy. And it is that big that we should all be concerned that the government's own Australian Fisheries Management Authority website stresses that the net to be used by this fishing vessel is by no means the largest that will be operating in Australia. If this is a new style of large-scale fishing, can the minister explain to us the bigger nets that are being used as we speak? Are they old? How can a new style of large-scale fishing be smaller than that which already exists? Oh what a tangled webs we weave when we set out to deceive.

Let us think of the background of this minister. Where did he cut his teeth politically? The Wilderness Society. Make no mistake as to what his antecedents are and that is why when he saw community concern against a big trawler he immediately said, 'Here's the opportunity in conjunction with our Greens alliance partners to get into every particular fishery that we can.' That is why on 11 September, just last week, he introduced legislation to deal with recreational, charter and commercial fisheries of our country, on the basis that if he felt a social uncertainty about the particular fishery he could ban it for two years. That was his agenda. That was the Greens agenda. This is the minister who says, 'I didn't sign off on the Commonwealth harvest strategy which invited these larger trawlers into Australia.' Oh, yes he did. He must have known or he was so incompetent that he does not deserve the big white car that he is driven around in let alone the ministerial stipend that he receives? Then he talked about the nature of this vessel. If this is a one-off, why did he want 'vessels' plural in his harvest strategy?

In that speech he gave on 11 September, he specifically said:

The amendments propose to incorporate—

and—

The provisions would only be activated if … there is uncertainty about the environmental, social or economic impacts of the identified fishing activity and that further assessment is required.

Is the minister denying that this was his second reading speech? Is the minister going to say the same as he did about the harvest strategy, that he had no knowledge of it, that he has no understanding of his ministerial portfolio? The government have come into this place today with a completely different second reading speech where social and economic impacts dealing with uncertainties the minister might have have been scrubbed out of the legislation.

So what does the minister claim? What does he know about his portfolio? What does he actually lay claim to? He dismisses the harvest strategy, he dismisses this speech which he gave to the parliament fewer than seven days ago, and now, on the back of the member for Dobell, Craig Thomson of Health Services Union fame, moving amendments for the government, the bill has been mucked up even further and requires further amendments. This is shambolic, written with capital letters. I am sure that one of these days the dictionary definition of Burke will be 'shambolic', because this is how he has gone about his ministerial duties.

The amazing thing about his second reading speech of 11 September—as is the wont of all those that cut their teeth in the Green movement; you have to clothe your deceit in morality—is that he finished by saying about that which he was proposing about the environmental, social and economic impacts that, if there were any uncertainty, he had to stop the fishery for two years. Do you know what his last few words were? They were, 'It is the only decent option.' Well, here we are, fewer than seven days later, and it is no longer the only decent option. He has ripped up two-thirds of that which he claimed was the only decent option. So much for morality. So much for the decency. So much for the options that were available.

But, of course, this is the same government that goes to the people six days before an election and says, 'There will be no carbon tax' and then, at the behest of the Greens and the green agitators within the ALP, imposes a carbon tax on the Australian people. This is the government that will also react to anything that it thinks is populous because it is so desperate to try to regain some traction with the Australian electorate. Sure, on this one, it may have tried to jump onto a populous issue. Remember, that is exactly what it did with the live cattle exports. Remember that? On the back of a TV program, it banned it overnight. And, slowly but surely, the policy unravelled. The Australian taxpayer is now facing a minimum of $30 million in compensation, and the sad thing is that when you have this shambolic public administration by Greens senators and hapless government ministers, it is not the Greens senators and the Labor ministers that pay the compensation bill—it is the Australian taxpayer.

