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

Look at some of the words that people have been saying around locking up our marine environment. It does mean that people can still enjoy our beaches. The parks do, however, reduce human activities on our marine life. They are there to protect our marine environment, our marine ecosystems, and ensure that future generations can also enjoy our diverse marine environment.

Two-thirds of the marine reserves network, 87 per cent, of the total Commonwealth marine area, will allow recreational fishing and some forms of commercial fishing, but will restrict destructive industries such as bottom trawling and oil and gas extraction. That will improve the quality of these areas for recreational and sustainable commercial fishing. Contrary to the arguments that are being put, if we put in place a strong and effective system of marine protected areas we will ensure fish stocks into the future and we will ensure that we have a healthy marine environment that is there for future generations.

There have been some exaggerated claims that this will have an unacceptable economic impact. All sorts of figures have been thrown around. There are claims that it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and some claims that $1 billion will be needed in compensation. The realistic figure is closer to $100 million. The Centre for Policy Development has unpacked these claims in its latest report, Marine reserves reality check. The centre's analysis shows that the new marine national parks in the proposed Commonwealth marine reserves network will cover an area that provides $1.2 billion a year in ecosystem service value—this is not recognised in our economic accounts—bringing the total value of Australia's fully protected marine reserves to $2 billion a year in ecosystem services. These services are based on a conservative analysis of the estimates from a major UN Environment Programme study, The economics of ecosystems and biodiversity, and is adjusted downwards to account for the lower productivity of Australia's waters. This is a huge contribution that marine environments provide. It costs less to avoid damage to ecosystems than to recover their functions once they have been damaged—and we know what impact poor management is having on fish stocks globally.

It is essential that Australia does act to ensure that our marine environment is protected. ABARES have undertaken an analysis of the cost of the marine reserves and estimate that the value of fishing production that will be displaced by creating the Commonwealth marine reserves network is around $11.1 million per year and about 1.1 per cent of the value of the fish catch gross value of production from wild fisheries.

This is nothing but an attempt by the coalition to undermine the system of marine reserves and the progress that the government is making on this. In a way it trashes its own proud history of marine protection that the previous Howard government set up. Is it now saying, 'We don't actually value what we did then; it is okay for us to do it, but we don't want that system extended'? The coalition is running the commercial fishers argument disguised as a rec fishers argument. Both commercial fishers and rec fishers have been making exaggerated claims about the impact it will have on their fisheries.