Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to make a contribution to a very important piece of legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Making Marine Parks Accountable) Bill 2012. It is a private member's bill.

I note that with the allocation of speaking times I have 20 minutes, and so this is actually being run as a pretty conventional debate that no doubt in some way we would normally conceive of as adversarial. I am a bit surprised; I actually thought this would be in the section of noncontroversial. It is a very sensible piece of legislation, with some principal elements of the legislation that I would have thought would simply have been ticked off by all sides and that we would just have moved on by having a very sensible series of amendments to a piece of legislation that at the moment is causing a great deal of concern right across the Australian community—particularly for those people who are concerned about the environment and those people who are concerned about their livelihoods and their jobs, particularly in coastal communities. It is also a concern for those people in the scientific community who want to continue to maintain that Australia has not only the best fisheries management regime in the world but that we are managing our marine estate with the very best legislation.

So I am not expecting anything but support for this legislation. Perhaps I am a little optimistic, but I have never read a piece of legislation with principles that are so simply and effectively put. It beggars belief that we would even be having too robust a debate. But this is an opportunity for me to stand and explain the benefits, which I am sure you will all be agreeing on.

The member for Dawson has introduced this legislation, no doubt as a consequence of his experience; he has lived in a marine community and he knows the consequences of poor planning.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And who put that planning in place?

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am going to take that; already we have interjections from the other side. Someone asked me, 'Well, who put those things in place?' I am going to get to exactly who actually decided that marine protected areas should be currency in a political debate and that the outcomes and the motivation for providing for a marine protected area should be about a deal with the Greens and political preferences rather than looking after the environment. I would hope that those opposite would simply understand that we have gone well beyond those issues now. We are now moving to a far more rational way to manage our oceans.

In this country it is quite clear that there is no reason that we should have a poor planning outcome. There is not a single reason, because we are endowed with the very best internationally. We are endowed with the best science and we are the envy of the world in terms of our marine scientists and the stuff that they do. Whether it is the CSIRO, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the Australian Institute of Marine Research or the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, all of our fisheries offices around Australia in the states and territories do an absolutely outstanding job. Not only are they outstanding—because we stand in this place and we do not like to annoy people too much, so we all call them outstanding—but I can recall in another life as the chairman of the International Coalition of Fisheries Associations that Australia was the envy of the world. There was a clear connection tied closely between the facts that we had such great scientific resources and how we had the best managed fisheries and marine ecosystems internationally.

So there is no reason at all that we should have a poor planning decision. The challenge is that it is not only about owning these wonderful individuals and institutions and the advice that they provide, it is actually using them and taking consideration of the advice, ensuring that we do so. We know, particularly in the issue about marine protected areas and marine planning, that those institutions have been completely ignored or sidelined on many occasions. Every time that has happened there has been a negative impact not only on the environment but on those people who wish to use the environment sustainably and the communities that they support.

We also have great wealth in another area: we have great wealth in an area of science that is not particularly well known publicly. We have modellers who can actually model the impact on pretty much anything. It was towards the later years in the rollout—probably around 2005-06—that this science really came to the notice of the Australian community.

But that science is, of course, measuring the impact on communities of almost any change. For example, if we decided that we would take the tourism out of here, push the rainforest down and put sugarcane in, someone would be able to tell you the exact impacts on the businesses and the communities that rely on them at that stage. So these are change models. A friend of mine, Melanie Fisher—I do not know what Melanie is doing at the moment—gave us some fantastic advice about the direct impacts on communities. When we model the impact on a community of a particular decision, we can moderate that decision and change that decision to ensure that it minimises any impact on the community. In terms of marine protected areas, it can be as much as changing a zone, moving a zone slightly over or changing a use pattern in regard to the distance from a port. That might keep two fuel businesses in business.

So we have the science, not only in looking after our ecosystem and this wonderful marine biosphere but also in how to look after the communities that depend on it. But, again, we actually have to ensure that the decision makers—in terms of Commonwealth marine protected areas, the decision makers are in this place, although not entirely, and I will get to that in a moment—rely on information that has been provided by that great science both in the conventional sense and in the marine sense.

We have had a bit of a sad history, and I touched on it earlier with the interjection. In terms of the rollout of marine protected areas, the history is a bit of a sad one. Motive has played a big part in my life—I am not sure where I stumble on the term—but I also like to think: 'What's motivating this person to approach me? What's motivating me to go through this activity?' I think that is a very important part of life. When you look at the motivation for a marine protected area, I think its success will rely pretty much on the motivation. If you are motivated to protect a particular piece of iconic biodiversity, it is very likely that that particular piece of iconic biodiversity will be protected. But suppose you are simply motivated, as we have seen plenty of times in this place and at a state level—certainly New South Wales is a standout—by making a currency out of marine protected areas so that you can do a preference deal with the Greens. This is not some sort of assertion. This is something that has been well documented, particularly in Queensland, where a deal was done: 'We will roll out this. We will give these protected areas to the Greens if you give us your preferences in these seats.' So the motivation of the Labor government in Queensland and the Labor government in New South Wales was simply, 'I want to get myself re-elected.' The motivation of getting myself re-elected is hardly a way to manage fisheries and our biosphere, and that is why it has fundamentally failed.

Of course, we as Australians should embrace every single opportunity to take away the perverse capacity to politically interfere with good science. I am not putting my hand on my heart and saying that we on this side would not do such a thing. I think that when such a thing exists in politics it provides a temptation that may be available to anyone. So we should remove it, and that is exactly what this piece of legislation does. This piece of legislation will ensure that we use the very best science. It ensures that time is set aside to ensure that there are no perverse and unintended consequences, which are something that in this place we are always trying to avoid.

I know that we are having complaint from Labor. They do not want this tool taken away from them. It is a tool that they use time and time again in their relationship with the Greens. We have not had to use the tool, because we do not have a similar relationship with the Greens, so they do not come and talk to us about what we are going to lock up if they give us their preferences. When this legislation passes, those sorts of circumstances will be a thing of the past. That is why I think this really should have broad support from this place. I know it will certainly have broad support in the wider community.

A really important part of this legislation is the element of the legislation that includes the term 'before'. Before you proclaim an area, these are the things that need to be done instead of saying, 'Right, we're going to go out and close all these areas, and then we're going to deal with the negative impacts.' Everybody accepts that there are negative impacts, whether it is the displaced effort, smashing communities you did not really mean to or the fact that you did not really have a budget for ensuring that you can offset the commercial effort—'Oh, sorry about that; we just can't do it for you now.' That will not happen again.

Fundamentally this legislation, I think, is encapsulated in the proposed amendment at the end of section 343. It says:

The Minister must obtain, and the Director must report on, scientific advice …

I know you will be recoiling on the other side at a suggestion that this place must take on board scientific advice, but I think it is something that the wider Australian community would agree with. Then it goes on to say 'stakeholders' views'. Again, I am not really sure what the problem is going to be from the other side on this, but I would have thought that stakeholders' views would be really important to consider in this matter. It is a very, very important matter. This is a matter about communities, jobs and sustainability. These are very important issues that need to be discussed with the stakeholders. It goes on to say 'and an independent social and economic impact assessment'. So the Melanie Fishers of the world, who have done such brilliant work, for the first time will be consulted before you make the proclamation.

Senator McLucas interjecting—

So instead of making the proclamation and then having to go and try to tidy up the mess afterwards, Senator McLucas, and smashing communities like Cairns and businesses in Cairns, what will happen if there are amendments made is that there will be some research done. A social and economic assessment will be done to ensure that we can have a balance of both things—with, of course, the best science. Australia has, as I have said, an enormous number of experts, and it is all about ensuring that we use them in this place.

That is exactly what this legislation does.

But the most important element is the last one, which goes on to say:

… an independent social and economic impact assessment before Proclamations over areas of sea (or over both land and sea) are made.

We learn as time goes on. Thirty years ago we thought that rolling out a marine protected area was a great thing—a matter of solitary islands and we will sneak one around here and that will be fine. But pretty soon everybody was saying, 'Look, there are an awful lot more fishermen in the area over here adjacent to that. Why is that?' Well, fishermen are not allowed here anymore so we have learned that, if we take a whole bunch of fishermen from one area and push them into other areas, we have actually increased fishing pressure in those other areas.

All the science in the world says that you cannot displace effort. So on the very first day of the proclamation people cannot go to one area so they go to an adjacent area. From that first day of something to protect the environment, you have increased pressure. That has always been the challenge, and this piece of legislation from the member for Dawson ensures that the effort has been displaced before a proclamation so there is no net negative impact on the environment, none. For the first time we have learnt from the past and now there will be no displaced effort.

I have been in this place from time to time and I have talked about what we can manage. There are plenty of issues around marine protected areas—and when you say 'marine protected areas' a lot of people think of fish and whales and all those sorts of things. But when you put a marine protected area in, you are actually having more of an impact because a marine protected area only affects people. I can assure you that there will be no dugongs out there inspecting section 343 of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Making Marine Parks Accountable) Bill. None of them will be doing that. There will be no mackerel or dugong saying, 'I am not going to go there, then. That is going to be completely different.' It is only going to affect people. Legislation can only impact on people, and on people it will impact, and it will impact on coastal communities. If you want to be fair dinkum, you will accept this legislation because it ensures that we consult science, we get it right first, and that we do not take any action until such time as we have got it right.

It is not a matter of slowing these things down—it is all part of a planning process and, yes, the planning process might have an 18-month lead-up time. We may say that we intend to close this area and declare these, and they will be declared when we have gone through the processes and finished them. This is the best science. This is what the scientists will tell you. This is what the social assessors and the social scientists and experts will tell you. These things have to be planned and have to be done in this particular manner, and that is exactly what this legislation says. This legislation says that this is the process and this is what you are going to do.

