Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hindmarsh for his question. The member for Hindmarsh has been following the issue of the supertrawler very closely for some time and has been making representations about it in detail. Since I referred to the issue yesterday, the legislation has been introduced and is now before the parliament. It is also the case that in the course of that discussion there have been a couple of issues raised extensively as developments that need to be put out of the way straight away for the benefit of all the parliament. The first development is that there has been a claim that a document that was put out independently by AFMA two or three years ago was somehow authorised by me when I was fisheries minister. That, of course, is not the case. It never has been the case and there never has been a harvest strategy authorised by the minister. That is not how the system works.

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