Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

It is breathtaking the way the coalition has addressed this issue. We obviously see the track record that they had prior to the 2010 election— out there mendaciously misleading the entire electorate about the marine bioregional planning process in one of the greatest disinformation campaigns ever seen. In fact, I recall the Leader of the Opposition down in Narooma hanging out a rod, trying to tell people that this was going to be the sort of activity that was going to be affected by the process. He would have had to have been able to cast that rod three nautical miles out to sea to have been anywhere near the region that these marine bioregional planning processes are addressing. So clearly he was out there trying to cause the same sort of hysteria, the same sort of deception and misleading reaction in the community that he has followed as part of his playbook in relation to the carbon tax. How could you take anybody on that side of the House seriously when it comes to dealing with an issue to do with our marine environment? They are out there trying to tell you that this is all about reacting to the Greens, when we know for a fact that what this is about is allaying the concerns that exist amongst our commercial fishers and recreational fishers as well as those who are concerned about the marine environment. If you were honest about that then you would admit it.

Let us remind ourselves technically what this bill does. It enables the minister to prohibit declared fishing activities with an independent expert panel being involved to assess the potential environmental, social or economic impacts of that activity. That would only be activated, of course, where there was a concern and uncertainty about those impacts and about the need for further assessment. As parliamentary secretary for fisheries in the last term, I was very proud to have taken a very keen involvement in refining and improving the regulation of our fishing industry. I was proud to have presented legislation creating comanagement regimes so that our commercial fishers could work more effectively with the regulatory authorities. We have seen some wonderful examples of how that can work; for example, the Spencer Gulf prawn trawlers do a magnificent job of their comanagement relationship with South Australian state authorities. We are now seeing this sort of relationship grow because the fishers in this country do get maligned unfairly by some; they are out there interested in preserving and sustaining their own industry. We do have world's best practice fishing management in this country—that is the truth of the story. With our vessel video monitoring systems and the way we set up the operation of the ships and the tracking of the vessels, it is certainly a commendable operation.

Further than that, we have people interested in the marine environment itself and in recreational fishing. I was very pleased and proud to have regularly conducted roundtable meetings here in Canberra with all the stakeholders in the recreational fisheries industry. We were able to bring on board all their concerns in the way that we dealt with these issues.

Also, of course, I was able to negotiate and deal with AFMA in finally setting the quotas for our national system of fisheries. There was some concern initially with how those quotas were being determined. In relation to abundant species there were quotas set and, fine, that would not be a problem in the short term; but I wanted to make sure that the quotas we set would give us sustainability in the long term. We certainly saw that. There was flexibility on the part of AFMA and I very much enjoyed working with Michael Egan and with James Findlay from AFMA. There is a high degree of independence in the way those authorities operate.

One of the concerns that has emerged with this issue is the inability of the relevant ministers to take action where something has not quite fit within the regulatory regime. I will come back to the biomarine regional planning process, because this really goes to the credibility of the coalition. I mentioned the misleading conduct and the statements and claims made by the Leader of the Opposition in the 2010 campaign. Of course, I travelled this country far and wide, to the great state of Western Australia, as the member for—

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