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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-09-14 Daily Xml
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'SWIM WITH THE TUNA'

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (17:05): First, let me wish the member for Taylor a very happy birthday. Some months ago I was approached by a Port Lincoln based company, run by the Forster family, who wanted to speak to me about putting in a cage, with a platform attached to it, to allow people to swim with fish and to watch fish being fed, similar to the one that is operating in Port Lincoln. It is called 'Swim with the Tuna' in Port Lincoln, and it will be called the same thing on Kangaroo Island.

This particular cage was used at Victor Harbor. The Forster family procured it and have spent considerable amounts of money on it; in fact, as I understand it, it is a $1 million project. Let me place well and truly on the record that I have absolutely no objection in our democracy with people expressing concerns, raising issues and making sure that the environmental matters and general worries they have about things can be expressed in the media and in letters to their local members. They can do what they wish in a free and open society.

However, what I do object to most strongly is nonsense being perpetrated by some people regarding this matter—which I think is over and above their democratic right—in not telling the truth as it should be told. This proposal is a tourism experience. It is for people, visitors, overseas visitors, South Australian families and families from interstate to get on a boat, go out to sea a short distance and get on the platform. They can buy a cup of coffee. They can feed the tuna. There are only 60 tuna, which, incidentally, the company had to buy. It does do not have a tuna licence: it had to buy them.

People can generally enjoy themselves, have a bit of fun, have a swim (if it is not too cold) and get out there and see how it works. Those who oppose this—quite correctly, as I said, if they wish to—want to stick to the facts. About 10 years ago we had what was called the 'tuna wars' on Kangaroo Island, when a company—I think from memory run by Mr Grant Birrell, the manager—wanted to put in tuna pens off the island, similar to Port Lincoln. Well, It was World War III a few months early, quite frankly, because all hell broke loose and, in the end, the people walked away and nothing happened.

Some of these people who were involved in that at the time are trying to put forward a bit of mischief now to say that this is a smoke and mirrors campaign for tuna farming. It is not. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I said the other day, in Australia we used to have a thing called a 'fair go', and the proponents of this business are not getting a fair go. It really concerns me. I pick up what the Treasurer said a few months ago—words to the effect that it is very difficult to get anything to happen in South Australia.

I actually agree with him on that, because, in this particular case, this business and the proponents have done the right thing. They have gone to the local Kangaroo Island council, which I have urged to support it, and it will make a decision, I guess, one way or the other, even though it is a state issue and not a local government issue. They have gone to environment groups, to tourism bodies and to all sorts of people. They have told them what they are doing, but we still have this nonsense being perpetrated by those who do not want anything to happen anywhere that this is a front for tuna farming. It annoys me intensely.

The reality is that the 'Swim with the Tuna' company must apply to PIRSA for an aquaculture licence because they are keeping the fish in a cage. It is pretty hard to go out and not see them in a cage. You will not see a lot of tuna swimming past at any given time. Tuna actually swim past the north and south coast of Kangaroo Island; it is their natural migratory path.

They then say it is against what Kangaroo Island is all about. Well, Mr Acting Speaker, if you visit the wildlife parks on the island (there are a couple of them) you will see animals and birds in cages. If you go to the aquarium at Kingscote Wharf you will see fish in an aquarium, a terrible state of affairs. If you go to the Raptor Domain, which is a very high-class tourism raptor display on the south coast near Vivonne Bay, guess what they do with them at night? They put them in a cage; it is a bit hard not to. For that matter, about 700,000 sheep on Kangaroo Island and about 20,000 or 30,000 head of cattle are in cages too; they are called paddocks. What is being perpetrated is absolute arrant nonsense.

I would like to see the government actively support this company in what it wants to do. I am sure that it does, but I would like to see the Minister for Tourism come out and support it and the minister for agriculture come out and say, 'Well, these poor beggars have got no choice but to go for this aquaculture licence' and put the record straight. I want to put the record straight. The Hon. Mr Parnell in another place was a bit keen to fire up and make some noise, but when he actually learnt what it really is my understanding is that he backed off considerably. However, I am afraid that we still have a minority pressure group making a lot of noise and trying to stop this.

This leads me to wonder where we are going to end up. If you went to Queensland or the Northern Territory the thing would be up and running in about two minutes flat. There are no environmental safeguards that cannot be put in place with this particular issue. Heavens to Betsy! They have done kilometres and kilometres looking for the appropriate bottom. I told them that they have to be very careful about where they put this, not only for environmental reasons but, more to the point, so that it has some degree of shelter, so that if you want to go out in the member for Hammond's 50-footer, for example, you can do so and have a look at it, but you do not want to get out there when you have a swell of about four metres or waves chopping around at about 15 feet or so on top of a swell. It will be educational, it will teach people about what goes on. It is an investment of about $1 million off the coast of Kangaroo Island, it will create jobs and it will have a flow-on effect, and it is yet another tourism attraction.

The other thing that irritates me is that we have this seemingly endless argument that we live in such a fragile place on Kangaroo Island that you cannot touch anything, you cannot do anything, it is all going to fall apart and we will all be doomed. Well, it is not quite like that. No-one knows what can be done there better than the long-term residents, the generations of families who have lived and worked in coastal areas where there is soft sand and light vegetation. Of course, you do not disrupt that, but there is a fair bit of sea off the land.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr PENGILLY: Yes, there's a lot of it. It is a surprising fact of life that a great part of the world is covered by the sea, and there is a lot of it. I agree with the Treasurer that it is difficult to get things done. I reiterate what I said at the start of these few words that I have absolutely no problem with people objecting, demonstrating, or exercising their democratic right to have a crack at something; however, they need to stick to the truth and not invent stories that suit their particular argument. They will get caught out.

I think some have been quite reasonable about this, and others who are a little bit more extreme have already taken the other side of the argument. I want this to proceed. It is looking for no public money. It is all their own private investment, and it deserves the opportunity to be adjudicated on properly and for the project to go ahead. I sincerely hope that it is successful.

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