Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to draw attention to the report of the Western Australian Fisheries Joint Authority. The joint authority looks after certain Western Australian fisheries. Most of the fisheries in Western Australia are actually run by the Western Australian state government, but some of the fisheries that are listed in this report, the shark fishery and some others, are run by the joint authority. Whilst it is a joint authority at law, and whilst as the then Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation I did sign minutes and make some decisions, the actual day-to-day management of the authority is done by the Western Australian state government through their Department of Fisheries. They do not do a bad job.

It is a fishery which has become prominent over the years because of the incursions of illegal Indonesian fishermen. It is a fairly remote area, where it has been difficult to address the illegal incursions. One reason for that, of course, is that the Indonesian fishermen have been coming down to those areas for tens of thousands of years. In those days, of course, modern surveillance did not pick that up; whereas nowadays, the minute anyone comes into our waters, they are seen by one or other of the forms of surveillance that the Australian government has wisely implemented over the last several years.

The management of the fishery there and the problem of illegal fishing, I have said often and will repeat, will only be properly addressed when the Indonesian government are encouraged to become involved. Again, as I have said many times in this chamber, the Indonesian government do want to become involved, not so much because what happens in the fishery is of great concern to them—they have a lot of other problems in their country—but because they know it is an irritation to Australia and they want to be good neighbours and want to address that.

I am delighted to see that the Indonesian fisheries minister, Rear Admiral Freddy Numberi, is visiting Australia—this week or next week, I think—to see my successor, Senator Abetz, in a joint meeting with fisheries areas. These days, of course, I am not privileged to know what is on the agenda, but I certainly hope that it is a continuation of the agenda that I started with the Indonesian minister this time last year, because we do need to ensure that we work together on those areas.

Management of that area is very difficult. It is made more difficult in the case of the Western Australian fishery by the quite un-Australian and quite criminal reporting of the West Australian, and a particular journalist—Regina Titelius, I think it was. This is a journalist who has no professional standing at all and who, in the time of a secret operation, continued to report it, contrary to Australia’s interests. I will not go into the details of it, but it distresses me that journalists, thinking that they are getting a scoop, would do so in contravention of Australia’s interests. I have nothing but contempt and condemnation for journalists like this particular journalist and the West Australian for the way they continued to do that contrary to Australia’s interests.

This fishery does require management. It requires good, on-the-ground work by the Western Australian government. As I said, to a degree they have discharged those measures well, although they seem to think that enforcement of compliance is not a matter for them, even though they are the day-to-day managers; but, nevertheless, by and large the fishery has worked well and I commend this report to the chamber.