As I said previously, when a government pulls the rug out from investors in circumstances where a harvest strategy three years earlier had invited a consortium to invest in a large-scale freezer vessel, when it tells them everything is okay and everything gets signed off, and then at one minute to midnight it cancels or moves the goalposts, it should send a shudder down everybody's back. If the government will do that to a fishery, why not to agriculture and mining? Indeed, the analogy I used before was: what is the difference between a local council saying to a person, 'You can build a house on this block of land', the person going out and buying the block of land and all the building materials, and, just when they are about to put the mattock into the ground to dig the foundations, the council saying, 'Sorry, we've changed our minds; you can no longer build'? Do you think that person would feel aggrieved? Absolutely. Would that person seek to sue for the cost of the block of land and all the building materials? Of course they would. Similarly, I have no doubt that this legislation will lead the government to a situation—like the live cattle exports—of huge compensation bills.

Why is this legislation being rushed through? It is because the government wants cheap popularity. I say to the recreational fishers and I say to the charter fishers: you know what this government's agenda is. Their real agenda was exposed in the original legislation. And it was not only a technical defect, because the minister specifically referred to it in his second reading speech. He said that the only decent option was to ensure that he had the power to stop a fishery on social, environmental and economic grounds if he, as minister, felt that there was any uncertainty. If they can do it now to the commercial fisheries, we know what they want to do. They want to have this across the totality of the fisheries and, as is the wont with the Greens, they will start and will slowly, slowly move across.

I say to the recreational fishing community, especially in my home state of Tasmania: see what they did to the forest industry—slowly, slowly. It was old growth forest, then it was regrowth forest and then it was plantations. And what are the Greens doing in Tasmania? They are campaigning against wild sea fisheries and the aquaculture industry. They celebrate when, through government manoeuvres, you cannot expand a fish farm in Tasmania. They are against the wild fisheries and against fish farming. That is unfortunately the result of a Greens-Labor alliance government, where the Labor Party, whilst being the majority in number, is the minority when it comes to backbone, when it comes to integrity and when it comes to sticking by their core consistency.

Make no mistake, if this legislation gets passed, 45 people who were unemployed and then got a job will, today, as a result of this legislation, which is predicted to go through this place, be unemployed again. That is the human face of this Greens-Labor alliance government. What is more, the science has been gone through. The Australian Fisheries Management Authority was appointed by this government and relies on the science of all the scientific bodies that deal in this area—be it the CSIRO, be it TAFI, be it the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation—that agree that the science is right.

All of them agree that this fishing should be able to take place. Indeed, the minister himself signed off in 2009 about the Commonwealth harvest strategy in this area.

But this product will actually be used for the feeding of Africans with fish protein. If we do not harvest it for them, on the sustainable and very modest basis that we will, who is going to provide them with cost-effective fish protein? I know who. It will be the countries that do not have proper harvest strategies. It will be countries that do not have the sorts of total allowable catches that we do; strategies and total allowable catches that are celebrated worldwide, because they are seen as the best strategies for a country with a substantial coastline. I understand from Senator Colbeck that, yes, Germany might be seen as different, but they are not exactly—with respect to the country of my birth—a fishing nation; they may have been somewhere in the dim, distant past but they are not at the moment. We are celebrated as the real trendsetters in strategies in total allowable catches—being exceptionally conservative.

In relation to this particular issue, the science is there. The government asked for large freezer vessels—and I stress 'vessels' plural not singular—and the government is now, at the last minute with their Greens alliance partners, passing special legislation to stop it. There will be a compensation bill. The losers will be the Australian taxpayers, funding that compensation bill. The losers will be the people who no longer have a job, courtesy of this. The losers will be the total Australian economy, because those who invest in Australia know that you cannot rely on this government.

This is a government that promises one thing, like no carbon tax, and then delivers the opposite. This is a government that announces cash for clunkers before an election so the motor vehicle industry gears up for it, but straight after the election they junk the policy. This is a government that is shambolic. This is a government that reacts on a knee-jerk basis. We had ministers standing in this House less than eight days ago claiming the science was robust and defendable. Now they are trashing their own appointed Australian Fisheries Management Authority. They are trashing the reputation of world renowned fisheries experts from all around Australia. All these people are having their reputations trashed, and we are having urgent legislation put in to stop one particular vessel with one particular quota.

