Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was not aware the Fisheries Legislation Amendment (Cooperative Fisheries Arrangements and Other Matters) Bill 2005 [2006] was coming on today. It is of course a bill that I initiated in my former role as the fisheries minister. I have made a commitment to myself not to interfere in the work that the new Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation, Senator Abetz, will be doing in fisheries or forestry matters. Senator Abetz will do a very good job in both fisheries and forestry.

I was goaded into coming in by Senator Sterle, with whom I have some unfinished business from when I was the minister. This has given me an opportunity—without any preparation, I might say—of responding to some of the things that perhaps Senator Sterle said today. I must say that I did not really hear much of his speech at all, but I can guess what he said from what he has said previously. I will not allow any opportunity to pass to correct the record on the Australian government’s approach to illegal fishing in Australia.

I am disappointed with the Western Australian government, who show absolutely no real understanding of or interest in this issue at all. That has been mirrored by Senator Sterle in all of the comments he has made here. I also want to say that the West Australian newspaper—fortunately, a newspaper that not many people read, and even those who do read it take little notice of it—has run a quite vicious campaign. I will not say ‘unfair’—politicians can never complain about unfairness from the media. It is a newspaper which not only is inaccurate and inflammatory but which in the course of Operation Clearwater II, which was a secret exercise, published details of the campaign by the Australian government against Indonesian fishermen. It was the West Australian newspaper that, to a degree, made that secret operation less effective than it may well have been.

I remember the journalist ringing me to ask me questions about that. I denied that it was on, because it was a secret operation. I remember saying to the journalist: ‘If you happen to be right, and you’re not, because there is no operation going on’—I said that; I was telling lies to her, but it was a secret operation and it was secret for many obvious reasons—‘I plead with you not to publish this in the interests of Australia. If you are an Australian and your newspaper is interested in Australia, please do not publish this, because it is against the national interest.’ That went unheeded, and the West Australian newspaper printed it the next day. While I am sure none of the Indonesian fishermen read the West Australianthey are probably too sensible for that—there would be people connected with them, such as the people who finance them and deal with the illegally caught fish, who would have known about that and who would have got messages out.

When I had the temerity to tell a newspaper that they were acting contrary to Australia’s interest, that was when the real problem started. Every day after that, I had a photo, usually an unflattering one, in the West Australian. Fortunately, I never saw any of these and my staff grew to understand that they should not even bring them to my attention. Fortunately, no-one in the rest of Australia saw them, but I am aware from my Western Australians colleagues that they did not have a very big impact even in that state. In fact, cleaning up my desk the other day I came across a cartoon—the sort of cartoon that you would expect. It was not terribly clever politically but it was personally degrading and insulting, portraying me as a gummy shark. I am not the most beautiful looking politician around, but when a newspaper gets down to personal abuse you know where they are coming from.

I wrote a letter of response to the editor once and he printed half of it—not the other half. When again his newspaper made a quite deliberately incorrect statement, I rang the editor to speak to him. Editors right around Australia are busy people, but usually an editor on any sensible newspaper—the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, or wherever—will take the call from someone who claims they have been wronged. Usually they will not do anything about it or will not agree with it; sometimes they will let you put your version in. This editor would not even take my call. That is the standard of editor and the standard of journalism at the West Australian newspaper.

It does not matter to me anymore—I am not on the front bench. None of my constituents ever read the West Australian, so again it does not worry me. But I bet you, Senator Sterle, that the personal campaign against me will continue on after today. But who cares? Very few people read, and even fewer people take any notice of, the West Australian.

Having said that—and I have misdirected myself there—I want to get back to the issue. As Senator Sterle, the West Australian and my other detractors should know, for a start this is not an issue which the fisheries minister can personally deal with on the water. The fisheries area in our government has no boats. We have fisheries officers on board naval and Customs patrol boats, but the fisheries area cannot put more vessels into the campaign. We do not do that, quite frankly.

Our system is a much better system, I have to say, than Labor’s proposed coastguard, with four or five vessels—I think that is how many they were going to have—to patrol the whole of Australia. Or maybe they were going to get volunteers to do it—nobody really knows what the Labor policy is, as it has changed so often. One of their better ones was having a helicopter hovering above the Indonesian fishing boats, and people with rifles going down to shoot out the motors. That is the sort of rot you get from the Labor Party with this coastguard idea.

It sounds good, and I have to be careful not to name names here. There are some senators, including one or two on our side, who take the populist view. Talking about a coastguard sounds great, but, when you look at it, it is a ridiculous idea. The way we have done it, with Coastwatch coordinating the Customs marine unit and the Navy patrol boats plus the Coastwatch aircraft, the Army, Quarantine and fisheries officers, is really the best way to do it and it is done very effectively.

We have had real success against illegal fishing in the south. Even my greatest detractors would concede that the Patagonian toothfish piracy in Australian waters that was rampant a decade or so ago has now stopped, and it has stopped because the Howard government was prepared to put the finances into it. We have a patrol boat, the Oceanic Viking, and in conjunction with the French, with whom we have developed very close relationships in the Southern Ocean, we have been able to clear the Patagonian toothfish pirates out of the Australian territories around Heard Island and McDonald Island, out of that part of Tasmania, which is Macquarie Island, and around the French islands of Kerguelen. We do have difficulties in the courts sometimes. Perhaps, now I am not on the front bench, one day I will have a comment to make about the jury system in Western Australia and the decisions of the jury in that disgraceful Viarsa acquittal. But that is a speech for another time.

