George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much. The previous member is probably not aware—he might need to pick up the phone and call the manager of government business— to find that they have given the member for Dobell amendments to move that get rid of the social impact issue that he just spent so much time talking about.

I do not support the supertrawler fishing in Australian waters. I have been on the record as saying that. If you look at the size of the thing and the size of the nets you just get a feeling in your bones that it is not right. And locals in my electorate have also been concerned about it. I refer to Lance Murray from recreational fishing group Sunfish Mackay, who pointed out to me that the superboats strip these migration routes fairly bare and that once the bait and fish stocks are gone they are gone forever. I refer to commercial fishing operator Greg Smith in Bowen, as well, who also has some strong concerns about what it might do to migratory stock.

But the fact is that this Gillard Labor government and its environment minister, when he was fisheries minister, actually invited the supertrawler here. He did so in 2009, when he was minister for fisheries and overseeing the Australian Fisheries Management Authority. In the Small Pelagic Fishery Harvest Strategy in October 2009 they say:

There are considerable economies of scale in the fishery and the most efficient way to fish may include large scale factory freezer vessels.

He was the minister at the time, basically inviting this vessel into Australia. And the government has been defending why it invited them here. The current minister for fisheries, in the other place, as late as Monday this week was raging against the Greens, who were essentially putting forward a proposal similar to that which the government is putting forward now. He said that the Greens motion could harm fisheries across Australian Commonwealth waters. Well, 'hear, hear,' to that. He said:

This disallowance motion is a message that the Greens political party do not support sustainable catch limits based on science. It is a message that says the Greens want fisheries managed by politics, not qualified fisheries managers. And it says that the Greens do not support the commercial operators who fish in some of the world's best managed fisheries.

He went on:

… I have no doubt that the same disregard—

by the Greens—

for the science and management of our commercial fisheries will be extended to the legitimate pursuit of recreational fishing.

That was the fisheries minister in the other place on Monday of this week. By Thursday of this week there had been a complete U-turn.

I say to the environment minister and to the fisheries minister: you created this problem. Why did you ask the Margiris to come to Australia to fish in our waters in the first place? Why did you ask a foreign supertrawler to come here when at the same time you were planning a network of marine parks around the country, a network of massive zones where Aussie fishermen, both commercial and recreational, could be locked out forever? Why did you do that? Once again, see how hopeless a government this lot are. They are making it up as they go along. They waited for the supertrawler to get here, to get to the point where the nets were almost in the water and then they cried 'Foul!'. Now an Australian business that has put considerable dollars on the line to get this ship out here is substantially out of pocket, 50 people are out of a job and, what is worse, the taxpayer is probably going to have to cough up for the absolute incompetence of the minister for the environment and the minister for fisheries. You should not have invited them here in the first place.

How do we do deal with this one fishing vessel? A simple way, as I have said, would have been not to have invited it here in the first place. But now that the Greens tail is wagging the Labor dog on this issue, substantially after the fact, how can they deal with it? They could have had a specific bill giving either the environment minister or, probably more appropriately, the fisheries minister the ability to deal exclusively with the Margiris. But, no, they have sought to use an atom bomb to kill an ant. The environment minister has brought before this House legislation that gives him the unfettered power to unilaterally declare unsustainable any fishing activity in Australian waters and to ban it for two years. That cure, my friends, is much worse than the actual disease. That cure in the hands of this environment minister in a dog of a government that is being wagged by its Greens tail could wipe out any form of fishing, anytime, anywhere in Australian waters with the stroke of a pen—or, at least, it would have been any form of fishing. The Recreational Fishing Foundation issued a statement yesterday, in which it said: 'It should not be about stopping mums, dads and kids from going and catching a fish in Australian waters.' It called on the government to amend the legislation immediately, because it had absolutely stuffed it.

The government got the member for Dobell to do its dirty work and fix up this absolute mess of a bill with his amendments. But even with those amendments the bill will still affect any form of commercial fishing—including charter fishing, which actually takes recreational fishermen out into Commonwealth waters. It will still affect those people. It will be one man's decision, because, despite what the legislation says, we know that the fisheries minister is a lame-duck minister and that he will have to bow or curtsy to whatever decision the environment minister makes. We have seen that in this case. Poor old Joe! He was busy defending the supertrawler—

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