There is another element of the legislation that says, 'Look, at the end of the day when they have done it all, let us check to see that they have got it right.' So it will have to be a disallowable instrument to sit in the parliament and we will have a chat about it. Those on the other side are shaking their heads because they do not want it to be. We do not mind transparency. We do not mind the representatives of the people at the highest possible level in this land having a look at that and saying, 'I am not sure whether you have displaced all the effort or whether you have compensated for the impacts.' This will ensure that you do not actually approach it with an attitude that says that it does not matter if all these communities are smashed and those businesses shut down, that they will build up and we will compensate them later. That is not going to work.

There have been some terrific arguments on the other side. I can remember Senator Furner—lovely bloke—in the last debate here when he was rolled out and told to argue the impossible. Poor old Furner stood up and said, 'Listen, if we have a disallowable instrument it is going to cause coral bleaching. That is what is going to happen if we have more transparency.'

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What?

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I know—ask the Hansard here, Senator Macdonald! It was a sad day. He is a great bloke but it is very difficult to defend the indefensible. The other issue is of course that it is going to give us something that is a complete change. It is going to give us the capacity to budget for it. We know the disaster in Queensland—

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So do we—Campbell Newman!

Government senators interjecting—

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

because we did not plan it properly. We now have an opportunity to ensure that we plan it properly. But there is something else along with the capacity to budget, one issue that you will all agree with. If you pick up a fishing magazine anywhere or talk to a coastal community anywhere and you say, 'Listen, what do you reckon about a marine protected area?' you had better have your mouth guard on. I can tell you what this legislation will do: it will make it popular. It will put the force of Australians' support, which they want to do, in a tool looking after their bioregions and their marine estate. That is what Australians want.

This is a piece of legislation that quite forensically and quite cleverly deals with those issues that have not only not made it popular, but have not made it work. It has not worked because there are so many unintended consequences. We have displaced fisheries. We have made claims that we are going to compensate and yet we have not budgeted for it. Ten years after people have been compensated they are still arguing with government. We need a planning phase and we need a forensic mechanism of ensuring that we plan these things so that there are no unintended consequences and at the same time we can continue to offer what we should be most proud of—our incredible marine biosphere—the highest level of protection we have internationally. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Matt Thistlethwaite (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise of course in opposition to this bill, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Making Marine Parks Accountable) Bill 2012, and in doing so I want to state that I have been close to the ocean for most of my life. The ocean is really the thermometer for our planet. Just as human beings take their body temperature as an indicator of sickness or wellbeing, the ocean is the indicator of our planet's wellbeing. For some decades now the ocean has been giving warning signals to the human race that the planet is under pressure. We have had ocean warming. We have had rising sea levels. We have had certain fish stocks being fished almost to the point of extinction. The scientific evidence has been getting more and more thorough and has been conducted more and more routinely by more and more nations, particularly those like Australia that rely so heavily on coastal development, on shipping, on resources from the sea and, importantly, on fishing. The number of studies being conducted has continued to grow and all of the scientific evidence indicates that our oceans are under pressure and that the process of studying our oceans' biodiversity, health and conservation is necessary. This has been based on sound scientific principles over the last couple of decades. So the process that the government has undertaken through the development and protection of our oceans' biodiversity with marine parks is not an knee-jerk reaction at all. In fact, it is a process that has been undertaken for decades in Australia. So much so that much of the evidence and the scientific study commenced and grew under the years of the Howard government.

The government's current marine park proposals have been more than a decade in development. The development of marine bioregional plans and the identification of the Commonwealth Marine Reserves Network proposal have been underpinned by strong scientific information, by detailed analysis and, importantly, by detailed socioeconomic studies on the impacts and rigours of the development of marine parks. Also importantly, there has been sound consultation with stakeholders and those affected.

The science underpinning the proposed reserves commenced more than 15 years ago under the Keating government. Importantly, it was fully embraced by the Howard government when they came to office in 1996. The rationale for creating a comprehensive, adequate and representative system of protected areas in our oceans has endured and strengthened in this nation over those years. The principle was enshrined in the Howard government's Oceans Policy, and successive Howard government ministers, from Robert Hill to Malcolm Turnbull, championed and implemented that policy. To their credit, those ministers did not blink in the face of opposition to good policy, as those opposite are at the moment.

It started with the marine bioregionalisation of Australia, a monumental exercise in integrating multidisciplinary data into a picture of how biodiversity is structured across Australia's oceans. The CSIRO, Geoscience Australia and a number of universities and museums all collaborated on that work for years. Forty-one provincial bioregions have been identified in Commonwealth waters and, in order for the Commonwealth Marine Reserves Network proposal to be representative of Australia's marine ecosystems, the government has sought to include a part of each of those bioregions in the reserve network proposal. The first three years of the marine bioregional planning program were dedicated to the consolidation of scientific information and in some instances the collection of new data. This resulted in the publication of a bioregional profile for each of the regions. These profiles were prepared using scientific information about the region's biophysical and socioeconomic characteristics and conservation values.

One of the last accomplishments of the Howard government and the member for Wentworth, as the then environment minister, was to publish the marine bioregional profile for the South-West Marine Region. That document—a lovely glossy document which of course bears the picture of the then minister—contains the goals and principles which have guided the development of the current marine reserves proposal. Clearly the science was good enough then, but for some reason it is now no longer good enough for those opposite. Why is that? Simply because they see an opportunity for a vote in opposition.

The outcome was based on science that was undertaken by the Howard government. When they were last in government the coalition achieved several key milestones, including the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and the creation in 2006 of the world's first representative network of marine reserves in temperate oceans, the South-east Commonwealth Marine Reserves Network, comprising 13 large-scale offshore marine reserves around Tasmania and Victoria. Both of these achievements have received extraordinary and well-deserved praise from around the world. The Australian Labor Party, when in opposition, ultimately supported those decisions, despite reasonable criticisms at the time from some sectors that consultation with key stakeholders had been rushed and that the decisions had been taken to protect the environment—necessarily, in our view—on less than complete scientific and economic evidence.

Now we have the likes of Senator Colbeck saying that the coalition will wind back 'no fishing' areas and scrap the entire marine park network plan if they win power in the Senate and the lower house. That is what he said in Fishing World magazine on 14 June this year. What has the change been? The change is that the opposition now find an opportunity for a vote opposing these quite reasonable and sensible proposals that are based on thorough scientific and socioeconomic studies.

The government supports protection of precious areas like the Great Barrier Reef. Indeed, we have commended those opposite for the action they took to protect this important bioregion and area of heritage significance for Australia and its economy. The rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef in 2004 provides an example of the opposition's work, where there was an area that was rezoned from 4.5 per cent 'no take' to more than 30 per cent 'no take'.

I have mentioned earlier that there was limited consultation on the design of the adjustment program for the Great Barrier Reef. It was conducted by an expert panel, and the panel's report was never released. A key feature of the coalition's south-east marine network is the extension of the network off limits to commercial fishing to 80 per cent. That figure, the 80 per cent of the coalition's marine reserve locking out commercial fishers, is the reason why the arguments being put today by those opposite are the height of hypocrisy.

None of the Commonwealth proposed reserves in any region restrict boating in state coastal waters or the types of fishing undertaken by the vast majority of recreational fishers, which primarily occurs from beaches and jetties or in bays and estuaries. So the claims of large-scale recreational fisher lock-outs are unfounded, as are exaggerated estimates of the impact on fishing and boating relating to industries. In the Commonwealth regions in question, 96 per cent of the ocean within 100 kilometres offshore remains open to recreational fishing.

So we have seen that the process that has been undertaken by the government was based on sound science, sound socioeconomic studies and sound consultation. It is now the consultation that I wish to go to in the time that I have left. Throughout the marine bioregional and planning process, many stakeholders have been consulted and have been provided the opportunity to have their input, which has assisted in the development of the draft marine bioregional plans and proposed Commonwealth marine reserve networks around Australia. When Labor came to government in 2007, we continued that overarching policy that was in place by the coalition regarding marine reserves but, importantly, we revised the process to address the specific deficiencies that had been identified in both the consultation process and the transparency of the socioeconomic studies and consultation.

The result was several additional rounds of public information campaigns and consultations conducted between 2009 and September of this year. The examples of consultation include engagement of stakeholders on areas of further assessment as early as May 2009 in the south-west region. A number of iterations of the draft proposal were released for 90 days consultation last year—the most recent a 60-day public consultation period on the final marine reserve proposal in September of this year. Following the 90-day consultation in 2011, the representatives of commercial fishing industry in the south-west region were invited to two comprehensive workshops, one in October 2011 and the other in February 2012, to inform of options for finalising the marine reserves network. Up to 35 representatives attended each of those workshops and, between May 2011 and February 2012, the department held a total of no less than 245 meetings, which consisted of sector and multisector stakeholder meetings; open-house information sessions where members of the public were able to talk to departmental staff individually and in groups about the proposals; and targeted meetings with stakeholders.

The meetings were attended by a total of nearly 2,000 stakeholders and, of the 245 meetings, 98 were held in Western Australia, 19 in South Australia, 26 in New South Wales, 69 in Queensland, 22 in the Northern Territory and 11 in Canberra and Hobart. In each marine region, a 90-day public consultation period enabled stakeholders to provide feedback on the proposals. The feedback in the submissions was received on a full range of issues and the whole process took several years, with proposals refined on the basis of stakeholder and public input and information produced through the socioeconomic evaluations.

