I rise tonight to speak about the marine bioregional planning process that is being undertaken by this Government. We are now at the final stages of one of the most comprehensive environmental assessment projects Australia has ever attempted.
The development of five bioregional plans to cover the South West, the North-West, the North, the Coral Sea and the Temperate East has the potential to establish a national network of marine protected areas based on rigorous scientific analysis. And marine sanctuaries are the best tool we have to protect our marine environment; they protect fish stocks by increasing the size and number of fish, support fisheries management, build the resilience of marine ecosystems to impacts like climate change and boost tourism and recreation as well as providing employment in tourism, research and sea country management.
This project is crucial because Australia is home to an amazing diversity of marine environment. In the South, we have unique species, found nowhere else and in the North we have one of the healthiest tropical marine environments left on the planet which provides a haven for threatened species including whales, dugongs and turtles. Yet less than 1% of the five major bioregions are protected from threats such as oil and gas spills, sea bed mining and trawling.
Having completed comprehensive surveys of the ecological values of the bioregions, draft maps of the proposed reserves have now been released for public comment. The objective of the bioregional planning process is to recognise that our oceans contain many iconic, ecologically important and fragile places that deserve protection, exactly the same as other precious environments such as the Kakadu and Uluru are protected by national parks. Yet in each bioregion, the level of marine protection provided for in these draft plans does not even meet the minimum scientific standards. The size and connectivity of the marine parks in the drafts are woefully inadequate to address the challenges of overfishing, pollution and climate change or to provide a basic level of protection from the dual threats of mining and trawling.
I challenge the Government to show greater courage and ambition by delivering final marine reserve maps that provide a substantially higher level of marine protection. It is a depressing state of affairs when mining and trawling, economic interests with easily quantified dollar figures, are registered by the Government, while conservation values have to be repeatedly shown to be politically palatable and in the best interests of the country and its population. Nowhere demonstrates this better than the North-West where oil and gas development taken the highest priority, yet the impact of an oil spill would be environmentally devastating.
This is not doom and gloom, worst-case scaremongering either - Australians experienced the devastation of a spill less than two years ago when the Montara project spilled millions of litres of oil into the ocean off the Kimberley coast. Similarly, the whole world was fixated on the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And in both cases, the responsible companies have been granted new licenses and new opportunities to mine our ocean. Indeed, the recent expansion in the number and size of the exploration licenses in the North West substantially reduces opportunity to establish marine reserves and it is disappointing that so many new leases have been granted while the bioregional assessments were still taking place, as it permanently excludes much of this region from even the possibility of a marine reserve.
But I am glad to see that there is a growing awareness that conserving our marine environment also has tangible economic worth. Research by the Centre for Policy Development has helped establish the financial worth of our marine economy and the value of conserving it into the future.
CPD estimated that the value that is currently unrecognised in economic accounts, was equivalent to $25billion a year, while in comparison, off-shore oil and gas exploration and production is estimated to be worth $24billion annually. They also highlighted that tourism accounts for one quarter of the recognised value at $11billion a year, while commercial fishing accounted for only $2billion. When set out in this way, the economic imperatives of trawling and mining no longer dominate.
And because the EPBC Act requires the Minister to consult the public on any draft plan, the public has an opportunity to demonstrate their support for higher levels of protection than has been proposed. So far, consultation has shown the high level of interest that the Australian people have in protecting their marine life. 39,000 submissions were made to the South West proposed reserves, overwhelmingly in favour of increased protection.
Similarly, polling in WA found that 75% of people thought there needed to be a higher level of protection for our marine environment. I can only hope that this will be matched by a willingness from the Minister and the Government to be more ambitious when releasing the final maps for the South West. Similarly, I hope the Australian people will continue to voice their desire for marine protection in the other four bio-regions and make submissions to the draft marine reserves.
Before I conclude, I want to acknowledge that there are a number of committed and passionate marine conservationists here in Parliament this week. Together they have prepared reports assessing the most important parts of Australia’s oceans, including icon reports for the SW, NW and N bioregions, which I encourage you to look at, to better understand the amazing marine treasures these bioregions have to offer. Australia’s ocean territory is the third largest on the planet and the richest in biodiversity.
From the Perth canyon in the south west where blue whales come to feed; to the humpback haven off the Kimberley coast, the nursery ground to the largest population of humpback whales in the world; the tropical waters off North East Arnhem Land dotted with sacred sites, endemic corals and colourful fish; the Coral Sea, one of the last places on our blue planet where ocean giants – such as whales, sharks, tuna, marlin and swordfish – can still be found in big numbers; and the Lord Howe seamount chain and rise which supports important habitat for sharks and seabirds in the temperate east.
These icons show us what we stand to lose, but I hope that we can be more ambitious in our expectations and avoid the charges levelled by Dr Callum Roberts in his Unnatural History of the Sea, that , “those charged with looking after the sea set themselves unambitious management targets that simply attempt to arrest declines, rather than rebuild to the richer and more productive states that existed in the past.” If we want to rebuild our marine life and ensure it is retained into the future, only a full network of scientifically derived marine protected areas can deliver us this outcome.
