Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens welcome this legislation, the High Seas Biodiversity Bill 2026, today to ratify the UN high seas treaty. It's been 44 years since the last international agreement on ocean protection was signed, and this is a historic moment. It's a symbolic moment, it's a ray of light, and it's some hope for people who love the oceans and have campaigned for the oceans all around the world. I want to reflect on how important it is to focus on the high seas and a little bit on what the high seas are.

My wife and I went to Vietnam for a short holiday last year after the federal election. I remember when we flew out of Ho Chi Minh City in the evening. The weather wasn't so great, but, as the plane got higher in the air, I remember looking out the window and seeing the sky dark and full of stars. It was a beautiful, starry sky. As I looked down towards the ocean, it was like the ocean was a mirror of the sky. It was full of lights like stars. But of course they weren't stars, and it wasn't a mirror. Those lights, as far as I could see, were fishing boats. The ocean was full of fishing vessels. Interestingly, I made a note to look at where the territorial waters of Vietnam finished, and I could see that clearly on the screen in front of me.

Once we reached territorial waters, the high seas, the area became dark again. There were some lights and there were some boats, but it was literally like night and day in comparison as we reached the high seas. I have also witnessed this on surf trips in Indonesia while standing on the beach at night and looking out onto the horizon. It almost appears like a continent is surrounding you, but it's not land and cities or towns. It's the same thing; it's fishing boats as far as the eye can see. The high seas are essentially lawless. They are a source of significant uncertainty in managing biodiversity, and they're a source of significant concern.

I want to give my brother, David Whish-Wilson, a quick shout-out in the Senate today. He is an author who writes crime fiction. He was so concerned about the issue of slavery and lack of sustainability in fishing practices on the high seas that he recently wrote a fictional book called Cutler. I won't spoil the story for you in case you want to get a copy of the book and read it, but it's about an undercover private detective going on board a boat. On board that boat a young Australian man, who was an ideological, young scientist that had finished university, was an observer. He disappeared, and foul play was suspected. So an undercover private detective went on board the boat as a new observer to try and uncover what had happened to the young Australian. It's a very hard-hitting book. It's an excellent read. It talks about the horrendous human rights abuses that occur on a number of these fishing boats on the high seas.

I want to give a shout-out to Minderoo Foundation for the work they've done on uncovering this over many years. When it comes to what goes on on the high seas, it is not just about protection of biodiversity; it is very much a human rights issue. In fact some of you may have had a visit by Greenpeace Indonesia recently with some fishermen who have been trapped in this cycle of slavery on the high seas. We've also, over the years, had other Burmese and Thai fishermen come and visit us and tell us their horrendous stories. Life is very cheap if you're a slave trapped on the high seas as a fisher. Because they're essentially lawless, very little is done about this, so any attempt to regulate what goes on on the high seas is to be welcomed and embraced.

I'd like to give a shout-out to all of the conservationists all around the world who have worked on this. The minister is in the chamber now, and I know he has met a number of them over the years. He would have met them last year in Nice at the international oceans conference. In particular, I'd like to give a shout-out to Alistair Graham, a Tasmanian, and Kate Noble from WWF; David Ritter from Greenpeace; and, from the other key marine conservation groups, Adele Pedder from AMCS and Christabel Mitchell from Pew. Of course, there are a lot more. All of them have played a really important role in getting Australia on board with this but also working with international partners. Just as it was with Alistair and CCAMLR over many years, it is always incredible people that care and are passionate and have experience and confidence who can drive these agreements forward. I just wanted to give them all a big shout-out and to thank them today for what they've been able to achieve.

I've been here long enough to remember the conflicts we've had in this chamber on marine protected areas in Australia. I remember, when I started as a new senator in 2012, Mr Tony Burke in the other place had brought in a package of marine protected areas that unfortunately we hadn't been able to legislate before the federal election in 2013. The disallowance hadn't passed the Senate. At that time, the environment movement—once again, a shout-out to those who spent decades trying to get the marine park set up in this country—were so tired and run down that they said, 'Okay, let's do this.' They weren't happy with what the Labor government at the time had brought in, but they were prepared to settle for it and then build on that over time.

Of course, history showed us that the Liberal Party won the 2013 election. Tony Abbott came in like the wrecking ball that he was and cut the green zones in Australia's marine parks by 50 per cent pretty much across the board. We lost a significant amount of marine protection. It was a really difficult debate we had to have in this Senate as to whether we supported a significantly reduced level of marine protection in this country or continued to campaign and continued to fight. In the end, although the Greens pushed for those to be disallowed and the campaign to continue, the disallowance passed and we had the marine protected area set up in this country.

The reason I provide this little bit of history is that I don't want anybody to think that what we've got in this country is adequate for marine protection, because it's not. The Labor Party weren't in government for 10 years. The Liberals did nothing to improve marine protections. We've seen oil and gas drilling in very important, critical areas of marine parks. We've seen commercial fishing in important marine parks. We can throw numbers around all we like, but the area of proper marine protection is nowhere near adequate in this country.