I have been involved in consultations at a local level with representatives of trawlermen, recreational fishermen and conservation groups in the Nelson Bay area in the electorate of Paterson, one of the areas that I am proud to represent on behalf of the Labor Party. I can tell you: in the consultations that I have had with those representative organisations, the message I got was that the government has not gone far enough in allocating and designating certain areas within that particular marine reserve as no-take areas. This is from the experts—a group of five trawlermen who work that area on a daily basis who have told of the threats to certain fish stocks, in particular the fishing of prawns, in that area. They have said that these plans do not go far enough. So that is some of the message that has been coming through that I have seen from this process. No-one can say that the deficiencies that existed under the previous government in relation to consultation have not been dealt with by this government in the process that we have undertaken to ensure that not only is the science covered but also we get as much feedback as possible from affected communities and representatives concerning the socioeconomic effects and, importantly, their views of the scientific evidence.

I want to say something about my state of New South Wales. New South Wales is in the process of conducting a review of marine parks, and the New South Wales government has released the review of state marine parks policies conducted by an expert panel led by Professor Bob Beeton. This report is a considered and balanced document that in many ways goes to the heart of some of the debates about marine parks—or marine reserves as they are called under the Commonwealth law.

While it is clearly up to the New South Wales government to interpret and respond to the report's findings and suggestions, there can be no doubt that the authors strongly endorse statutory reserves as a key tool in protecting and managing the marine environment. So they are continuing the tradition that was established under Labor in New South Wales of creating marine parks to protect the coast of New South Wales. The report makes a strong case for the completion of both state and national marine reserve networks focused on biodiversity conservation. The report also strongly endorses the application of economic and social science, alongside the biological sciences, in the design, zoning and management of marine reserves.

So in all respects this government has worked comprehensively with fishing communities and with representatives of conservation organisations to correct the deficiencies that existed in the past, with respect to consultation on these important conservation issues. We believe that we have got the balance right. We believe that the proposal released by the government will ensure the protection of various regional bioconservation areas related to our oceans and that it will have a limited effect on fishing communities and local environments. Importantly, this has been done in consultation with those affected. So, on that basis, we see no need for this bill to proceed.

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

It will come as no surprise, I am sure, to the chamber to know that the Greens will not be supporting the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Making Marine Parks Accountable) Bill 2012. This bill is really a cynical attempt by the coalition to garner support from the rec fishers when, in fact, what they are doing is supporting commercial fishers. I will get to a lot more detail of that in a minute. One of the fundamental facts here is that this system of marine protected areas and bioregional planning will ensure that our marine environment is protected. Not only is that good for biodiversity; it is also good for fish stocks. In particular, in this system of federal marine parks bottom trawling will be banned from well over a third of Australia's exclusive economic zone, or EEZ. We know that bottom trawling is a very major threat to fish stocks—and I have articulated those arguments in this place many times in the past. We know it is a threat to fish stocks, along with some of the issues around industrial mid-water trawling—and we spoke at length about that issue during our last session of parliament. We know that these two issues, which are key threats to fish stocks, will be banned from a third of that area. That is a positive for rec fishing.

The coalition say, 'Here we are trying to protect the rec fishers' interests,' when in fact it is actually about running the commercial fishers' arguments. The things which the coalition say this bill is trying to do have already occurred. We already have strong science around these proposals—and I will come back to that. There is overwhelming community support for marine protected areas—and I will also come back to that. The legislation is about politicising this argument. It is not about the science; it is about further politicising this particular argument.

I have been involved in marine conservation for a very long time. Ever since I started work on marine conservation issues, marine protection issues and the protection of our marine biodiversity, I have been hearing that there is no science around no-take areas, there is no science around marine protection. There are pages and pages, reams, of science now that show the benefits of well planned no-take areas and of marine biodiversity protection. But we keep being told that there is no science, when in fact there is. They just do not want to listen to that science.

There has been an extensive amount of consultation, some of which we have just heard about from the previous speaker. There is overwhelming community support for marine protection. It is consistently shown in polling and community surveys that 70 per cent of the Australian community supports marine protection measures. In the latest one, only 13 per cent opposed it. Marine protection has broad community support. There were 36,000 public submissions to the south-west plan, which is the plan for the south-west coast of Western Australia and the coast of South Australia. Thirty-six thousand submissions were supportive of the draft plan. Eighty thousand people around the country sent in submissions to the final consultation phase. That is a lot of people paying attention to this issue. It is disappointing to note that, on websites, the rec fishers were reduced to offering inducements to people to encourage their participation in the process. The consultation process has been extensive.

I do find it hard that the coalition are now seemingly not supportive of marine protected areas when in fact the coalition have been involved in marine protection for a long period of time. They should be proud of the marine protected areas that at a federal level they have put in place. There are really some outstanding examples of what the coalition have done. They started this current process. In my home state of Western Australia, the Barnett government—while I have some criticisms that they have not gone far enough—have put in place a number of marine protected areas, such as Camden Sound and one of my favourite areas on the planet, the Cape to Cape region in the south-west. Years ago, when I was wearing another hat as the coordinator of the Conservation Council of Western Australia, I was involved in those consultation processes. I know each of the reserves that they put in place. I know them. I have walked the beaches there, including along virtually the entire Cape to Cape region. So they also recognise the value of marine protected areas.

In fact, I remember the debate over the Jurien Bay Marine Park in the late 1990s in Western Australia where there was an argument being put that, 'We don't need no-take areas in this marine park, because we are the best fisheries managers in the world and the rock lobster industry has the best fisheries management process. We do not need no-take areas.' This was the Western Australian government and the fishers running this line. There were many hours of arguments around the need for no-take areas. This was happening at the same time as the Marine Stewardship Council were doing their certification process. Again, the arguments there were long and about, 'We don't need to have no-take areas, because we understand the fishery. We don't actually understand a key part of that fishery, but we understand that fishery.'

Of course, circumstances now show that, in fact, we did not understand that fishery and we have had to see significant measures taken because numbers have dropped so low. History has now shown us that, if we had no-take areas there—even the modest ones that we were recommending—we probably would have a better handle on that fishery now than we do. The science is very clear about the role and importance of no-take areas. I think it would be fair to say that it is inconvenient science that the coalition does not like.

The importance of marine protection is recognised globally. Marine parks make marine ecosystems more resilient to environmental shocks and act as restocking areas for the surrounding waters. Marine protected areas have been shown to lead to larger fish and more biodiversity within protected areas. That also has an effect to varying degrees outside these protected areas. There is increased resistance to various environmental threats such as pollution, pests, overfishing and climate change. Where implemented, MPAs have led to the reappearance and/or increased numbers of top predators, better functioning food webs and more stable ecosystems. This is particularly important in a world of crashing fish stocks and ever more environmental pressure on our marine protected areas. Australia has some of the most wonderful biodiversity in the world. In particular in the southwest of WA we have an amazing array of unique species found nowhere else on the planet.

I also think the coalition are getting some of their understanding of the science wrong in terms of, for example, the crown-of-thorns starfish in Queensland where the science is showing that no-take areas—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Spare me, spare me.

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

Again, Senator Macdonald is saying, 'Spare me.' He does not want to hear the facts. He does not want to hear what the scientists are saying around crown-of-thorns starfish. Simply doing a bit of pest control will not deal with the issue.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have lived with crown-of-thorns starfish.

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

Maybe you should look at the science, Senator Macdonald—the inconvenient science—that shows that you need healthy ecosystems that are resilient. Just doing some pest control does not deal with the underlying causes of those pest outbreaks. Terry Hughes says that reef health is the key to controlling crown-of-thorns starfish, that outbreaks are a symptom of low reef health, not the problem, and that we need to be looking at no-take reserves and that they are important for dealing with crown-of-thorns starfish.

Of course, the no-take areas and the marine protected areas provide an opportunity to benchmark fish populations in undisturbed ecosystems. There is overwhelming evidence to show the value of marine protection and the value of a series of marine reserves, a network, that is designed to support a resilient marine environment and marine ecosystems. Just last month Australia's moves to put in place a large national network of marine reserves was recognised by the IUCN at its annual—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is this the one Christine is on?

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

Actually, she is not any more, Senator Macdonald.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But it gives you an idea of what the IUCN is like.

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

It has recognised and paid tribute to Australia. Actually, Senator Macdonald, the IUCN is a combination of government and non-government organisations and if you understood IUCN you would understand—

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Excuse me, Senators; can I please remind you to direct your comments through the chair.

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

Sorry, through the chair, Senator Macdonald probably needs to go and have a look at the way the IUCN operates as a house of both government and non-government organisations.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, with people like Senator Milne.

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

The IUCN recognised the value, importance and significance of the series of marine protected areas that Australia is about to establish.

We hear lots arguments around the social and economic impacts. Again, this is inconvenient for the coalition because it shows that it does have significant benefits both socially and economically. We know, as I said earlier, that 70 per cent of people do support marine protection and appreciate the value. A number of us had the pleasure of listening to Tim Winton several months ago when he spoke so eloquently in this very place on the importance of our marine environment and how important it is to Australians, as we are a coastal nation and the vast majority of our community live on the coast and associate very clearly with the sea and with beaches.

Commonwealth marine parks, contrary to the scares that are out there, do not stop people enjoying our beaches. They do, however, reduce—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Who says that it stops them enjoying beaches?

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

Look at some of the words that people have been saying around locking up our marine environment. It does mean that people can still enjoy our beaches. The parks do, however, reduce human activities on our marine life. They are there to protect our marine environment, our marine ecosystems, and ensure that future generations can also enjoy our diverse marine environment.

Two-thirds of the marine reserves network, 87 per cent, of the total Commonwealth marine area, will allow recreational fishing and some forms of commercial fishing, but will restrict destructive industries such as bottom trawling and oil and gas extraction. That will improve the quality of these areas for recreational and sustainable commercial fishing. Contrary to the arguments that are being put, if we put in place a strong and effective system of marine protected areas we will ensure fish stocks into the future and we will ensure that we have a healthy marine environment that is there for future generations.

