Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is directed to the Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator Ellison. Will the minister please update the Senate on the Australian government’s commitment to the security of our border? Further, is the minister aware of any alternative policies?

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a good question.

Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As Senator Abetz said, this is a good question. He knows, because he is the minister for fisheries and is doing a great job in relation to initiatives to look after our fishing stocks. I thank Senator Parry for this very important question dealing with the border protection of this country, which is an absolute priority of the Howard government. We have demonstrated that further by including a $389 million package in this year’s budget to protect our fishing stocks from illegal fishing.

This threat is one which is of high priority to this government; thus we have seen a staged implementation of that $389 million package. Just the other day, we put out a request for tender for a large armed patrol vessel, which will back up our Navy and Customs patrol boats, which are doing a great job in looking out for Australia’s interests. This mother ship will act as a floating platform to give support to our Navy and Customs vessels to free up their time so that they can go about interdicting those vessels suspected of illegally fishing and arresting those crew who are illegally fishing in our waters.

This vessel will be able to hold those crew members and also act as a holding facility for any vessels which are intercepted. That will free up our patrol boats to go about their essential duties. We have trialled this with great success with the Oceanic Viking, an 8,000-tonne vessel which we normally use in the Southern Ocean. So we thought we should have a vessel chartered for this purpose for the north—a large vessel to operate in our northern waters.

Of course, the reaction to this initiative by the opposition has been desperate, as you would expect it to be. What have we had from them in relation to border protection? Senator Ludwig said that it did not seem to be a sensible solution, which is contrary to what the Western Australian Labor fisheries minister, Mr Jon Ford, said. He said, ‘We shouldn’t be afraid of trying new ideas, because what we’re facing here is an environmental disaster.’ There you have a minister who is embracing a new initiative such as the one we have announced.

The member for Lingiari opposed the initiative—God only knows why. He represents a seat in the Northern Territory, so you would think he would have a keen interest in illegal fishing, and he is certainly out of touch with people such as the Australian Seafood Industry Council and the Kimberley Professional Fishermen’s Association, who have endorsed this plan to use a mother ship.

A request for tender worth $14 million will also be put out by the end of this month for the use of private vessels to assist us in towing back those illegal fishing vessels that we have interdicted. Again, this will free up the time of our patrol boats so that they can go about their essential duties in looking out for Australia’s borders.

Senator Parry asked me about alternative policies. Sadly, all that we get from the opposition is the word ‘coastguard’. We have had four different iterations of ‘coastguard’. Mr Beazley, the Leader of the Opposition, has said they are still committed to it and that we will be getting a fifth version. It is really interesting that his first version was costed at $895 million. His fourth version, at the last election, went down to $303 million. What does this involve? Three patrol boats? Three plus 10? Is it the sort of proposal that we saw from Simon Crean in November 2002 when he was Leader of the Opposition, or the one that was put forward by Mr Latham in 2004? Mr McClelland has tried to do an able job of defending that policy, but what did we have from Labor? An absolute hotchpotch of suggestions in relation to number and size of vessels. Importantly, they did not even know how much it was going to cost. They started out with just under $900 million; they are down to $300 million. (Time expired)