Marine Parks, Sanctuary Zones

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:05): My question is to the Minister for Environment and Water. Will the minister guarantee that the commercial fishing sector will not be given immediate access to the sanctuary areas the minister proposes to remove protection from before parliament has been able to consider a disallowance motion?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (15:05): I thank the deputy leader for her question. As I have updated this house before, this has been a very challenging process over many years to get the right balance between conservation, regional jobs and economic development. We know that the process of creating marine parks in South Australia was manhandled under the previous government and caused huge angst. I have sat at the kitchen tables of fishers around this state who have contemplated doing terrible things—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: —because of the way they were treated by the previous government. It has been heartbreaking to sit with those fishers and see how they have suffered at the hands of an ideological, purist, leftist regime which sought to strip away the opportunity—

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order: debate.

The SPEAKER: I have given the minister some opportunity to get to the point; I expect him to do so relatively soon.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: It is always good to have a bit of compare and contrast, and I was contrasting that leftist, ideologically driven regime with this government, which is taking a pragmatic approach, sitting down with—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: —conservationists and co-designing—that's a word that was used, of course, by my predecessor, the Hon. Ian Hunter: co-designing a new engagement paradigm. We don't want to go back to those old days, but occasionally, when Ian Hunter is not involved, sometimes co-designing does work. We sat down, the conservation sector and the fishers—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: —and we were able to work towards a process. Not everyone agreed all of the time, but we were able to get much closer together, and I was incredibly encouraged by the way the conservation sector and the fishing sector were able to work together to nuance the debate and get those boundaries a bit closer to what both sides wanted.

They did not agree on everything, and they are the first to concede that, but I think it was a process of co-design which has led to those two sectors understanding each other better, having better relationships going forward, and having more trust between one another. They are actually still working through this process. While the consultation has ended, I know those two sectors are still in talks about how they will balance fishing and economic development alongside conservation going forward.

In the coming weeks, we will get to a point where those proposals are brought into parliament and there will be an opportunity, of course, for those regulations to be disallowed. I am very confident that they will pass this house. It will be for the crossbenchers in the other place to work alongside the fishing sector and the conservation sector and understand how that co-design has occurred, how those two parties have come together. We will see if we can get a piece of work that enables both economic development and conservation. We are much closer than we ever were under the previous government. We are progressing in a good direction, and I look forward to continuing to work with both of those groups because it has been an encouraging process to date.