There have been some exaggerated claims that this will have an unacceptable economic impact. All sorts of figures have been thrown around. There are claims that it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and some claims that $1 billion will be needed in compensation. The realistic figure is closer to $100 million. The Centre for Policy Development has unpacked these claims in its latest report, Marine reserves reality check. The centre's analysis shows that the new marine national parks in the proposed Commonwealth marine reserves network will cover an area that provides $1.2 billion a year in ecosystem service value—this is not recognised in our economic accounts—bringing the total value of Australia's fully protected marine reserves to $2 billion a year in ecosystem services. These services are based on a conservative analysis of the estimates from a major UN Environment Programme study, The economics of ecosystems and biodiversity, and is adjusted downwards to account for the lower productivity of Australia's waters. This is a huge contribution that marine environments provide. It costs less to avoid damage to ecosystems than to recover their functions once they have been damaged—and we know what impact poor management is having on fish stocks globally.

It is essential that Australia does act to ensure that our marine environment is protected. ABARES have undertaken an analysis of the cost of the marine reserves and estimate that the value of fishing production that will be displaced by creating the Commonwealth marine reserves network is around $11.1 million per year and about 1.1 per cent of the value of the fish catch gross value of production from wild fisheries.

This is nothing but an attempt by the coalition to undermine the system of marine reserves and the progress that the government is making on this. In a way it trashes its own proud history of marine protection that the previous Howard government set up. Is it now saying, 'We don't actually value what we did then; it is okay for us to do it, but we don't want that system extended'? The coalition is running the commercial fishers argument disguised as a rec fishers argument. Both commercial fishers and rec fishers have been making exaggerated claims about the impact it will have on their fisheries.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Rec fishers too?

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

I have said commercial fishers and rec fishers have both been running exaggerated claims about the impact it will have. They do not appreciate the value that marine protected areas play in actually keeping their fisheries sustainable.

Marine protection is vital to the future of our unique marine biodiversity and is the key to our protecting our fish stocks into the future. The science is clearly there. How much more science do you need to show the values of marine protected areas, of no-take areas and of a properly planned process? That is what this process is—it is about properly planning the use and protection of our marine environment. Imagine if we had had the opportunity to do that terrestrially. What a different landscape we would have. Hopefully we would not have the massive loss of biodiversity that we have seen in Australia. We, unfortunately, have an unenviable record in extinctions and biodiversity loss terrestrially in this country. We do not want to replicate that in our marine environment.

We have an opportunity to make sure that those areas are protected but that we also have fish stocks into the future so that future generations can enjoy our splendid marine environment, so that rec fishers can continue to fish and so that commercial fisheries can continue to operate into the future. Without adequate marine protection we will see our fish stocks crash and we will see the loss of marine biodiversity that has been witnessed elsewhere on the planet. The Greens oppose this bill.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I must say I am rather disappointed to have heard the previous speaker. I have always had regard for Senator Siewert as being one of the few members of the Greens political party who is a genuine environmentalist, but clearly the speech she has just read was written for her by the Pew group or WWF. I have been around a long while and have seen Senator Siewert in action. Her hesitant approach to this and the fact that she read most of it shows that she clearly has no passion for what she has been told to say on this and so she trotted out all the old words in the rhetoric that the Greens go on with.

One thing Senator Siewert said that I did agree with was that it would not surprise anyone that the Greens are opposing this. Of course, the Greens and the Labor Party oppose anything that is put up by other than the Greens political party. Why? Because this dysfunctional government continues to operate because of the tainted votes of a couple of Independents and the Greens political party in the other place and on this side. So whatever Pew says, whatever the crackpot wilderness society says or whatever WWF says, the Greens just mouth that and, once the Greens say, it the Labor Party just rolls over because if it ever challenges the Greens it will be out of government and Ms Gillard will not have a job. So that is what this is all about.

Clearly neither of the previous two speakers have even bothered to read the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Making Marine Parks Accountable) Bill 2012. Senator Siewert's whole speech was about attacking the coalition for trying to put more science into marine protection. We are not opposing marine protection, Senator Siewert; we are trying to put some science into it. We are trying to get it out of the political system and trying to get it out of the clutches of that foreign oil based group, Pew, and into the hands of Australians who actually live, work and have fun on our coasts and seas.

I am not quite sure how Senator Siewert and the Greens can take much notice of the WWF, an organisation that used to have some credibility but, of course, now we hear that WWF's world leader wants to ban all trawling in Australia. 'We want to ban all trawling in Australia,' the WWF world boss says. But, hang on—WWF in Australia is taking money off commercial fishing trawler industry members to give them marine stewardship certification for their trawling in Australian waters. So, clearly, the WWF will do something when there is a buck in it for them so they can continue their work around the world but their true thoughts come out in a typical Greens political party approach: shut down all extractive industries in Australia. They have almost succeeded with the forestry industry, one of the most sustainable forest industries in the world, if not bar none. Thanks to the Greens political party and their lackeys in the Labor Party, that industry, which has employed hundreds of thousands of Australian workers, is now on its knees.

And they have started again on the fishing industry. We have seen that ridiculous decision on the Abel Tasman when Minister Burke, as fisheries minister, encouraged the five quota holders to combine their quotas and bring in a big, efficient fishing vessel to catch the quota take and then, when the boat arrives and people have spent a lot of money to bring it here, Minister Burke then, as environment minister, bans the operation that he encouraged as fisheries minister. Why? Because Ms Gillard holds her office as Prime Minister on the tainted vote of a couple of Independents and the Greens political party. The Greens political party will not stop until all extractive industries and, in fact, anything that extracts any of our national assets are stopped in Australia.

I have said before, and I say it again, to the few recreational fishing groups that still support some of the rhetoric of the Greens: don't be fooled; your senior peak body understands that the Greens are dangerous insofar as recreational fishing is concerned. The Greens political party would even go out—and this is typical of the Greens and the Labor Party—and rewrite a bit of history and hope that a bit of it sticks. We heard Senator Siewert say that under the coalition, it is alleged, these marine regions will stop people enjoying the beaches, stop them walking along the beaches and stop them having a swim in the surf.

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

Madam Acting Deputy President, on a point of order: Senator Macdonald is clearly misquoting something I said. I did not say the coalition said that. I said some other groups have been out there saying that. I did not say the coalition said it. I would ask you to ask him to withdraw that.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Macdonald?

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not withdrawing that. It is not a point of order for a start, Madam Acting Deputy President, as you well know. Here are the Greens going around saying people are saying that doing this bioregional marine planning will stop people enjoying the beaches, stop people walking along the beaches and stop people having a swim in the surf. This is the sort of approach that the Greens and the Labor Party take to anything: verbal anyone you like and rewrite history as you would like and do not let that get in the way of your goal to stop any extractive industries or any fishing at all, recreational or otherwise, within Australia.

If you could believe anything Senator Siewert or Senator Thistlethwaite, for that matter, says, you would just ask them to read the bill. All the bill is saying is let's get a bit of science into it, let's talk to people apart from the oil supported Pew environmental group from America, let's ask real people in Australia rather than those wackos in the wilderness society and let's have this parliament have a bit of a say. Isn't it outrageous that some of the decisions on marine bioregional planning should be disallowable instruments so that the elected members of parliament, who in our system represent Australians, can have a say!

They could actually say, 'This is a good idea; let's support it.' Or they could say: 'This is going to affect my community. It's not going to do anything for marine planning so let's oppose it.' But, no; the Greens and the Labor Party would hate the representatives of the Australian people to have a say in this. This bill will make those decisions disallowable instruments. What is wrong with that? Why do you not want to have a say, Senator Siewert? You would be able to have a say in this parliament. Why do you not want a commission of independent social and economic assessment—

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order. I ask that you ask the senator to address you rather than speaking directly across the chamber to Senator Siewert.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Feeney. Senator Macdonald, please address your remarks to the bill through the chair.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President; I will do that. Madam Acting Deputy President, one thing I could say about Senator Thistlethwaite's speech—and this was new for the Labor Party—is that he did actually acknowledge that the world's first oceans policy was introduced by the people that Senator Siewert says are trying to destroy our marine environment. It was the coalition who introduced the world's first oceans policy, and part of that was to have marine bioregional planning.

The difference between the coalition's approach to this and that of the Labor Party is why this bill is before the chamber today. The coalition started this process, and I very proudly say that I was part of the first marine bioregional region, in the south-east, in Australia. That was good because, at the time that it was introduced by the environment minister, I as fisheries minister had equal say, and it was not going to be one of these whitewashes by the Wilderness Society or Pew, as this current process is. It was one where all stakeholders were consulted and all of their views were taken on board. As I always proudly say, 80 per cent thought that 80 per cent of it was okay. Nobody was 100 per cent happy but, after two or three years of intensive consultation with all stakeholders, all Australians, all the people involved, we got a good outcome in the south-east bioregional process which was generally supported by every stakeholder.

Contrast that with the Labor Party's approach. You have this being the sole prerogative now of a minister who has a litany of backflips and actions that show he cannot be trusted. As I said, the most recent is the one where he as fisheries minister encouraged the Abel Tasman out here and as environment minister blocked it. So that is the person who is in charge of this bioregional planning process. Under the coalition, the people in charge were all relevant ministers and, more importantly, we consulted the scientists, the fisheries managers, the recreational, commercial and charter fishermen, the people who live along the coast and the people whose livelihoods depend upon properly managed marine areas—and that is what this bill wants to do.

