Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

because we did not plan it properly. We now have an opportunity to ensure that we plan it properly. But there is something else along with the capacity to budget, one issue that you will all agree with. If you pick up a fishing magazine anywhere or talk to a coastal community anywhere and you say, 'Listen, what do you reckon about a marine protected area?' you had better have your mouth guard on. I can tell you what this legislation will do: it will make it popular. It will put the force of Australians' support, which they want to do, in a tool looking after their bioregions and their marine estate. That is what Australians want.

This is a piece of legislation that quite forensically and quite cleverly deals with those issues that have not only not made it popular, but have not made it work. It has not worked because there are so many unintended consequences. We have displaced fisheries. We have made claims that we are going to compensate and yet we have not budgeted for it. Ten years after people have been compensated they are still arguing with government. We need a planning phase and we need a forensic mechanism of ensuring that we plan these things so that there are no unintended consequences and at the same time we can continue to offer what we should be most proud of—our incredible marine biosphere—the highest level of protection we have internationally. I commend the bill to the Senate.