Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for your protection, Chair. So, what we on this side actually want to see is Tasmanians—and indeed fishing families and the industry right around Australia—having a sustainable future and on the mainland, in our supermarkets, access to a sustainable, ecologically sound food source, as opposed to getting it from somewhere else, because, guess what? We are not giving up eating fish.

But I have completely digressed from my contribution. I shall now return. This sunset clause that Senator Ludwig is presenting removes all ability from the environment minister to declare any further fishing activities and ensures that he or she must listen to the expert panel, which we already have—through the AFMA, through the extensive consultation that has been the hallmark of this government in its policy development process and that I am confident continues through our action of government.

The dysfunctional mess that the coalition is trying to clean up can be demonstrated by a colleague of Senator Nash and mine who has since left this place and gone on to what we would call other things in the other place—Barnaby Joyce. He talks about particularly the Greens but also some in the Labor Party being seduced by these activist groups—that it was like the 'X Factor of politics', that it was like 'dial-a-decision', when he talked about another time that the Greens and the ALP were captured by activist groups, and that was the live cattle decision:

It was like the X Factor of politics. It was like Dial-a-Decision and what we have there has been completely and utterly replicated in what we have here. It is Dial-a-Decision, Twitter politics, Facebook friend politics. But it is also a total and utter insanity.

We had been promised, just a month earlier, by Senator Ludwig that such a brand of politics would not affect him:

As Minister for Fisheries, I will not allow the emotive politics of the Greens political party to run fisheries management policy in this country. We will ensure that the Australian Fisheries Management Authority is independent, that it makes independent decisions based on the science through its expert commissioners and on the facts that are presented to them. They will continue to make decisions based on sound judgement to ensure that fisheries are sustainable and meet all the ecological requirements.

What we have before us today is proof of yet another Labor Party dysfunction. I do not understand why we cannot leave this to the experts, to the minister who relies on that advice. Let's end the dysfunctional politics of the Labor-Greens alliance, ensure that knee-jerk reactions are ignored and that interest groups do not have a greater influence than experts. What we are proposing is sound reasoning, detached from emotion.