I have not heard any of the speakers opposing this bill indicate what they do not actually like about it. In case the next speaker has a speech written for her by the minister's office or by Pew that does not quite go to the facts of the bill, I will just relate what this bill actually talks about. It calls on the minister to commission an independent social and economic impact assessment before proclamations are made. What is wrong with that? Can anyone tell me why they would oppose that? The bill also requires the minister to obtain independent, scientific peer reviewed advice before making any proclamation and for that advice to be publicly available. Who could object to that? Please, can the next speaker tell me what is wrong with that?

Senator Pratt interjecting—

Tell me why you would vote against that. The bill also requires the minister to establish independent—I emphasise 'independent'—scientific reference panels and stakeholder advisory groups for each region to ensure rigorous decision making. Why in a democracy would we oppose that? Please, the next speaker—

Senator Pratt interjecting—

Senator, if you are going to be speaking on this bill, can you answer me what is wrong with those things?

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Macdonald, can I again remind you to direct your comments to the other side through the chair.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, certainly. Madam Acting Deputy President, through you, I ask the next speaker to tell me what is offensive about that, what is wrong with that. Finally, can I ask the next speaker to advise what is wrong with members in this chamber and in the House of Representatives, what is wrong with the elected representatives of Australia, having a say on these things by making the minister's decisions disallowable instruments. Please, if you can give me a decent reason, Madam Acting Deputy President, or any speaker in this debate, on what is wrong with those aspects, which are what this bill is all about, I will listen intently. But I guarantee there will not be a speaker opposing this bill who can explain what is wrong with those four principal elements of the bill.

Madam Acting Deputy President, that will bring you back to the inevitable conclusion that this is all about the Greens telling the Labor Party that, unless they go along with what their wacky supporters require—that is, to shut down fishing in Australia—then the Greens are out of the coalition and Ms Gillard will have to go to an election which she knows she will lose remarkably.

The coalition is proud of its record in the management of our seas.

We have always taken into account the advice of qualified, independent scientists. I would point out that in Australia the latest Commonwealth fish data reports confirm there is an ongoing improvement in fish stocks. No-one else will ever praise me, so I might have to praise myself and say that I am very proud of having a significant role in getting Australian fish stocks to the state where they are more sustainable and improving each year. Of the 96 fish stocks assessed in Australia, 71 are not subject to overfishing, which means that they are being harvested at the appropriate level. All those statistics show that Australian fisheries are well managed.

If you take the advice of some of the world's leading scientists, then I will quote just one. Dr Ray Hilborn, a professor of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences from the University of Washington, says that 'Australian fisheries are well managed, sustainable and do not need further locking up to protect them from overfishing; the existing tools are working'. He goes on elsewhere to say that, 'Closing Australian areas to fisheries will not increase food production from fisheries; it will reduce it'. He then goes on to say that, 'Reducing access to Australian fish stocks is irresponsible'. And he says further that, 'Reducing access to Australian fish stocks results in Australia importing more fish, often sourced from areas that have less sustainably managed fisheries at a much higher environmental cost, 'effectively' as he says, 'offshoring our domestic requirement'. Look at what the serious, learned expert scientists in this area say.

Here is a bill which should receive universal support because it is all about properly managing our oceans and our marine areas. It is about getting the right advice, not advice tainted by various environmental groups who have a particular agenda. I have quoted the WWF, who on one hand want to ban commercial trawling but on the other hand are charging Australian commercial trawlers to give them a marine stewardship certificate—getting some money off them and saying it is okay. You cannot take notice of the people who support the Greens and who, because of that, impose upon this dysfunctional government their will.

This is a bill which anybody who has a serious interest in management of Australia's oceans would support. It is the sort of bill that would enhance Australia's world-leading reputation. Look at the way the Labor Party administer this. I mean, Ms Gillard and Senator Siewert are quoted as saying the compensation for all of these closures will be $100 million. I have to say that when we were in government we were in error. We thought that the compensation in relation to the Great Barrier Reef closures—something we were very proud of—would be about $10 million. The last I heard it was $250 million and rising. Ms Gillard, in her typical 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead' approach, says, 'This will only be $100 million'. Mind you, it is $100 million the Labor Party do not have. They do have a $120 billion black hole, and they can add this $100 million to it—but it is not $100 million. If people are to be compensated for the results of the Labor Party's mismanagement of our marine bioregional planning processes, the bill will be up in the billions of dollars. The Labor Party do not allow for that. We know them—they will not bother about compensation. They will not do what the coalition government did and try to adequately compensate all of those businesses and all of those people who were impacted by the decision. You can be assured the Labor Party (a) will not be interested in doing it and (b) will not be able to afford to do it.

I conclude my remarks on this by challenging further speakers to tell me what is wrong with the four principal elements of this bill: getting independent social and economic assessments done, getting independent scientific peer-reviewed advice and having the decisions as disallowable instruments. I look forward to hearing why they oppose it. (Time expired)

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning I am very pleased to rise to oppose the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Making Marine Parks Accountable) Bill 2012, introduced in this place by Senator Colbeck. It will come as little surprise to the chamber to know that I am a passionate supporter of marine parks, and I think that the action this nation is taking to protect our big blue backyard is long overdue. I am not in favour of further delay and blockage to what has already been a very robust and good quality process.

We know that the waters surrounding Australia are unique and wonderful. From the Great Barrier Reef to the migratory passages of turtles and whales in my own Western Australia state, along our west coast, we have wonderful environmental assets that should be protected. As I have remarked before in this place, and I know the minister has also said this, many of the features in our oceans, if they were on land, would have been protected decades ago.

I have been pleased with the outcome of this process, and I think Australia is likely to be one of the few countries to achieve the international commitment made at Rio+10 in 2002 to develop a representative system of marine parks by 2012. It truly is a wonderful and remarkable milestone. Indeed, our network of marine reserves will be the largest in the world, covering more than one-third of Commonwealth waters. I know some would have liked to have seen even greater protections for some areas—we all have opinions about these things—and there are some areas that I also would have liked to have seen receive greater protection. There have been, for example, arguments that we should have had greater protections over the Diamantina fracture zone in Western Australia and no-take zones that are closer to the coast.

I would really like to acknowledge everyone who has put so much effort into what has been a robust and in-depth process that does not need to be compromised or duplicated or overlaid by the process that is in the bill before us. I would like to thank those in the environment movement, in the fishing industry and recreational fishers for their involvement and engagement around these issues. I have received more than 15,000 emails in favour of marine parks from Western Australian constituents alone. It is because of this high level of engagement that we will have the opportunity as a nation to be a world leader in marine protection. It has been a very robust process involving all stakeholders, with much higher levels of engagement than under the Howard government's planning process, when they undertook a similar marine planning process under these very same laws. I think that is because of the comprehensive nature of our consultation process. On that basis, we should be far more confident of the outcome of the marine plan that is before us and its legitimacy than overlaying it with the unnecessary duplication that this half-baked process before the Senate today gives us.

However, it is precisely this robust consultation process that those opposite are attacking through the bill before us today. At the heart of this bill is an implication that the consultation process creating this network of marine parks has been flawed. There is an implication that the consultation process was not rigorous enough, that it did not take proper account of the science or that it has failed to consider the views of communities and industry. This is simply not the case. We have run a lengthy consultation process. It has been accessible to all members of the community and, indeed, it has been responsive to feedback. There has been considerable change to the plans that have been put forward and a lot of negotiation and exchange has gone on. The consultation process has been largely based on the very same process created by the Howard government during the implementation of its marine reforms.

I would add, though, that we have been far more intensive and engaged with the science and also with stakeholders. It should not be a disallowable instrument before this parliament. The stakeholders, environmentalists, fishing communities, the fishing industry, recreational fishers, the wider community, the process and the law should be the arbiters of these questions, not the parliament.

In our first term of government, Labor took the Howard government model and made it far more comprehensive. We reformed the model to have additional multiple rounds of public information campaigns and consultation, conducted as far back as 2009 to this year. That is more than three years of consistent consultation with stakeholders that the coalition is now attempting to throw out the window with the bill before us today.

To demonstrate just how comprehensive our consultation process has been, I would like to take you through some of the elements of it. I am going to reflect in detail on some of the steps that have been taken in my home state of Western Australia. There are two marine regions that cover the coast of WA: one comes around from South Australia and goes up the coast as far as Geraldton, through the Commonwealth waters; and the other is north of Geraldton, around the top of the state, through to the Northern Territory. There have been extensive consultations in both of those regions. They have been exemplary and they have led to real outcomes for both the environment and industry.

Our south-west region includes some amazing environmental features, like the Perth Canyon and the waters around Geographe Bay. Both are important resting grounds for migrating humpback whales. This region has been very thoroughly consulted. The government engaged stakeholders for further assessments as early as May 2009 in the south-west region. Following the 90-day consultation in 2011, representatives of the commercial fishing industry of the south-west region were invited to two comprehensive workshops: one in October 2011 and one in February this year. This was about going through the options for finalising the marine network reserves. The workshops were very well attended, with about 35 representatives at each, and it was a very thorough process. In the south-west region since 2009 there have been no fewer than 59 consultation meetings, including two multisector sessions, 10 public information sessions and 47 targeted stakeholder meetings. That is the formal government consultation that has taken place, but there have also been hundreds of community meetings on all sides of this debate. So there have been very high levels of community engagement.

The meetings we are talking about stretched from Esperance and all the way up to Geraldton. In the north-west there were 62 meetings in total: two multisector sessions, six public information sessions and 54 targeted stakeholder meetings. Again, those meetings took place in towns all around the north-west coast, from Kalbarri up to Kununurra and in Wyndham. No affected coastal community in WA was denied the opportunity to participate in this consultation process. There were 245 meetings held by the department between May 2011 and February 2012, with 98 of those meetings taking place in Western Australia—the most by far—closely followed by Queensland with 67 meetings.

