Coalition Marine Protected Areas Policy

[Nete-Quette]

Updated: 13:20, Tuesday July 27, 2010
A coalition government would freeze the gazetting of new marine parks around the country, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has announced.

Mr Abbott made the announcement while campaigning in the central Queensland coastal city of Mackay - where he filleted a giant barramundi at the local fishworks - on Tuesday.
The federal government's process of planning for new parks would be put on hold, and the whole process restructured, he said.
'Man and nature have to live together,' Mr Abbott told reporters..
'It's very important that we don't do anything as a government that unreasonably threatens the livelihood of fishing industries and the tourism industries upon which so much of Australia depends.'

Mr Abbott acknowledged the process of gazetting new marine parks had started under the previous Howard government.
But the process now needed more consultation built into it than existed currently under Labor.
Marine protection areas prohibit various activities in order to protect the environment and some of them have 'no-take zones' for fishing.

[CEO]

And the Gillard govrnment is going to permit mining for coal, oil and gasin these AFA's, but ban fishing??? Don't they learn anything from the Gulf of Mexico? Isn't that being described by shrimp fishers in the Gulf as the world's greatest environmental disaster? Malcolm Poole advised this afternoon, that the current Gillard government has already approved one of these mining  leases in Western Australia. Banned fishing but approves a mining lease? I can't vote for that!

[CEO]

How come and why, are the "greenie preservationists" able to claim they are getting at least 30% sanctuary zones in these Labor AFA's when the rest of the Australian communities are being deliberately kept in the dark about what Garrett is doing? Locking Ausralians out of Australia, that's what it is!