Grievance Debate

MARINE PARKS

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood) (15:08): I rise to continue our discussion in this house on the important issue of marine parks. I can say, up-front, that the Liberal Party strongly supports marine parks in South Australia. In fact, it was the Liberal Party, back in the 1990s, that floated the idea of establishing marine parks. Going to the 2002 election, it was a Liberal Party commitment to establish marine parks.

The government has also made a long-term commitment to marine parks. They made that commitment leading up to the 2002 election but here we are, a full 10 years later, and we still do not have the zone arrangements in place in South Australia in our marine parks. It has been an absolutely shambolic management of this process by this hopeless, incompetent government. More than that, it is not just their hopelessness; they are affecting the lives of people in regional and rural South Australia, people who derive their income, their entire livelihoods, from fishing activities in regional communities.

Not only is the Liberal Party fully in favour of marine parks, it is fully in favour of sanctuary zones. It is a complete furphy that the minister puts forward that somehow the Liberal Party is against sanctuary zones. The Liberal Party is for them, the commercial fishing sector is for them, regional communities are for them; we are just not for this government's hopeless sanctuary zones, the zones that it has put in place. We reject those zones that the government has suggested to the people and on which consultation closes off next week. We reject them because the process to determine those sanctuary zones is fundamentally flawed. It is fundamentally flawed because it has not followed the established protocol for arranging protection zones within marine parks.

The simple fact of the matter is that throughout the entire world—and, in fact, as part of the COAG agreement—marine park protection zones need to be based upon identified, scientifically evaluated threats to marine biodiversity. This is not the approach that the state government has had. It has simply done the lazy thing and said, 'We want to create a representative sample of our state waters.' Well, I put it to you that this will not have any positive environmental outcome whatsoever and, more than that, it just flies in the face of what the rest of the world is doing and it flies in the face of the agreement that South Australia signed up to as part of the COAG agreement on managing marine parks in Australia. We have gone out on a limb because this minister cannot stand up to his department and put the lives of hard-working people in regional communities first.

The government's plans for sanctuary zones will have a huge effect on regional communities. The minister seemed to somehow refuse to acknowledge his own government department's reports on this issue. In fact, he repeatedly said today, 'I think this is going to have a positive outcome for South Australia.' Well, read your report, minister, and you will actually see that there is going to be significant social and economic impacts right across the regions here in South Australia because of your hopeless policies.

I also raise the point that this will have a devastating effect on South Australia's exports. Our fisheries in South Australia are amongst the most sustainable in the world. There is no reason whatsoever that the government should be using marine parks and sanctuary zones to control fishing. When minister O'Brien, the very hard-working former minister for fisheries, stood up in this place, he made it very clear that the people who should be managing our fishing zones in South Australia are those in the fisheries department, which sits within PIRSA. But no, not this Premier, not Premier Weatherill—he wants to talk about going down to the beach 25 years ago and finding a couple of tubeworms. The simple fact of the matter is that there is an important industry in South Australia and it is under threat by this government. If there are identified marine biodiversity threats, the government should use the aquatic reserve provisions within the Fisheries Act to control any single threat that exists.

The Liberal Party is for marine parks, for sanctuary zones and for sustainable fishing, and we want the government to start to address the issue of sanctuary zones on a threat basis, not just these hopeless lines on a page—representative samples for South Australia. It is going to cost us jobs, it is going to cost the regional communities, it is going to cost exports, and it is going to cost our recreational and our commercial fishing sector. It is not good enough. The government needs to sit up and take notice. Fishermen are not going to go away; they feel very passionately about that, and that is because their entire livelihoods are in jeopardy at the moment because of this government. Sit up, Mr Weatherill, take note of what people are saying, listen to their concerns, involve the local advisory groups and make some sensible decisions on behalf of South Australians.