Why did the consultations focus so heavily on these states? I can tell you why: it is because these are the states that had not yet had the comprehensive marine planning take place in them. The Commonwealth areas in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales were largely done under the Howard government. This is why we have had such high levels of engagement in these states. I think that the outcomes from our process have been manifestly better than those delivered under the previous consultations for the other zones.

Under these consultation processes the government received feedback from a full range of stakeholders, including the scientific community, commercial fishers, oil and gas companies, tourism operators, rec fishers, Indigenous communities, environmental groups and members of the public. As I said, the entire process has taken more than three years, with proposals refined on the basis of stakeholder and public input. Information also produced very thorough socioeconomic evaluations—precisely the kinds of things that the bill before us is asking for. They have already been done, and the bill before us has a much narrower scope and focus for exactly the kind of work that has already taken place and been done thoroughly. The process has taken more than three years—just think about that.

I would also like to comment on what I think has been exceptional leadership by Minister Burke in this area. He has been incredibly thorough and a responsive administrator. On a number of environmental decisions, including this one, I have witnessed his willingness to meet with and to listen to all concerned parties. I know that through the consultations on the creation of marine parks the minister has ensured that everyone, even those with a passing interest, has had several opportunities to comment on the plans. The proof of that is in the changes that have been made to drive plans. These changes are evidence that the government has listened and that we have acted on community advice.

In the south-west bioregional plan, parts of the Marine National Park Zone on the continental shelf in the proposed Eastern Recherche reserve were shifted to reduce impacts on the Esperance rock lobster fishery. That is just one example of the kind of exchange and consultation that has taken place. In the north-west plan we know that there were changes to the Eighty Mile Beach reserve that have significantly decreased the impact of the marine reserves on the Western Australian Nickol Bay prawn fishery. So we know that the current north-west reserve network has significantly reduced the potential impacts on a number of fisheries from the network proposal taken out for public consultation in August 2011. Overall, the potential impact of the reserve network has been halved from 0.2 per cent for all fisheries in the region down to 0.1 per cent. These are minimal impacts on those fisheries—really quite, quite small.

There have certainly been those who have argued that we should not have made those compromises, and that in fact we should have maintained the boundaries as they were or been even more ambitious. This just goes to show, I think, the kind of level of engagement that you need around these issues. What the coalition has before us today seeks to throw all that away—to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I would like to comment on the concerns of recreational fishers. Ninety-six per cent of the ocean within 100 kilometres of the shore remains open to recreational fishers under this scheme. So you can see that the Commonwealth has had a very thorough consultation process, and one that I would argue has world's best practice—very much so.

But what has the coalition's response to all of this been? The bill before us today that we are debating tells us exactly that. The bill before us today has provisions that would require that the government establish a so-called independent scientific reference panel, as well as a stakeholder advisory group that would go through another process of assessment before a marine protected area could be declared. I really think that the coalition is trying to have its cake and eat it too. Ultimately, they do not want to look like they are overtly opposed to these marine parks so they have put forward this delaying model that would have massive duplication in it. But their heart is not in it; they simply do not want to support the marine parks that are before us.

I think that the coalition believes that the government has deliberately ignored feedback from industry, despite all evidence to the contrary. The coalition's answer to this charge is this baseless bill which is before us today. It is a bill that would essentially require the government do more consultations with two advisory groups. The two advisory groups that are put forward in this bill are more exclusive than the consultations that have already taken place. They are also less accessible to the public than the consultations that have already taken place and less transparent than the process the government has pursued over the last few years. This bill is their answer; it is fudging their way through what they think they have as a political problem.

This bill has been brought into this place in the final hour when the marine plans are just months away from being finalised, and following years and years of consultation. This bill essentially requires us to rip up all of that work, those detailed submissions, and go back to the drawing board. It is a bill which is entirely, I think, about the Liberals looking for a headline.

I would like to comment on the impact of the coalition's plan. There has been a great deal of dithering; the coalition wants us to believe that their proposal will not have any negative impacts. But they are completely silent on the costs of this bill.

The costs are, I think, greater than you could at first imagine. There are the obvious costs of establishing new bodies and resourcing them appropriately, and then there is also the question around the types of consultation processes that they would have to go through. They are essentially asking us to redo what has been a thorough three-year process that we have just been through, seeking to add these costs to the budget all over again.

But, in addition to these costs, there are significant opportunity costs. The tourism industry, the fishing industry and the diving industry are already gearing up around the plan that is before us, but this bill is designed to create material delay—perhaps, I would argue, even permanent delay—in the implementation of marine parks. Every day that we unnecessarily delay is another day in which our precious and unique marine biodiversity is being pushed closer to the brink. Every day that we unnecessarily delay is another day in which our fisheries are inadequately cared for. Every day that we unnecessarily delay is another day that we do a disservice to the legacy that we want to leave the children of our nation. Those delays could also cost our economy millions and detrimentally affect our environmental assets in ways that we can avoid by acting now and continuing on the good path that we have already established.

By acting now and rejecting this bill, we can also end uncertainty for industry. What the coalition has put before us does not assist industry; it simply puts yet another layer of bureaucracy over the current decision-making process. Throughout our consultation process, the government has had strong communication with stakeholders so that they know where they stand. Under the coalition's bill, industry and local communities have no idea. They cannot know that the outcome of the processes will be any better for them, nor can they be confident that their voices will be heard in what is a much more closed and exclusive model of consultation.

Overall, I think that it is clear that we cannot afford to support this bill. It is not in the interests of the environment or industry. It is being driven by a small, vocal minority who do not support marine parks or the science behind them. That is not the legacy that I want this place to leave for the next generation. They deserve much better, as do the wonderful and beautiful marine ecosystems of our nation.

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

I rise to talk on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Making Marine Parks Accountable) Bill 2012, which I am very pleased to talk about today. When I was a child, my dream was to become an astronaut, which clearly I have failed on.

Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for COAG) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's still time.

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

There is still time. Perhaps my little boy can carry that dream forward. But about 15 years ago I was at Cape Canaveral, at the Kennedy Space Center. While we were observing the space shuttle on the launching pad, I looked over to the ocean—because, of course, the space centre is built on the ocean. What caught my attention at the time was some fantastic surf and the fact that there was nobody on the beach or in the water, which I thought was quite unusual. So I asked the security guard why that was the case, and he said to me, 'There's an exclusion zone around the space station—34 miles.' Converting that, it is around 55 kilometres. In fact, it extended to 64 miles in the period leading up to the launch of the shuttle.

What is really interesting about this is that it is how the benefits of marine protected areas were discovered, totally by accident. I will read a couple of excerpts from the Los Angeles Times about this concept. It was when the fisheries towns that were on the edge of this exclusion zone starting getting better boats, bigger houses and more money that people started to take notice. What was the logic behind this? The Los Angeles Times said:

Since the dawn of the Space Age, fishermen here have grown to accept the 15-square-mile security zone that keeps boats out of the waters surrounding rocket launching pads.

Indeed, clever fishermen long ago learned how to parlay a forbidden zone into a bonanza: If an area is set off-limits, the fishing on the perimeter can be extraordinary.

Scientists more recently discovered the same thing, carefully recording the remarkable abundance of fish in the protected waters surrounding the Kennedy Space Center and the cluster of trophy fish caught just outside the boundary.

This case study of the "spillover effect" has surfaced as a prime argument for establishing similar no-fishing zones off the California coast. State officials are planning a network of no-take zones around the Channel Islands, in addition to last week's emergency closing of—

a trawling zone. It is often not understood that the benefits of marine protected areas were discovered by accident, and actually the earliest science was focused on those particular waters around the space centre as to what was causing this abundance of fish. It makes a lot of sense to think that, if you have a biodiverse area and you leave it alone, you are going to get what we call these spillover effects where we have an increase in fecundity of fish and, of course, larger biomass numbers. Since that time there have been literally thousands of studies of marine protected areas, some of which I will go through in a minute.

The reason I am very pleased to talk in this debate is that I have had some experience with marine protected areas in the past. Four years ago I volunteered for the ACF and the Wilderness Society to brief the South Australian government and opposition on the economics of marine protected areas, which of course is a good tie between the science and the socioeconomic benefits of marine protected areas. At the time, I had to read all the latest research and a number of economic reports, and I discovered when I visited South Australia that there is actually a lot of logic in marine protected areas not just from a conservation point of view but also from a fisheries management point of view. If you go onto the South Australian government website, in terms of promoting marine parks it says:

Scientific research from around the world is demonstrating that marine parks are a powerful tool to help protect our coastal and marine environments and maintain them in a healthy condition.

…   …   …

The location of and design of marine parks in South Australia will be based on scientifically informed principles and thorough and ongoing scientific studies which began in the 1990's.

In fact, research on the Cape Kennedy area dates back to the 1960s. There has been a considerable body of scientific evidence that supports the conservation benefits and underpins the economic benefits of marine protected areas.

We have had a lot of debate in this chamber in recent months about fisheries, the super trawler debate having occupied this place for a number of weeks. I think what we all had agreement on in the end was that a boat like the super trawler needed our spatial fisheries management plan, a plan that will address the risks to certain ecosystems in the ocean and will take into account what scientists call 'biodiverse hotspots'. I asked a good friend of mine—I will not name him in here but he is one of the top fishery scientists in the country working in a very honourable university in Melbourne—how he would construct such a spatial fisheries management plan for the super trawler. He said, 'Peter, there already is a spatial fisheries management plan in place in Australia and it is called marine protected areas.' It is also used to assess total ecosystem effects using the same models that we wanted to see applied to the spatial fisheries management plan for the super trawler.

