Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia's coastal lifestyle and the connections of Australians with the oceans around our island nation is perhaps unparalleled in the developed world. Whether it be in our experience of summer days at the beach, fresh local seafood on the barbecue or our concern and, importantly, activism in the name of whale conservation both here and internationally, Australians place an extraordinarily high value on our oceans and expect a correspondingly high standard when it comes to the management and protection of our marine environment.

The Australian sense of identity is linked to our oceans and we extend that sense of identity into an expectation that future generations will also be able to experience the ocean and live in harmony with marine life to the same and perhaps even greater degree than we do not.

Australia's envied international reputation for fisheries and conservation management of our oceans is a direct product of this strong identity and its matching commitment. We have avoided many of the difficulties, the damage and the depletion that has beset other nations. More and more, governments, researchers and educators from around the world look to the example we have set. Our local seafood industry is not shy to market itself to the world on the back of these credentials—and nor should it be.

Our tourism industry depends on Australia's hard-won reputation as a place of enormous natural beauty and strongly protected biodiversity. There is one fundamental reason that our credentials and our reputation in these areas are established and intact: it is because the Australian public demands that it be so. It is the Australian people who ensure that a clear responsibility is laid upon and that a clear mandate is provided to governments of all persuasions to continue and enhance our leadership on the management and protection of the marine environment.

That is why the coalition government's apparent embarkation on a mission to industrialise our oceans goes directly against the clear will and the best interests of the Australian public—now and in the future. The Abbott government's plans would put us back in the herd; relegating Australia from its leading position to joining the many nations suffering the economic and environmental consequences of taking a different path; of overfishing and depletion; and of pollution and weak regulation of the wide and sometimes irreversible harm that is inevitable when you give carte blanche to high-risk industrial scale extraction.

The week before last, Dr Daniel Pauly, an eminent fisheries researcher at the University of British Columbia and a widely recognised expert in the travails of fishery extraction from a global perspective, visited Australia to deliver his latest analysis. I am glad to say that there were a number of members and senators who took the opportunity to hear him speak here in parliament.

Dr Pauly made it clear that Australia is a marine conservation leader by international standards and that this position or status has been achieved, in large part, because, unlike many other nations, Australia has not yet rolled out the welcome mat for industrial-scale fishing. It is certainly not for any lack of interest from some operators and some fishery managers; indeed, Australians are only too aware of the attempts made by the supertrawlers Veronica and Margiris to undertake exactly that kind of bloody work. These Godzillas of the industrial fishing world, which appeared in 2004 and 2012 respectively, were regarded with appropriate horror by the Australian community. The idea that they would operate in our oceans and that they would wreak havoc on our marine life was soundly rejected.

From the public's perspective, nothing has changed when it comes to assessing the latest proposed assault on our oceans in the form of the Geelong Star. The Stop the Trawler Alliance, which represents recreational fishers and environment groups as well as the general public has delivered, since the Geelong Star's introduction: 75,000 petitioners names delivered to Canberra; over 9,600 emails to federal MPs across the country; almost 8,000 emails to Barnaby Joyce and Greg Hunt calling on them to protect our dolphins and seals; and over 400 phone calls to federal MP's offices.

All these efforts have been united in their rejection of the Geelong Star; of its business case; of its complete absence of any social licence; and of the very notion of exploiting our marine resources on an industrial scale.

It is critical to note that, when the trawlers Veronica and Margiris were given their marching orders at the behest of sensible marine science and matching public opinion, there was no impact whatsoever on the confidence or certainty surrounding commercial fishing industry investment in this country. If anything, our reputation as a careful steward of our fishery resources was enhanced. That is another reason why rejecting the Geelong Star and protecting our small pelagic fish stocks permanently from all factory freezer trawl fishing is absolutely the right thing to do.

