Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is direct from the explanatory memorandum:

It has been longstanding legal practice in Australia not to impose custodial penalties for offences that are subject to strict liability. Accordingly, the Bill would amend the FMA and TSFA on the basis that the new custodial penalties would apply only to fault based indictable offences.

Having read that out on behalf of the shadow minister, I might now revert to the comments I wanted to make about those matters, in which he may even find some grounds for agreement. I have to point out that over many years in the state of Western Australia the financial penalties that the United Nations convention required for these foreign fishing incursions always carried a rider, as they do with other offences in Western Australia—if the fine was not paid, each $50, for example, represented a day in custody. So many people have been given custodial sentences not because of the crime, which is subject to a final penalty, but because of their failure to pay that penalty.

Whilst I support the government—and, hopefully, the more senior officials and people involved—in respect of this outrageous situation, both environmentally and commercially, of the incursion of foreign fishing entities into our traditional waters, I must point out that for the lesser individual, the crewman, this process of incarceration has not worked. I do not want to say this in a critical sense, but the reality is that while you are in an Australian jail you get pocket money and, unfortunately, the pocket money frequently exceeds the wages that some of them would have been paid in their home state. Whilst I guess they do not enjoy the period of incarceration, they are flown home in a charter jet and with quite a bit of money.

I was further confronted with this situation in Darwin where, after arresting the boats, the practice was to tow them into the harbour and to then leave the crew on board. The crew would be onboard in conditions which would be identical to those were they to return to their home port, because many, if not all, did not have accommodation on land in their home port; they continued to live on the vessel. Of course, they were provided with stores—and might have been given significantly more—but there was pressure from certain parties to bring these people ashore and to accommodate them in a much more salubrious way. So I am pleased to say to the House that I think these penalties will be a great deterrent to the senior crew of boats that are there to collect the catches of the smaller vessels and freeze them and treat them. Whilst I think that will be an excellent deterrent, I am encouraged, after questioning the minister. that our more practical responses will be the front line of protection.

My recollection of the former Labor government’s administration in respect of the prevention of these fishing practices was to use Customs assets—vessels worth $10 million, $20 million or $30 million at the point of launching—to arrest and tow cockleboats into Broome or Darwin, which were the most logical places to bring them. I always had grave concerns about bringing those vessels so close to the coastline, but that was the practice of that government, as it was the previous government.

The new policy and a lot of the new funding—and this is only a component of it—will make sure we have the capacity to make arrests and that facilities for the eventual destruction of these vessels are as far away as possible from our mainland. Other vessels, of much lesser value than those that should be making the arrests, should be available for towing and for the application of other parts of the law of the sea, with which this nation must comply. All in all, it is with some pleasure that I support this legislation. I reserve my right to continue my remarks after question time and the MPI, to which I hope the people who are to speak will turn up on time.

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