Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. Is the minister aware of the pain being imposed on those who rallied at Parliament House this morning over the government's sterilisation of the Coral Sea and the gulf by creating the world's largest marine park in a country which already has the world's lowest fish harvest rate? Could the minister revisit these decisions in light of the knowledge that these people, stripped of their right to earn a living, will lose cars, homes, families and, very sadly, in some cases their lives? The Liberal-National marine park closures took 2,000 jobs from North Queenslanders. Is the minister trying to break their record? (Time expired)

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

I thank the member for Kennedy for his question. He is the one member of this House who has been consistent in his opposition to marine parks. I hear the scoffing opposite. The point the member for Kennedy makes is true when he says that the zoning done under the Howard government had a much bigger economic impact on communities than what is proposed by the Commonwealth now. That is exactly true.

He also refers to a protest held outside here today. If you had a look at the placards at that protest today, one of them said, 'Don't lock us out of Hervey Bay'—in fact, two of them referred to Hervey Bay. When the areas for further assessment first went out some years ago, there was a proposed area off Hervey Bay which went out some distance. If you go to the final maps that have been released by the government, you will see that you can go out as far as you want east from Hervey Bay and there are no restrictions at all—no proposed marine park, nothing. This goes to the fear campaigns that have been run opposite and in a similar way with the Coral Sea. Those opposite are still circulating maps that have the entire Coral Sea locked up. That is simply not true. That is not the government's proposal.

We then have the claim that there is no science on which these are based. Yet we have volume after volume of scientific bioregional planning—some of which have photographs of the member for Wentworth in them—the scientific basis for this work. I respect the fact that the member for Kennedy has a different view on this issue. You cannot pretend that there is no impact on communities. It is true that there is some, but it has been grossly exaggerated. The reference to Hervey Bay is completely wrong. There has been talk in recent days of a $1 billion impact on Cairns. That sort of impact would only be possible if you counted the impact over more than 150 years.

Ultimately we on this side of the House, each and every time, are supportive of the concept of national parks; whereas those opposite, now with a private members' bill, want to abolish them in the ocean, to turn the ones in Victoria into farms and to turn the ones in New South Wales into rifle ranges. There is also a report of logging proposed in national parks in Queensland. On this side of the House, the support for national parks on land and in the ocean is a simple, straightforward environmental step forward which we are happy to back.