Can I say, there will also be other losers in this: those fishing families that have leased or sold their licences to this particular company. Some people do not like the idea of big fishing ventures. Well, it is like one farmer buying the farm next door or leasing the property next door. It happens every day in Australia, and we should not be concerned about it. What we should be concerned about is the populism of people wanting to see this trawler stopped. The strategy was put in place years before; people were invited and required to jump through all sorts of hoops so that they could get all the required licences, which they did; and then the government says: 'Well, we can't attack you on the science. We can't attack you on the economics. But the Greens want us to oppose this; therefore, we will.' That sends a message to every single person who might seek to invest and create wealth in our country.

This is an important job security issue for 50 people in my home state of Tasmania, where jobs are being shed by about 100 or more every single week. The Greens-ALP alliance seeks to snuff out the one glimmer of hope on their horizon with an opportunistic populism.

Can I simply say to those recreational fishermen who are concerned about the coalition stance: be careful, because the precedent has been set. The minister can, and this government will, move on you if they think they can get away with it. That is why you were included in the first draft of the bill and that is why we oppose the bill—(Time expired)

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We heard the scare campaign there at the end of Senator Abetz's speech: 'We are coming for you next, Recreational Fishers!' which is really a slap in the face for those recreational fishers who have run a very strong campaign. They are very rightly concerned about the impact that this supertrawler will have on the marine environment and on fish stocks. We have seen globally the impact that supertrawlers have had on our marine environment and that is why people are so worried about the impact that these supertrawlers will have on the Australian marine environment.

I have said in this place many times that Australia can be proud of its approach to fisheries management. But I have never said it is perfect. In fact I have been very clear to say that it is not perfect, because we have significant problems with sustainable management of fisheries in this country. In my home state of Western Australia you do not need to look any further than the rock lobster fishery which has gone through some very difficult times because we do not know all the science. When we were talking a decade ago about sustainable management of fisheries, we were told we knew everything about it. Well, we did not know everything about it, because now we have seen a significant crash in the stocks of that fishery, with some significant social and economic impacts.

So nobody can say that we are perfect in this country. Yes, we are leading the world, but we are not perfect.

One of the reasons that we are doing so well is that we do not have and have not had supertrawlers in our fisheries. We have not been subjected to those fishing practices carried out by supertrawlers, as has been the case in European fisheries and in other fisheries. This very supertrawler has been operating off the west coast of Africa, to the point where it got banned, for example, from Senegal—the very continent that it is claimed that this supertrawler is going to sell fish back to. They have been in there fishing those waters, taking fishing out of those waters, and basically saying, 'That's okay; we'll sell them somewhere else and we'll make a profit out of that and then we'll go and fish in Australian waters and flog them back to you at a much higher price than you can fish those waters yourselves.' That is not learning from the mistakes of the past.

Yes, the Greens are pleased that we are seeing a bill to deal with this, because it has been mishandled, because mistakes have been made in the past, and because we do not know the science. Those opposite can claim all they like about having known the science and that all these fisheries scientists said that this was a well-managed fishery or the quota was sustainable. People will remember that just over three weeks ago we had a debate about the disallowance of the quota—and we voted a week ago—where we Greens clearly pointed out that the science was not there for doubling the quote and we raised very serious concerns about the process. And guess what? In fact, there are serious concerns about the quota and we are now hearing that the science is not there. Fortunately the government has discovered it in time and is acting—at, I will agree, one minute to midnight; but at least the government is acting—to ensure that this supertrawler cannot operate in the rapacious manner that it planned to in our Australian marine environment.