Dr Pauly's work demonstrates that Australia is becoming more important as not only a leader but also a teacher in the shared global effort to sustainably manage and protect our oceans, to manage the sea catch harvest so that it corresponds with what our oceans can support, and to adequately conserve the marine biodiversity that is critical to the way of life that everyone on this planet should be able to enjoy. The possibility that future generations will be able to experience that kind of life is dependent upon the adoption of science based networks of marine reserves, and in that regard Australia has been a pioneer.

Once upon a time, New Zealand had a similarly enviable reputation, but it has taken a different path and is now embroiled in controversy as foreign owned factory fishing vessels face allegations of unwelcome fishing practices that border on slavery and show a disgraceful lack of resource stewardship. While these operations manage to maximise their cost, albeit at great collateral cost to the marine environment, at the same time local fish-processing plants laid off local workers in their hundreds.

Dr Pauly showed us clear evidence that the largest fishing vessels in the world attract the most government funding yet provide the fewest jobs and the least economic return per unit of catch. He also debunked the notion that it is the particular size of the vessel that matters. Rather, he said, it is the capacity of the vessel to stay out at sea while it harvests, processes and freezes huge numbers of fish that is the key issue. Thus, the Geelong Star, while slightly smaller than the Veronica and the Margiris, has a similar capacity to inflict serious damage on our marine environment.

Now, after a period of Labor government in which great gains in marine conservation were made, we are at a crossroads. This government seeks to turn its back on a once proud legacy of ocean protection. Ironically, in an earlier incarnation, the coalition established perhaps the world's most scientifically respected marine park on the Great Barrier Reef, and it also protected our sub-Antarctic islands. That coalition government embarked on the process to include all of Australia's Commonwealth waters in a marine reserve network that would be a shining example to the world of how to safeguard the future of marine resources and ecosystems. Of course, it took Labor to see that grand project through to completion. Let's remember that the Howard government committed $220 million to rationalise the Commonwealth fishing fleet more than a decade ago in the very waters that the Geelong Star now seeks to exploit.

It is clear that the Australian public has invested time, effort and energy to ensure this country remains as a steward and guardian of our precious oceans. It is therefore no surprise that we are now seeing Australians reject the coalition's push to industrialise the oceans at every turn. Just months ago, the community furiously rejected government proposals to dump dredge spoil in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Needless to say, the government has attempted to take credit for not doing so. A year ago, Tony Abbott said the supertrawler was banned and it would stay banned, in making a policy announcement that was only likely to be effective in preventing about half a dozen specific fishing vessels from plying their damaging trade in our waters. Nowhere was there consideration about the value of the harvest weighed objectively against the value of this resource as a whole or of the loss involved when damage to the wider ecosystem's function and the wildlife it supports impacts on higher value commercial fisheries, tourism and recreational fishing activities.

The truth is that the policy solution in this case is pretty simple. The correct, sensible and responsible policy is straightforward: enact a permanent ban on factory freezer trawling in the small pelagic fishery. Upon its election, the coalition suspended our Commonwealth marine reserve network, the marine parks that everyone in the community thought were finally complete and about to be established. It then announced a hand-picked review panel made up of fishing industry figures, scientific advocates of industrial fishing, and proponents of maximising harvest. It claimed to be refining the extensive consultation that had already been incredibly exhaustive and thorough, but in reality it appeared to be shutting out the voices of the wider community and, indeed, of the entire Australian scientific community that seeks to better understand, monitor and manage our biodiversity assets. Now the government is learning that a few donations from the fishing industry are not worth the electoral pain of turning away from the once proud legacy of marine conservation, and it is finding not only that the vast bulk of Australians are entirely comfortable with the idea of protecting our waters in marine parks and entirely supportive of the already established plans to achieve that protection but that, in fact, they insist upon it.

So I hope the coalition government takes this opportunity to listen and to learn, to acknowledge that the coalition is far from united in its support for industrialising our oceans, and to simply enact the policies that are in line with what the Australian public rightly demand when it comes to our oceans, beaches, reefs and marine life. Australians want strong, effective, comprehensive protection of the oceans. They want the national marine network of reserves, and they want a permanent ban on the indiscriminate and wanton damage of industrial-scale trawlers.