We have succeeded down in the south. Several years ago people said to me, ‘You’ll never do it.’ They laughed and said, ‘It’s too big a job; they are too well organised and you will never succeed.’ I did not accept that and we kept at it and we got the money. It is never easy to get money from a responsible and fiscally stringent government but we got the money for the Oceanic Viking and for other resources that I will not go into—and cannot go into. We have succeeded there and I know that my successor will continue that good fight and we will continue to win that battle in the south.

In the north it is different. For a long period of time, including the time when the Labor Party were in power, nobody worried about it. In fact, when Labor were in power they would allow anyone to come into our waters. They landed on the beaches at Darwin and the Labor Party used to give them the taxi fare to go and see the immigration office to claim asylum or something. That is how good the Labor Party were and that is how they would be in the future. But under our regime we have increased the resources very substantially in the fight against illegal fishing in the north. It is business half completed; I am obviously disappointed I will not be there to complete the business and to achieve the success I know we will achieve, but I know that my successor, Senator Abetz, will carry on that fight and will indeed be present when the battle is won.

Just last year alone, on top of the regular expenditure there was an additional $90 million, if my memory serves me well, put into the fight against illegal fishing in the north. In September-October, I think it was, Senator Ellison and I announced an additional $88 million for that fight for new fisheries officers, new Customs marine officers and new tactical response vessels in Broome, Darwin, Gove and Thursday Island. New detention facilities are being built on Thursday Island and Horn Island and the immigration department has taken over the looking after of illegal fishermen when they are caught.

When I came to the job I could not understand why it was that fisheries officers were acting as jailers for these illegal fishermen. But that was the system that had been running since the Labor time and nobody had bothered to fix it up. After a lot of fighting—a bit of internal fighting with some of my then ministerial colleagues, I might say—we got it sorted out so that the right people were doing the right jobs. The fisheries officers were, with the assistance of Navy and Customs, doing the on-the-water work, the DPP was doing the prosecutions in the court, and DIMIA or the state authorities were looking after those people who were locked up pending trial or sentencing. So that issue was resolved.

We continue to fight a very good fight there. I pay enormous tribute to the men and women of the Australian Navy, the Australian Customs marine service and the fisheries, Quarantine and other officers. They do a fabulous job up there—the sort of job that Australians have been renowned for and respected for doing. They will continue to do a fabulous job and they do so with my very best wishes and my grateful thanks for the work they do. It is obviously something the government keeps under constant review. The government will continue to assess the extent of the resources that are needed to win the battle—and win the battle we will.

What now turns out to have been one of my last roles as the fisheries minister was to go to Indonesia four or five days before Christmas to meet with the Indonesian foreign minister and the Indonesian fishing minister to look at the issue of illegal fishing. I am pleased to say that for the first time the Indonesian government and those ministers were focused on the issue. Indonesia does have significant problems and it is easy for the Western Australian government to lambast the Indonesians. It is easy for the West Australian to carry on with the sort of drivel that they usually do when it comes to these matters. The Indonesian government is made up of a central government, provincial governments and local governments. There are difficulties there, but the ministers in the central government showed a very concise understanding of the problems and a determination to help Australia out of an area where they saw difficulty. For the first time ever they were focused on the issue and were very keen to help in the fight against illegal fishing.

I am confident that the Indonesian and Australian governments, working closely together, will achieve success in that fight, as the Australian government continues to upgrade its resources. This will happen not because of anything either the Labor Party or theWest Australian has said, I have to say. It will happen on the completion of work that has been going on for a long time now. We will get the resources into that area that are needed. I think you will recall, Mr Acting Deputy President Barnett, that the Prime Minister actually said publicly that whatever resources are needed to win the battle up there will be provided, and that that will happen. Of course, I regret that I will not be around to be managing and leading that fight, but it will happen.

While I am speaking on this important bill, I will indicate that the High Seas Task Force meets for the final time at the end of this month. It was not entirely an Australian initiative, but Australia was one of the countries whose ministers set it up. The task force will bring forth some real initiatives on how we can win the fight against illegal fishing on the high seas, which is something that the world has to look at in the times ahead. I am delighted that the High Seas Task Force—which has been led administratively by an Australian, Mr Frank Meere, the previous head of AFMA—has done a magnificent job in bringing together a lot of the entrails of the work being done around the world over many years on this problem of illegal fishing. The work never quite got where it should. The High Seas Task Force of ministers was there to find practical means to address the problem, and we are going to do that.

This bill is an important one. I urge the Senate to support it. Again, in deference to my successor, Senator Abetz, I can assure him I am not going to be commenting publicly on the issues that are henceforth matters for his portfolio. But the temptation and encouragement by Senator Sterle were too much to let this opportunity pass, and there were some things I needed to say about these issues in the north-west of Australia. I urge the Senate to support the bill.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.