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

The point I am making—and I know it is a sensitive point for the failed climate change minister, Senator Wong, for me to talk about climate change and her complete failure in the ministry and her complete failure at Copenhagen. But I want to make the point in response to Senator Siewert: why does Australia penalise itself and the fishing industry and every other industry for no gain? Senator Siewert talks about the 'marine heatwave' and all the difficulties there

She did not, of course, mention that there have been new coral reefs forming in Western Australia as the southern waters get a little warmer. I acknowledge that is a question of colder waters getting warmer, and so new coral reefs are growing, but what the Greens and the Labor Party never understand is that this is going to happen. The climate will continue to change. What we have to deal with is climate adaptation. We should be spending money researching how we deal with, how we adapt to, whatever change happens in the climate—as it certainly will, and as it has done since time immemorial.

I notice Senator Siewert also spoke about the Western Australian rock lobster industry and said there were claims that it was world's best and now it is not. Senator Siewert knows as well as I do that that fishery was certified by the Marine Stewardship Council as being properly run—and the Marine Stewardship Council, as we all know, is a WWF sponsored organisation. Senator Siewert in those days thought that was pretty good. Now it is not the world's best fishery, according to Senator Siewert.

Senator Colbeck in his address—a contribution to the debate that I would urge all interested parties to read and reread—went through the whole gamut of fisheries in relation to this legislation. As Senator Colbeck quite rightly said, this is legislation we support because it will help the way we can assess the strength and health of the fisheries. But the problem with the Labor government is that they make decisions on our fisheries not based on science, not based on this data, but on the basis that Ms Gillard needs the Greens in order for her to stay as Prime Minister. The Greens rattle the can; Ms Gillard says, 'Whatever you say, whether it is backed by science or not, I will do it provided you continue to keep me for a few more months in the job I am desperate to keep, and that is the job of Prime Minister.' So we have marine bioregional plans. And Senator Siewert from the Greens political party suggests: 'Labor are good, Greens are good, for having marine bioregional plans. Liberals are bad because they challenge some of the decisions that are made.'

Senator Siewert never acknowledges, of course, that bioregional plans were an initiative of the Howard government under its world-first oceans policy. The first marine bioregional plan we had in Australia's south-east—I am proud to say it happened while I was fisheries minister—was a plan on which there was full consultation with all the stakeholders. We came to a resolution on that plan that 85 per cent of the people were 85 per cent happy about. It was not a bad outcome. The fishing industry was able to continue to employ Australians, we were able to continue to eat Australian produced fish and a lot of areas were set aside for conservation.

Contrast that process with this farce of a consultation process that the Labor Party and the Greens have embarked upon. It is absolutely farcical. Labor only consulted with the Greens and the Pew organisation, that American environmental group that came into being on the back of oil money from some American oil barons who wanted to salve their consciences. The Pew foundation wanted this; the Greens jumped when they were told by Pew to do this; and then Ms Gillard, wanting to retain her office as Prime Minister, also jumped. So we have had this farce of a consultation process.

The prawning industry, one of the few continuingly successful industries in the Gulf of Carpentaria, was at risk of destruction through the marine bioregional plan. I, Senator Colbeck, many in the industry and all the stakeholders in the Gulf of Carpentaria have pleaded and petitioned for a better outcome for that plan. I just hope that Mr Burke will, at last, at least take notice of the submissions that Senator Colbeck and the industry have made on that marine bioregional plan so that we can not only have good conservation outcomes but also protect and sustain what is a very sustainable industry that, as I said, is one of the few that continues to operate in Australia.

To come back to what I said at the beginning, the difficulty for Australians eating locally produced fish is that there is no confidence these days in the fishing industry because of what investors see as a sovereign risk problem within Australia at the moment. Mr Acting Deputy President Furner, you will remember that Mr Burke, when he was the fisheries minister, actually encouraged fishermen in Tasmania to bring in a supertrawler. He did that because the science at the time—and the science currently, I might say—said that was a good way to harvest the fish. Lo and behold, with some of the ructions in the Labor Party, time moves on and Mr Burke is no longer fisheries minister but becomes environment minister. Having encouraged Australian and some foreign investors to put money into this supertrawler as fisheries minister, Mr Burke as environment minister then stops that boat from operating. And you wonder why there is no confidence in investment in the Australian fishing industry! Why did Mr Burke do that? Because Ms Gillard likes her current temporary job as Prime Minister, the Greens said they would do awful things if the supertrawler was allowed in—again, the populist politics of the Greens without any consideration of the economics or investment implications of their action—and the trawler was banned.

We have a fisheries minister who in this legislation is doing something positive. It is probably the only positive thing I can recall the government doing with fisheries legislation. But, contrary to that, there is green tape and red tape that is shutting down the Australian industry and making it necessary for Australians, if they want to eat seafood, to import 72 per cent of what we consume.

I move on to another aspect of fisheries legislation which I thought the Greens might have mentioned but, alas, they have not. That is, that we have in Australian waters the Patagonian toothfish, a quite rare but, if it is managed properly, a sustainable fish that is very valuable. Some years ago there were pirates who knew the value of the fish and who came in from all over the world to take Australia's Patagonian toothfish. I am pleased to say the Howard government by very firm action acquired a vessel to go down into the Southern Ocean and capture, arrest or chase away those pirate vessels from all over the world. We cleaned out those pirate vessels in the Southern Ocean. Now we find that the Labor government has no interest in that anymore. The vessel that was acquired for that is up running a taxi service for illegal arrivals in the north-west of Australia. It was supposed to be helping the French protect the Southern Ocean from pirates but is no longer working there. When you ask the Labor government about this it says, 'Oh, but the French are there, and we put Australian officers on French vessels.' Yes, we do—but how long is this one-sided approach going to last? How long are the French going to say, 'We'll keep taking your guys around, but we never expect you to reciprocate by putting our people on your vessels'? That is what is wrong with Labor's approach to fisheries management and, I might say, to border protection as well.

Debate interrupted.