It has been made to sound as if all the marine scientists all agreed that the science was in to show the quota was okay, when in fact that is not the case. For example, Jessica Meeuwig, of the Oceans Institute at the University of Western Australia was very clearly saying that there were concerns there—and she is not the only one. The science on the fish stocks, the ecosystem function and the bycatch was not there. We need recent data, not old data. We need regional and species specific data. We need that data over a period of time—for at least two years, the scientists say. We need movement studies. We need to understand the role of the target species in the ecosystems and to understand the dynamics of those ecosystems—and we need new data, not old data. And that is just on the fish stocks.

Then of course we need the data on the bycatch species. We need robust data on those bycatch species. We need expert advice around those species that are going to be taken as bycatch—for example, the mammals. We need expert advice on their migration, on how effective mid-water trawl nets are and how they affect and interact with bycatch. We need to understand the comprehensive population dynamics and assess that. And we need to be looking not only at mammals but also at seabirds. The seabird management plans that have been put in place have not been proven yet. So we were about to sign off on this trawler when we did not know any of that—none of it.

I will say that it is unfortunate that we got to this point and that our motion to disallow the quota was not supported. Of course, since then, we have had the findings from the Ombudsman, which found that there were problems with the setting of the quota and the administrative process in setting the total allowable catch in the fishery. It was also found that the management advisory committee had failed to exclude the committee member, Mr Gerry Gene, from its meeting in February, where that total allowable catch was being discussed. They found that the committee did not follow the processes for excluding Mr Gene from that decision-making process. I will not read out the whole letter, but the letter does go on to say:

Other matters have come up in the course of our investigation. We are in the process of giving further consideration to these matters before we will be in a position to conclude our investigation.

In other words, there are other issues hanging over the decision on this quota. That is the decision-making process and then of course, as I have said, we need to come back to the science. So, clearly, this quota should not have been doubled. Clearly, there have been problems in the way that the decision-making process occurred and also about the information that was considered.

Then we get to the issue around the oft quoted small pelagic fishery harvest plan and the fact that the last dot point in the background says:

There are considerable economies of scale in the fishery and the most efficient way to fish may—

and I underline the word 'may'—

include large scale factory freezer vessels.

I agree that it was a stupid thing to put in the harvest plan and I do not think it is appropriate for Australian waters—but it does say 'may'. So then the company goes, 'Oh, you beauty; we can bring in a factory ship. Don't worry about the science; we'll just try and use the political process.'

The fact is that the community knew nothing about this. The claim is that it has been on the books for seven years. How are those concerned recreational fishers, commercial fishers, the environmental movement, the broader community and local communities supposed to know that this is happening? They found out only a couple of months ago. If I had come into this place three or four years ago and said, 'Guess what? There's this huge 22,000 tonne vessel that is going to be coming to and trawling in our waters and it is going to take 18,000 tonnes of fish,' I would have been laughed out of this place. I would have been told that I was scaremongering. Nobody would have paid any attention.

It is only now that people are actually focused on what is happening. Public concern has been growing very substantially around the coast of Australia. It is a minute to midnight—as I said, it is very, very late—but at least we are taking action to protect the Australian marine environment. Having said that, the government should have put in place a much better, more robust, scientific process around the harvest management plan. But, just because the government got it wrong in the first place, does not justify them continuing to double the impact by going along with it without questioning that process.

AFMA has the precautionary principle built into its operating guidelines, and this would have probably given some people confidence that the government was taking the necessary care with this fishery. But it has become increasingly clear that the economic rather than the precautionary principle has been prevailing in the decision-making process.

I have just been talking about how the quota setting has been poorly managed. The doubling of the jack mackerel quota, which we understand was called for by Seafish Tasmania, happened while Seafish Tasmania sat on the fisheries management advisory committee. Of course, as I said, this has now attracted the interest of the Ombudsman. The minister for fisheries has publicly declared that he no longer has faith in AFMA to do its job in managing our fisheries and has announced a review, which I will come to in a minute.

