Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—The Greens support the substance of the resolution from the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly and their serious concerns about increased illegal fishing and note that the Territory and Western Australian governments have been calling for strong action to protect our northern fisheries and livelihoods for some time. We note the urgency of the matter but are concerned to ensure that the federal government’s actions have long-term sustainability of the region in mind rather than grabbing a quick fix that may make matters worse. There is a lot of pressure on the federal government to take firm action on the issue, but we want to send a strong message of caution that relying only on a strict policy of interception and detection could make a bad situation much worse.

A study by Professor James Fox from ANU for Environment Australia in 2002 sounded the warning:

One clear effect of the Australian fisheries enforcement policy of destroying vessels has been to put pressure on individual—

and small craft owners—

... who are unable to recover from the loss of their vessel and gear and are either forced into debt or out of fishing—

completely.

Conversely the larger owner/traders have effectively flourished under this policy as they are easily able to find second-hand vessels to replace destroyed vessels and they pass on the entire risk of destroyed fishing gear to their captains and crews. Their control of fishing and the indebtedness of fishers has increased.

In addition, captains and crews involved in shark fishing are financially responsible for any loss of fishing gear, usually owned by the fish trader/vessel outfitter.

This gear is very expensive. When it is confiscated by Australian authorities, that contributes further to the indebtedness of fishers without having impact on the boat owners and traders.

What this tells us is that, in relying purely on intercepting and destroying the smaller vessels, we are potentially inadvertently consolidating the illegal industry in fewer but more organised hands. Foreign vessel fleets operating under licence or poaching within Indonesian waters have had a major impact in recent years. This is one of the reasons so many Indonesian operators are sailing into Australian waters and having such a devastating impact on our marine environment. There is a huge temptation to simply arrest as many people as possible to show that something is being done, but with hundreds of impoverished Indonesians in detention serving long sentences for nonpayment of illegal fishing fines we will have attacked the wrong end of the problem and simply have compounded the misery.

We believe the government must target the large operators and organised crime networks which are operating in Australian and Indonesian waters. The illegal trade cycle has to be broken, but we cannot do this without the assistance of the Indonesian government. This means that the approaches of working with our Indonesian counterparts must be at the forefront of our action. We also need to look at what we can do to support sustainability and long-term food security at a village level in Indonesia, particularly in coastal villages. The Indonesian government’s economic empowerment of coastal community program is designed in part to address this question. We believe it is firmly in Australia’s interests to support this initiative. We must also look at the ecosystems which are at the basis of this whole question. The Arafura and Timor seas are a global marine hot spot and need our careful attention. We need a better understanding of the environment that this illegal activity is occurring in.

At this stage we have very little understanding of the true status of most of the shark populations in Australian waters. There is widespread concern about declining shark numbers but we do not have a handle on those populations. There is only basic biological information on the background of most of these species. We have little knowledge of the habitat preferences and other ecological requirements of these species. It is absolutely imperative that this is part of any of the programs dealing with illegal fishing. Sharks are under threat—we have no doubt about it.

We also need to look at what international trade sanctions and practices we can put in place as a mixture of packages for dealing with illegal fishing. There is no one easy answer to the fishing problem. We need to look at a shared seas approach where we work together with our northern neighbours to protect our shared seas. There is no real boundary in the habitats or environment between our northern neighbours and us. We must acknowledge that the boundary is an artificial boundary and one that our marine species pay no regard to. Therefore our approach has to be a joint approach to managing all our regional seas, not just Australian waters. We cannot leave the Indonesian government to deal with the Indonesian waters. It has to be a regional marine management approach.

We also need to look at how we invest our trade resources and to acknowledge that we need to deal with some of the fundamental causes of hardship in Indonesian coastal communities and that those resources have been fished out. There is no use arguing about the fact that they have been fished out and pointing blame; we need to acknowledge there is a problem and share our marine and fisheries expertise in this country with our northern neighbours. It would be highly desirable to target our aid packages to replenishing the reef systems that have been depleted in Indonesian waters.

We need to establish a collaborative fisheries management framework that, yes, has deterrents as part of that package. We also need a much better fisheries management approach; we need to be sharing our resources. We also need to establish a marine protected area program that protects areas of high biodiversity as nurseries for our northern fisheries and that protects threatened species, such as shark species. We therefore support this motion of the Northern Territory’s Legislative Assembly but believe that, although the measures that the Northern Territory government put forward are worth supporting, we need to go beyond that. We urge the Australian government to take note of this motion from the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly but to go further and look at all the initiatives that must be included in a comprehensive package if we are to deal with illegal fishing in Australia’s northern waters.