Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I know that this has been something that Senator Whish-Wilson has advocated for, for a very long time, and I know that's based on a very sincere belief. In some respects, you've answered your question by pointing out that this was not a recommendation of the Samuel review. While I'm not going to pretend that we've delivered every single recommendation in the Samuel review—although we've delivered the absolute vast majority of them—and while I wouldn't want to pretend that we haven't done additional things beyond the Samuel review recommendations, delivering those recommendations has absolutely been our priority in this reform package. I'm sure you'd acknowledge, Senator Whish-Wilson, that even the bill that we are debating today is an incredibly comprehensive bill. There is a huge amount in it. It's much broader than any other bill this parliament has considered around the reform of these laws, and my judgement was that there were only so many things that we could do in these reforms. Simply delivering the recommendations of the Samuel review was a pretty herculean task in its own right.

I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to both my office and the departmental officials, who've absolutely worked their guts out over the last few months—and, in some cases, the last few years—to get us to this point. So even delivering these recommendations has been a mammoth effort from a very large team of people.

You're right, Senator Whish-Wilson. There are some groups who have advocated to remove the continuous use exemption that applies in relation to shark nets. I'm particularly thinking of the humane society, and, as I recall, the Australian Marine Conservation Society has also been quite active on that issue. There may be others that I've momentarily forgotten, but my memory is that those two have been the most vocal about this, and I welcome their contributions to these debates. But my judgement was that we needed to focus in particular on the recommendations of the Samuel review in delivering these reforms.