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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-05-11 Daily Xml
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MARINE PARKS

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (16:19): There is a large sleeping issue out in the South Australian community, and the people in my electorate are very much awake to it, and that is the matter of marine parks, which has been fiddle-flopped around in this place, I think, for eight years. We are currently going through yet another round of consultation. We have had community committees put into place. I attended one of these meetings not so long back in Victor Harbor and I was rather surprised at the comments I received from some members of the committee afterwards that they thought they were fed a lot of hogwash all afternoon and that they were not having any major input into it.

There are a lot of ongoing concerns about the marine parks fiasco and where it is heading. The professional fishermen, the recreational fishermen and even some environmentalists are most concerned about the way the agenda is being pushed at the moment. The Marine Parks Bill was never meant to be about fishing. It would appear that the extreme conservation movement—what we colloquially call the extreme greenies—is still pushing this and trying to turn it into an effort to get rid of people going about their business, whether they be professional fishermen or recreational fishermen.

It is simply not good enough that this takes place. This needs putting to bed once and for all. I am hopeful that the new Minister for the Environment will take the issue of marine parks up and pull these bureaucrats into gear. Indeed, I am also hopeful that the Minister for Agriculture may act in the right manner and stop this play acting of trying to control the fishing industry of South Australia, whether it be recreational or professional. It is not about fishing. Marine parks are about protecting the whole marine environment.

One of the other issues is the zoning. There are a whole lot of secret agendas being run around on the inner zones, which is causing great concern, particularly to the professional fishermen, and that will translate to recreational fishermen if and when we ever find out where these zones are, because currently we do not know. There is developing mistrust, I am afraid to say, yet again with some of the officers who are going around on the consultation process. They are not giving straight answers to these committees. They are dillydallying around in showing them copious video presentations and trying to fill the day in without telling them what they want to know, which is where these zones are going.

When is the government going to listen to the everyday people, those people who use the water, the sea, around our state for all sorts of means, whether that be fishing, sailing, diving, anything you care to add to the list? When are they going to get some assurance that they can go on with their businesses and do what they have always done? I am really concerned about the professional fishermen, whether they be hook fishermen, net fishermen or, indeed, rock lobster fishermen.

The rock lobster fishermen are under an enormous amount of stress at the moment, both in the northern zone and the southern zone. My electorate is in the northern zone, and the fishermen on Kangaroo Island had all caught their quotas by the end of February. So, they fish from 1 November to the end of February and for the rest of the year they are going to have to go on the dole. They caught their quotas quickly. The recruitment stock is good and they are saying, 'Where is this industry going to end up?' Their families are having to go out to work, they are going to have to find other jobs, and in some cases they go hooking fish.

Another issue which gets hidden away by the Rann government is the fact that there is no marine park proposed for metropolitan Adelaide. Surely, with 1.3 million people in the city of Adelaide you would have thought the most obvious place to start would be off the coastline of South Australia, indeed Adelaide, where the seagrass has been diminishing for years and where the marine environment does need looking after, a lot more so than those areas that are currently being looked after properly, fished properly and everything that goes with that. I merely ask that both ministers get their heads together and get some certainty for South Australian fishermen.

Time expired.

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