Marine Park Sanctuary Zones

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (14:51): Given that the minister referred to 'opportunities' in the last part of that answer, does the minister therefore have any information on the impact on regional tourism and regional job opportunities and whether there are families who have had to leave their area to move to other parts of South Australia to take up fishing grounds?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport, Minister for Racing) (14:52): As the Minister for Fisheries and the Minister for Tourism, we haven't had any people come to us, certainly in the tourism sector, saying that they are being hit in an adverse way by the marine parks introduction. All the fisheries I have spoken with have said, 'Look, we have to have a date and a time to bring these changes in.'

I know there were people who were scared of change, and we wanted to make sure whether it was just the fear of change or were there some real concerns out there and they would only become evident as the marine parks came into being. We have had some feedback from many of the fisheries and we will continue to discuss the future with those fisheries. As the Minister for Regional Development indicated, we had a meeting as recently as this week with some of the scale fishers from up in the Port Wakefield area. I am heading out fishing with them in a couple of weeks' time just to get a real firsthand look at it.

I have been out on a crayfish fishing boat down at Robe, I have been out on a prawn boat and I have been out on a crab boat. This is the thing to do—actually get out there and have the conversations and work with them. That wall of noise that was there and the campaign that was run, I think when we boil it all down we can actually have a sensible conversation about it and plug holes where they need to be plugged, fix things where they need to be fixed. I think a lot of the emotion and the passion has gone out of it. Where there are concerns, as a government we will listen to those concerns and bring in whatever measures need to be brought in.