I will read you the logic behind it. This is from a report by Dr Melissa Nursey-Bray from Adelaide University, and I will use this report quite extensively in this talk because what Dr Nursey-Bray has done, very usefully for me, is an aggregate of all the science that has been written on marine protected areas put in a very simple form. I would encourage all the senators in this chamber to read it. She says:

Foley et al. suggest that ecosystem-based marine spatial planning (MSP) is a process that "informs the spatial distribution of activities in the ocean so that existing and emerging uses can be maintained, use conflicts reduced and ecosystem health and services protected and sustained for future generations". They argue the need to move away from MPA design that takes a sector by sector approach, to one such as marine spatial planning that emphasises ecological, economic, governance and social dimensions, thus bringing planning together in an integrated way.

A lot of work has been done, as I mentioned, for up to 30 years in areas such as South Australia, and a number of senators in the chamber today both from across the chamber and from this side of the chamber have talked about the work that has been done in Australian Commonwealth waters. Nobody denies that a lot of science has gone into marine protected areas.

I want to read you my quick version of the report by Dr Nursey-Bray. She has summarised 48 recent scientific reports on the science of marine protected areas, outlining all their recommendations in terms of the positive impact that they have on fisheries and in some cases where the evidence has not shown that. Right across the world, from Arabia, Spain, South Africa, the Philippines, New Zealand, South Australia, Tasmania, Great Britain, the USA—and that includes Florida, California and Maine—Kenya, Fiji, Western Australia and the Bahamas, wherever marine protected areas have been scientifically studied they have been shown to have benefits to fisheries. One specific report actually summarised 89 separate studies dating back to 1992. Funnily enough, that same report was quoted in the Los Angeles Times. It said:

In a survey of 89 scientific papers, UC Santa Barbara researchers found that 90% of marine reserves around the world had more fish, 84% had much larger fish and shellfish and 59% had a far greater variety of marine life than did adjacent waters. So far, the spillover effect hasn't won many converts amongst anglers, who disdain it as "junk science," and fear new limits on where they can fish.

I thought this was a good opportunity to perhaps talk a little bit more about recreational fishing groups, because clearly I have got to know lots of recreational fishers in recent months in my home state of Tasmania and I have come to learn just how important recreational and commercial fishing are to Tasmania. In fact, I would probably even go so far as to say Tasmania should be called a fishing state—and I am getting the thumbs-up there from some of my fellow senators. I do not claim to be an avid fisherman myself. I do fish with my children at Bicheno, where my family go quite often, but I must say I can understand why rec fishers want the utility that they get from fishing protected, with the amount of money and time that they put into this.

In an interesting way, I think the super trawler debate has introduced the idea of marine protected areas inadvertently to the rec fishing groups in Tasmania. To give you an example, TARFish, one of the main rec fishing groups, put out a media release during the super trawler debate saying that they were very concerned that they had heard that the Margiris, the super trawler, was going to be allowed to fish in a marine protected area off Pedra Branca.

Pedra Branca, off the south-east coast of Tasmania, is one of the best fishing spots in the country for a variety of reasons. In every way it represents an ecological hotspot. It is also very diverse in terms of its other ecosystems. We are looking at a large number of seals and penguins and of course some of the biggest albatross rookeries in the world. It is where a lot of the charter fishing boats go from their port in Hobart to go fishing. TARFish expressed a lot of concern that the trawler would be able to operate in this marine protected area, the key reason being that when they go out into the ocean—and Senator Scullion from across the chamber would be very well aware of this, as an old salt himself—they look for the birds that are looking for the schooling fish, and then when you get the schooling fish you get the large fish that the anglers are targeting. So to them it was a big concern that a boat such as the trawler would be able to operate in a marine protected area. This marine protected area is a multiple-use area; it is not what we would officially call a 'no-take' zone. But at least it is a recognition by rec fishing groups that these areas serve important functions for spatial fisheries management.

My fellow Greens senator Senator Siewert also has experience with rec fishing groups in Western Australia who have come to understand the importance of marine protected areas in terms of the positive benefits they can bring to their local fisheries. When you think about the logic of spillover effects, they do make a lot of sense. Marine protected area design is very complex and requires a lot of science. I see marine protected areas as one tool in the toolbox for managing fisheries, alongside other types of fisheries management, including the quota system we have talked about a lot in the house in recent weeks. So I do not necessarily see them as a silver bullet, but they are absolutely essential not only in underpinning conservation but also in fisheries management.

Looking at the economics of marine protected areas, we tend to get different effects depending on the size of the protected areas, because that of course influences spawning biomass and its ability to spill over into other areas, and also on how depleted the existing fishing area is. But there has been so much work done on it now that I think it is pretty much unanimously accepted that MPAs have a very important role to play in conservation, in preserving fish stocks for the future and also in rebuilding our ecosystems that have been severely depleted.

One very interesting thing in the economic reports I read is that the key reason most economists supported marine protected areas was because of what we call exogenous shocks, which Senator Siewert has touched on. What are exogenous shocks? They are shocks outside the system that influence, in this case, fisheries. They are things such as climate change, changes in water temperatures, viruses and nutrient level changes because of pollution from river systems and land run-off. One thing that MPAs do is serve as an insurance premium against these shocks. The effects of heavily fishing an area that is suffering from a shock have been seen very clearly with abalone right around the country and with rock lobsters in Western Australia and Tasmania. With the best fisheries management in the world, we have seen these stocks go into very severe decline; in fact, they are not currently being fished. The key reason is not that a scientist did not do a good job but that we are coming to grips with these exogenous shocks to our systems which are extremely complex and very difficult to model. At least if we lock up areas that are biologically diverse and have a very positive impact right across the ecosystem then we can be assured that, like a heart, they will keep pumping and keep our ecosystems alive. That is exactly what a marine protected area is designed to do.

I want to touch on what I think this bill is trying to do and also highlight this in relation to the supertrawler debate. I was criticised in this house and outside the house quite consistently for being 'anti-science' when we talked about the supertrawler. I would like to get on record again that what we wanted to see was more science and more funding for scientists. Never once did we disparage the quality of our scientists. But it is interesting that, when we put our motion to the Senate for a disallowance, the key feedback we received, particularly from the Senate, was that it was anti-science. Trying to disallow the science behind marine protected areas, which is exactly what this bill is designed to do, contradicts what I heard then in the Senate—in fact, it turns it on its head: you do not want to disallow a fishing activity like allowing a supertrawler to come to the country because that is anti-science but you are prepared to disallow 30 to 50 years of scientific work that underpins marine protected areas. That does not make sense to me. If we are talking about respecting scientists, a number of good scientists, particularly those in the Tasmanian scientific community, many of whom supported the supertrawler, have also written scientific papers supporting the positive benefits of marine protected areas. So this is an area where we are going to have to find some common ground in terms of the benefits of science and how we use science in our policy making.

I would like to finish by saying that we do not know exactly what will happen with our ecosystems. Even with the best scientists in the world, we can only do our best with the tools that we have in place. There is something as simple as leaving our ocean ecosystem alone and monitoring it. And of course there is potential for monitoring and adaptive fisheries management with marine protected areas in the future, looking at the data and conserving important marine ecosystems that we need for the health of our oceans. One of the exogenous shocks I did not talk about was ocean acidification, which has been fingered by a number of scientists as being one of the most important risks facing marine ecosystems in the future. We can learn from something as simple as the space station at Cape Kennedy: if you leave an ecosystem alone it can have very positive benefits, but not just for the so-called greenies and conservationists we have heard about in the house today but also for recreational fishing communities and for commercial fishing communities.

I understand that, in areas where marine protected areas directly conflict with commercial fishing interests and rec fishing interests, compensation packages should adequately compensate fishermen. That is something I was working on with the South Australian government, on what levels of compensation should be in place. But I think we all have a responsibility to understand the complexity of the systems we are dealing with here and realise that we do need an insurance premium. Putting in place for the long term a series of marine protected areas will provide an insurance premium to help protect our oceans and also protect the rights and interests of a lot of stakeholders across this country, including rec fishermen.

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Poor judgement and poor implementation have been hallmarks of the Rudd-Gillard governments. But if we are looking for fantastically dumb things to do, the legislation that the government has in place on marine parks in the Coral Sea is one of the most destructive and far-reaching that they have managed to produce. The Coral Sea, which will be locked up by the proposals of Minister Burke—the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities—is a vital and renewable food source.

Minister Burke in the overall proposal is looking to lock Australians—Australian industry, Australian recreationalists—out of 3.1 million square kilometres of Australia's water. The government is of course not planning to lock us out because fishing is harmful to our marine environment; it is locking us out because of a deal that it has done with the Greens. Why would we be surprised? This government will do anything to stay in power even if that means Australians lose that great Australian tradition of eating wild-caught fish.

If it were fishing that was harming our waters, then fine; something should be done to protect our oceans from fishing. But fishing is not harming our waters, and Minister Burke knows that only too well. He is being incredibly negligent in pushing this proposal—one that has a high probability of damaging food security and industries, and the health ultimately of Australians.

Minister Burke knows that it is introduced organisms and run-off that are harming our waters, not fishing. In this area the reef rescue plan and other groups in Queensland are doing a sterling job in working to protect our waters from run-off. That is why the coalition has put forward this bill through the shadow parliamentary secretary for fisheries, Senator Richard Colbeck, calling on the minister to (1) commission an independent social and economic impact statement before any proclamations are made; (2) obtain independent scientific peer reviewed advice before making any proclamations and for that advice to be publicly available; and (3) to establish independent scientific reference panels and stakeholder advisory groups for each region to ensure rigorous decision making.

The one question that we do not seem to have any sort of answer to from Minister Burke or this government—or indeed from the sponsors of the government's legislation, the Greens—and one they cannot answer and have not answered is: how is it possible for the government to have produced a regulatory impact statement on the marine reserves network that does not include any costings at all and completely lacks assessment or even proper identification of the risks? When the government can answer that question perhaps we might withdraw this legislation, but not until then.

