Marine Parks

The Hon. S.G. WADE (14:34): I thank the minister for his answer about the fact that his department is going to look for, I understood him to mean, ecotourism development opportunities. My question, though, was more in terms of the guidelines that those tourism ventures will operate within, particularly so that any impact on other industries and other users of the marine parks is properly taken into account. I remind the minister that I was particularly referencing activities such as berleying around shark-cage diving, which I understand has been shown in other contexts to have an impact on related industries.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation) (14:35): I thank the honourable member for his supplementary and, in fact, he is quite right: a CSIRO report in terms of shark-cage diving does show that there has been some sort of change in the behaviour of sharks. We assume it is related to berleying. It is not absolutely certain, but certainly some shark behaviour changes have been noticed and that is why we have a very strict process about how many licences can be issued in terms of cage diving in South Australia and what systems they use to attract sharks.

Berleying is one of them, but there are very strict regulations applied by PIRSA, as I understand it, about what the berley can be composed of and how it is to be administered. We are talking to those operators now about how we can sharpen up that industry, and there is one operator, I understand, who does not actually use berley: he uses some other interesting ways of attracting the attention of marine wildlife. We will be talking to those agencies and industry people who have some expertise in this area in developing these guidelines.

The PRESIDENT: Supplementary, the Hon. Mr Ridgway.