Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I rise to talk about climate change, our oceans, ocean warming and sharks. 2014 was a record year, but there is nothing to be proud of in that record. It was hotter in 2014 than in any other year in recorded history, and already 2015 is shaping up to be even hotter than that. The consequences of this ever-increasing heat and the associated extreme weather events are devastating. My heart goes out in particular to those in my home state of Western Australia who have been affected by fires and are still being affected by fires that are blazing across the south-west of my home state. As well as more fires and more extreme storms and weather events, another consequence of climate change is that the ocean is getting progressively warmer. The frequency of extremely hot days in our coastal waters has increased by a third over the last 30 years. Our knowledge of what is happening in our oceans is growing and it is unfortunately not good news. For example, the Argo program for floating robots has been profiling the ocean once every 10 days for the last eight years and the data on temperature and salinity that they are collecting shows that the oceans are under significant pressure and are continuing to warm at an alarming rate.

On top of that, ocean acidification, where human generated carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean, making it more acidic, is altering the chemical environment of our marine environment. More than 90 per cent of human induced planetary warming goes into our oceans. Small changes in the ocean can have huge impacts on our overall climate, and it is the southern oceans, particularly the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, that have absorbed the majority of that extra heat. Australia, which suffered some of the first and most extreme impacts of climate change on land, is also suffering it in our oceans. We have already seen that extreme weather events such as marine heatwaves can do a significant amount of damage in a relatively short amount of time. In WA we saw an example of this a couple of years ago. For example, large seaweeds die off, disrupting the food cycle of turtles and shellfish, large sections of coral reef are rapidly bleached beyond recovery, and invasive species, like the Chinese green mussel that invaded Perth's Garden Island two years ago, can move into new territories. Warming over time has a slower effect, but there is no doubt that we are now seeing higher levels of acidification and species migration.

There is still so much we do not know about our oceans, but new monitoring data suggests that climate change is a factor in the changing behaviour of key species like sharks, which are being sighted more regularly and are changing their feeding and breeding habits. Of course, none of this was taken into account before the knee-jerk response of the WA government last summer, when they introduced the WA shark cull. Culling sharks is an arrogant policy that does not recognise how fragile our world is and how fragile our marine environments and our ecosystems are. Sharks are already under huge pressure, not just from climate change but from overfishing and pollution. There is clear evidence that if we wipe out sharks we lose the balance in our entire marine ecosystem, which has a devastating flow-on effect for not only the environment but also tourism, fishing and recreation.

I put a motion to the chamber, which was passed by the chamber today, condemning the serious threat guidelines, but I have also condemned the WA shark cull in the past. I once again condemn it here. It is time to go beyond the simplistic solutions that are often put in place by governments and do more harm than good. We need long-term thinking if we are to mitigate the worst effects of global warming.

Marine parks are part of that. Marine parks are an essential insurance against the impacts of climate change on our marine environment. A properly managed network that includes large interconnected sanctuary zones can relieve the impact of human activities, including fishing and pollution, as well as human induced warming, and can reduce the impacts on marine life. It has been 10 years since the federal government extended Ningaloo's sanctuary zones from 10 per cent of the reef to 34 per cent, making it one of the most highly protected marine areas in Australia. The result of this improved fishing, generated significant tourism and boosted the regional economy. One hundred and eighty thousand tourists a year visit Ningaloo and spend in excess of $141 million. Similarly, it has been 40 years since the Great Barrier Reef was turned into a marine management zone, which included some no-take sanctuaries. A 2012 study of coral trout and stripy snapper within a network of marine reserves on the Great Barrier Reef provided clear evidence that these reserve networks make a significant contribution to restoring fish populations, not just in reserves but also for the benefit of local fishers.

These are success stories that could be and should be replicated around our nation. On paper, Australia has an amazing world-leading network of marine reserves, but the fundamental problem is that it is just on paper. One of the first moves of the Abbott government was to suspend our national network of marine sanctuaries. It got rid of the management plans and began a completely unnecessary review rather than getting on with implementing the management plans. We could now have been holding our head high and saying, 'We do have a world-leading series of marine protected areas.' The current review the government is carrying out is an expensive timewaster. There is already 10 years of work on the science of marine parks underpinning the creation of Australia's marine network. In fact, it even goes beyond that. In those 10 years, there were 600 days of consultation and 750,000 submissions, which were largely positive in supporting marine protected areas and the proposals for the marine networks around Australia. There was input from across the spectrum of ocean users, including recreational and commercial fishers. Clearly this new review will not be based on scientific evidence and what is best for our fragile oceans and marine ecosystems, but, rather, what is good for industry and what is good for the government's mates.

This is incredibly short-sighted, given the threats that face our marine ecosystems. We did see unnecessary cutbacks from the draft plans under the first proposal, which the ALP put up, including big bites for oil and gas. People probably recall I was in this place talking about the fact that the previous government had caved in to some big business around oil and gas, and even fishers complained that the oil and gas industry was being favoured, in particular oil and gas areas that were cut out of the north west zone in my home state of Western Australia.

Having said that, we still must remember that that was a world-leading proposal and series of marine protected areas, one that I was proud to talk about all over the world if I ever got the opportunity. I cannot imagine what will come out of this review process. But given its genesis, it can only be bad. It is time that we took the protection of our oceans seriously. It is time we took ocean warming seriously and realised what impact it is going to have not only on our marine environments but on our whole global environment. A world-class network of marine reserves and sanctuaries is a key way of mitigating some of the worst impacts.

That is not to say that, of course, we absolutely have to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions and our carbon dioxide emissions. However, given that the oceans have already absorbed so much carbon dioxide, even with reducing our emissions we know that it is going to have an impact on our marine environment. It is essential that we enable these marine parks to be put in place so they can play their part in protecting our absolutely unique marine environment in Australia's marine zone.