I do want to acknowledge that these marine parks are reviewed—they're decadal reviews—and the Labor government made some improvements in the last parliament in its first review of the south-east marine park area, which, I note, had an entire area of the south-east trawl closed permanently because of a collapse in fisheries stocks in that area. It was partly attributed to climate change and partly attributed to poor fishing practices, especially around the lack of data around marine bycatch. Nevertheless it was a big deal for AFMA to stand up and say, 'We are permanently closing a large part of this fishery.' It wasn't called a marine park; they wanted to avoid any language around marine protected areas and marine parks. This was a fisheries closure and a very significant one, because of what's happening in our oceans.

This is what we've got to remember. This debate might have been going on in Australia for 30 years, but our oceans are changing, and they are changing rapidly and not for the better. The changes we are seeing in our oceans are frightening. We can barely keep up with monitoring them. We've got to understand we're in a very dynamic environment right now.

One thing we do know about marine protected areas, be they in the high seas or in Australian territorial waters, is that they do help insulate against some of these most rapid changes and some of the worst impacts of things like climate change and overfishing. They help build resilience in the oceans, but they are not a silver bullet solution for what we need to do to properly protect biodiversity in our oceans. I would urge Labor to continue with the 10-year reviews of other marine protected areas, to lock in more improvements in these marine parks and to expand the areas of green zones.

I want to finish, in the last five minutes, by reiterating what the same amazing campaigners who have delivered this today in Australia are saying. We can't say we're protecting our oceans if we're not acting on climate change, reducing our emissions and showing global leadership on the impacts that burning fossil fuels are having on our oceans.

I can tell you I have borne witness to this in recent years. I have dived on the Great Barrier Reef multiple times with scientists. Last year, I had the Australian Institute of Marine Science take me out on Ningaloo Reef. I took three separate dives, and it was devastating to see what the worst recorded marine heat waves in history have done to biodiversity on these reefs. You need to go and see it for yourself if you don't believe me. I've seen the loss of giant kelp forests; the most productive habitat not just in the oceans but on our planet have disappeared in Tasmania. I've seen the impact it has had on fisheries industries, and they have disappeared because of marine heat waves and marine invasive species that are on the march because of warming oceans.

Not only does this effect fishing industries and our economy; it effects the communities that live on our coastlines. We've heard today from Senator McLachlan about the impact of the algal bloom, also caused partly or primarily by the burning of fossil fuels and marine heat waves. When are we going to wake up and understand that, unless we act on climate change, the oceans will continue to change? And it will undermine life on earth as we have known it and have been lucky enough in our lifetimes to have known it.

I'm not talking about being able to go snorkelling with your kids on the Great Barrier Reef; I'm talking about the womb of the earth: the ocean. All life has come from the ocean. If we saw a terrestrial forest ecosystem disappear along the coastline of Australia, if Tasmania's east coast had the most productive biodiverse forest on the planet that went a kilometre inland from its coastline, that produced billions of dollars in export revenue and that fed our country and if that disappeared before our eyes, do you think there would be a riot? Yes, there would be. Politicians of every colour would be talking about what we need to do about this, but, because it is happening in our oceans and is out of mind and out of sight for a lot of people, we don't talk anywhere near enough about it. The oceans literally are the canary in the coalmine for this planet right now. We need to watch and we need to listen and we need to act.

I would urge the government especially to look at the capstone project that I, as someone who has campaigned on oceans for decades, am thinking about right now, at a time when we need to show meaningful change and action: the plan for the Browse Basin on the North West Shelf of WA, the plan to drill Scott Reef and open up the biggest carbon bomb, the biggest fossil fuel project and the dirtiest fossil fuel project in our nation's history. This is at a time when we are literally seeing the climate break down.

Western Australia recorded ocean temperatures of between 36 and 38 degrees, off your beautiful state of Western Australia, Deputy President, which I love dearly, including in some of the most precious marine ecosystems in this country. It isn't just the fringing reefs of Ningaloo but further north of there, all the way up to Scott Reef, the Rowley Shoals. It is absolutely off the charts and only predicted to get worse if we don't act.

Today's legislation is dearly welcomed by anyone who's holding out hope that we can work together unilaterally. Let's forget about America and Russia, who haven't signed this agreement and therefore are not bound by it. Hopefully that will happen over time with pressure as more countries sign onto this. I'm all for focusing on the positives of this agreement and the fact that humans can work together to make our ocean a more beautiful, safer place, not just for the creatures that live there that we love but also for the humans that have to go and work on fishing boats on the ocean.

But let's not forget that there's so much more we need to do. And, if we're going to do that, it has to start in the parliaments of the world, in the places where we are today. That's my final message: only we can fix this problem, parliamentarians elected by the people. (Time expired)