Our bill, whilst it sounds innocuous, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Making Marine Parks Accountable) Bill 2012, I believe is one of the most important bills—and I do not think I am exaggerating here—to come before the chamber. It is calling on the government not to rush in and lock our oceans up and deny Australians access to wild-caught seafood without proper analysis. We would not be asking for much at all if this government had the slightest sense of proper implementation and proper analysis. What we are asking for is a proper process, and that should be just a fundamental part of governing. But with this government it is not, and we have had so many examples of that.

Senator Whish-Wilson earlier was talking about the science in New South Wales, the science in South Australia and the science internationally that he believes would support the development of marine park reserves. I would like to point out to Senator Whish-Wilson that the Coral Sea, which is the major part that will be locked up by these reserves, off Queensland's north coast is not an estuary in South Australia. That is where the research has been done: in South Australian estuaries with water depths of a quarter or less than that of the Coral Sea, which is the area that needs scientific analysis.

This minister needs to explain to the Australian people why he is planning to go ahead with his bill and denying them access to a nutritious food source when he knows full well that Australia is already a leader in ocean management. University of Canberra's emeritus professor of fisheries Bob Carney's assessment of the government's regulatory impact statement into extending the marine reserve network found bias and imbalance riddled throughout the statement. The bias starts right in the opening statement of the government's impact statement when they say:

Australia's oceans, like those around the world, are subject to many pressures arising from direct exploitation as well as the indirect impacts of expanding human activities across the planet.

That assertion is just wrong. Yes, Australia's oceans are under pressure from indirect impacts of expanding activities across the planet but they are not under pressure from direct exploitation. That is because of the very proud history that Australia has in oceans management. Australia's oceans are unlike other countries in that they are not under many pressures arising from direct exploitation because direct exploitation is very well managed in Australia. That is as a result of legislation introduced by ministers such as Senator Robert Hill and Senator Ian Macdonald under the Howard-Costello government.

Most of the major pressures on Australia's oceans come from indirect impacts and those are predominantly the impacts of activities on land. For Senator Whish-Wilson to suggest that it is the coalition turning common sense on its head is absolutely laughable. It is the Greens and Labor that are turning common sense on its head. Where there is science that supports the use of any type of direct exploitation of the ocean floor as there was with the supertrawler, which would have operated within quotas and in a very strict system, we will support that.

When there is no direct science, as is the case with the government's proposed marine park reserves, we will oppose it. We will put in place legislation that gives us a better outcome—an outcome that would actually look at the areas that would go into this marine park.

The health of our oceans is borne out by Australia's rankings in the world. We rank fourth in the world on the UN Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. The Australian Fisheries Management Authority, which I am pleased to say is an independent authority, although it appears to upset this government when it behaves like an independent authority, has demonstrated that Australian fishers have been consistently ranked amongst the world's best for resource management by—and I would like to emphasise—international experts writing in peer reviewed journals. I know using the term 'peer reviewed journals' is somewhat of an anathema to this government and to the Greens. Any sort of research that supports their idea is good enough. It does not matter that no other expert in the field agrees with them or that their research was done in conditions that are completely different from those areas that the government is seeking to lock up. They will just accept whatever they want.

Let us look at the research by experts in the peer reviewed journals. They say that Australia is one of the world's best managers of its fishery and ocean resources. There is absolutely no evidence that fishing is harming our Australian oceans—none whatsoever. Even the green groups admit that fishing is not harming our oceans. I am somewhat bemused by Senator Whish-Wilson's comments, which were strictly around Tasmania, suggesting that marine park reserves will help commercial and recreational fishermen. I am not quite sure what 'help' stopping their activities will be for them. I have no idea how that will be helpful to them. The only appropriate approach that the government should have taken was to identify real ecological threats, and that is what the coalition is proposing in this bill.

The declaration of bioregional plans and marine protected areas has significant environmental and socioeconomic consequences, and so it must be properly assessed. In Townsville, for example, an assessment done by an independent accountancy firm suggests that the cost to Townsville and the surrounding area of this lock-out will be in the region of $1 billion. That is not covered at all in the government's regulatory impact statement on their legislation. So let us look at the real cost of what the government is planning and ask what the benefits are. The answer is that there are no known benefits to be achieved whatsoever by the government's legislation.

The Greens will not support the coalition's bill because of their misplaced priorities, in my view. They can be depended on not to look past their myopia and see that the government's proposal will actually harm our oceans. Their ideology comes at a high price when they refuse to even consider the harm that Minister Burke's proposal will do to the environment. If the government proposal goes ahead, it will have a disastrous impact on our fishing industry and related industries. I was told a story in North Queensland recently that even services such as supermarkets and doctors left town after the Bligh government's buyback of commercial contracts. This was because the chandlers and other providers such as the bait and tackle shops et cetera that relied on the commercial and recreational fishing failed and then so too did the service industries that supported them.

Let us look at the disastrous impact that the government's legislation would have were it allowed to go ahead without proper analysis and without proper cost and benefit assessment. Imagine what it will do to our tourism industry—and I am not talking about the minor issue of Tasmanian charter boats; I am talking about the multibillion dollar industries of deep sea fishing and tourism out of Cairns and North Queensland generally. Minister Burke likes to suggest that there will be no effect on recreational fishermen because these marine parks start so far offshore that recreational fishermen will never go there. Well, sorry, there will be an effect. The problem, of course, is that if commercial fishermen are restricted closer to the coast, they will become direct competitors with the recreational fishermen.

The hospitality industry, as part of the tourism industry, will also be seriously affected by the government's legislation. When eating at seafood restaurants in Brisbane—some of which include restaurants such as Gambaro's, which is associated with the current member for Brisbane, Teresa Gambaro—I know that I am going to get Australian wild-caught seafood when I order it from the menu. There are a number of other organisations such as Samies Girl that also provide Australian seafood—but they provide it at a premium. Seafood imported from primarily Asian countries does not have our environmental standards or our standards of workplace health and safety, so you have them fishing out areas, you have waters that are by no means as clean as the waters in which we catch our Australian fish. It is going to become almost impossible to find freshly caught Australian seafood if the government's plan goes ahead. Demand will be so high and supply so low that most Australians will not be able to afford to eat Australian seafood at all.

We already have well over 80 per cent of seafood imported into Australia. Do we want that to go to almost 100 per cent? Australian families simply will not be able to buy Australian seafood. What the government is doing is outsourcing Australia's fishing industry offshore to countries whose fishing practices are not as sustainable as ours and it is shipping jobs offshore as well. I very much hope that the Australian public will maintain their rage, as they have on the government's proposal to extend marine reserves from 27 to 60. They need to think about how it will affect them. It sounds impressive to say we will have all these marine reserves, but it is not so great when you think about how those marine reserves are going to affect the diet, the lifestyle and the livelihood of Australians.

The impact in Queensland will be huge. In Queensland alone, Minister Burke is proposing to lock up more than the equivalent of half the state—989,842 square kilometres of our ocean will be locked up. The international benchmark for marine reserves is 10 per cent. Good old Queensland will end up with 80 per cent of our coastal waters locked away. We have a comparative economic advantage as well as a comparative environmental advantage with our fishing zones and the government wants to just rip that comparative advantage away. We have the third largest fishing zone in the world and yet, in terms of our take from that fishing zone, we come in 61st. So to suggest that we are overfishing our fishing zones is incredible in my view. Where will we end up ranking if these marine reserves go ahead? We will fall even further than 61st in terms of our take from our massive and well-managed oceans.

There is also the risk of unregulated illegal foreign fishing activities replacing the legal and well-regulated domestic fishing activities. Who will police Australian waters when Australian fishers in the main are banned from fishing in our waters? Think about that, Mr Deputy President—989,000 square kilometres. We do not have the resources to use Customs or border protection or anybody else to keep an eye on an area of that size. The people who jealously guard it for us are Australian fishers who work to Australian standards, use Australian environmental controls, work on low energy efficiency and design their products so that they do not damage the ocean floors. These are the people who are also policing our fisheries right now and ensuring that other countries do not fish in our waters. When they are not there, who will save us?

It is ironic that the government is prepared to risk Australia's food security, the health of Australian people, our iconic lifestyle and our oceans and is prepared to send our fishing industry offshore so it can stay in power. Where is the logic in this? Where is the rigorous assessment one would hope a government like this might manage to produce once in a while?

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Thorp, you have a couple of minutes before the debate expiry, and then you will be in continuation.

Lin Thorp (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against this Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Making Marine Parks Accountable) Bill 2012. In this country we have a huge network of national parks that protect our most pristine natural landscapes for generations to come. Our oceans contain fragile marine life and that deserves protection too. The government is working hard to protect and sustainably manage our marine environment.

The year 2012 will go down as a landmark year for marine conservation in Australia. This year the government is finalising the largest ever addition to our national network of marine reserves, the largest marine reserve network in the world. The government's decision is the outcome of a transparent, science driven process undertaken over several years. We have engaged in meaningful consultation with stakeholders and conducted a comprehensive socioeconomic impact evaluation of the marine reserves proposal. This bill is an attempt by those opposite to grandstand and criticise improved marine planning.

Stakeholder views were considered and comprehensively addressed in the Senate inquiry held last year into the bill. The statements made in the recent media by those opposite about marine reserves and planning are incorrect and grossly exaggerate the actual impacts on commercial and recreational fishers. The claim that the government is locking out commercial and recreational fishers is false. As I have said, the government's decision is the outcome of a transparent process in which science, socioeconomic analysis and stakeholder and public consultation all play key roles in achieving a balanced outcome. Analysis undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences estimates that around one per cent of the national annual value of wild catch fisheries production in Australia will be displaced by the proposed reserves.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired.

Debate interrupted.