Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Northern Territory Fisheries Joint Authority Report 2002-03 has been a long time in coming. It was commissioned for the period during which I was one of the members of the Northern Territory Fisheries Joint Authority. One of my concerns at the time was that these reports were very slow in coming through; I see there are two reports—one for this year and one for next year—on the Notice Paper today. It was one of the Commonwealth’s goals to try to get these reports into both parliaments at a time when they actually mean something, rather than two or three years after the event. In the time that I was involved with the authority, I interacted with the Hon. Dr Chris Burns, the Northern Territory Minister for Primary Industries and Fisheries, who, as always, was a fine gentleman. He is a man with many talents and he did a very, very good job in this area.

I want to make a brief reference to something that is highlighted in this report—that is, that the report goes through the various fisheries for which the joint authority is responsible. The authority, whilst it is a joint Commonwealth and Territory authority, is managed by the Northern Territory department of business and regional development on behalf of, I think, the Northern Territory Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries. So it is actually run by the Northern Territorians.

The shark fishery is one of the fisheries looked after by the authority. I only mention it because in recent times the shark fishery has been one of the fisheries that was plundered by illegal Indonesian fishermen coming into Australian territory. The Australian government has done a marvellous job over the years—since my time and continuing today—in increasing surveillance and enforcement in all of the fisheries around Australia’s northern border.

I want to make the point that, while the shark fishery goes all around the Northern Territory, including the whole of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and while it was effectively the responsibility of the Northern Territory government, their surveillance, enforcement and compliance activities were pretty limited. I do not resile from the fact that the Commonwealth should protect its borders, but one would think that the states and territories also have a responsibility in compliance. This report notes that enforcement is undertaken by the Northern Territory Police Marine and Fisheries Enforcement Unit, which had 17 officers who were responsible for providing compliance and education for all fisheries managed by the Northern Territory.

The report goes on to say—rather strangely, one might say, in retrospect—that there are no current compliance issues in the fishery. Obviously the Northern Territory government, who run this fishery, did not think that the incursion of Indonesian fishermen at that time was a current compliance issue. Nevertheless, the report is there; I commend it to the Senate and repeat my thanks to Dr Burns for his cooperation and for the way this fishery was managed during 2002-03.

Question agreed to.