I have touched on the science and the fact that we do not know a lot of things about this particular fishery and the oft quoted reports from the opposition around the science—and the government was quoting some of it too during the debate on the disallowance motion. A new report released today has further questioned the science behind the quota setting, and this report, Re-analysis of mean daily egg production in jack mackerel, is from the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies, which Senator Colbeck not long ago was also talking about.

In the case of the small pelagic fishery, the harvest strategy dictates that the recommended biological catch or the RBC should not exceed a prescribed percentage of the best available spawning biomass estimate. The background of the report reads:

Given the level of interest in the jack mackerel … daily egg production method …

the institute

have undertaken a re-analysis of the reported egg density data using a range of alternative model fitting methods suggested in the literature.

And guess what? They found some serious differences arise from the choice of the egg model—differences that present seriously different end results about what constitutes a sustainable total catch.

While we have heard over and over again that the doubling of the jack mackerel quota on old egg data is within the precautionary principle of the harvest strategy, we now have clear proof that there is plenty of wriggle room within these facts—in other words, it casts serious doubt over what is the sustainable total catch. I have had scientists say to me that it could be as much as a third or even a fifth less than what they say. The bottom line has significant question marks around the sustainable total catch.

I quote again from the report:

A shortcoming of the current harvest strategy is that it does not explicitly consider the effect of differing uncertainties between studies and analytical methods.

Unfortunately, these results do not surprise me at all. If the minister had not already announced a serious review of the fisheries management legislation and its operation through AFMA, I think the broader community, including us, would have been calling for such a review. This review is going to be very important and it needs to be on the record that it will be independent, transparent and have opportunities for public submissions. The fact that the harvest strategy does not specifically and explicitly consider the effect of the different uncertainties between studies and analytical methods highlights the flaws in the harvest strategy yet again.

If the company had been in serious negotiation and thought about how it was going to bring that trawler to Australia, surely it would have been going through the harvest strategy and looking at the other scientists' comments. This is a case of picking out the science that you want and running with it.

Scientists have been raising serious concerns about the setting of the sustainable total catch and they have also been pointing out that the science of the life cycle of these species has not been agreed upon. As I said before, Dr Jessica Meeuwig, who is a renowned marine scientist from Western Australia, voiced her concerns during the public debate by explaining that the live-hard, dying-fast explanation of the life cycle of these fish and comparing it to the South American anchovy is simply wrong. The jack mackerel is significantly different to those particular fish and it lives up to 30 years. We simply cannot anticipate that it will rapidly repopulate without further scientific analysis—in other words, the assumptions that were made in some of the science, she very strongly questioned. She is one of Australia's leading marine scientists and has a much different opinion on some of the science underpinning the setting of the quota.

Dr Meeuwig and others have emphasised that, before we can allow a fishing activity on this scale to occur, we need to examine the population structures as well as finally conducting proper independent estimates of the biomass. We also need to review the dynamics of species recruitment and particularly understand how a warming ocean will impact on these species.

These species have almost been fished out in the past. They used to be so abundant in the waters around Tasmania, yet stocks have been decimated. We are now being told that efficiencies in this fishery can only be achieved through massive factory ships. We reject that claim. That sort of fishing is not appropriate in Australian waters. If we are to retain our leading status in terms of the quality of the way we manage our fisheries, we need to be looking at this science. We need to be reassessing how we manage our fish stocks.

This is not the first time there have been outrageous claims made around fishing and sustainable total catch in this country. We need to be getting this right. We need to be looking at the science a lot better and not just making decisions based on gross assumptions. We need to be giving real teeth to the precautionary principle and enacting it: what does it mean?

We believe that the onus of proof needs to be on proving something is sustainable rather than assuming that it is and fishing until there is no more left. We are deeply concerned with the approach that was taken during this harvest strategy and believe that we need to be relooking at the way we approach the setting. I will not go into a lot of detail around the amendments that the Greens propose, because I will discuss those in committee as a whole. But the Greens believe that there should not be supertrawlers in Australian waters—

Debate interrupted.