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Tuesday, 13 September 2011
Page: 5910

Senator COLBECK (Tasmania) (15:47): Mr Deputy President, I seek leave to make a short statement.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for two minutes.

Senator COLBECK: I do note that Senator Siewert asked a question about this in question time today, and the opposition does agree that it has taken too long to sort out this particular matter. In fact, we would agree with every single sentiment that Senator Siewert has written under item (a) of her motion. But under item (b) Senator Siewert calls on the government to amend the Fisheries Management Act 1991 to ban fishing in the north-east area of the North West Slope Trawl Fishery, and the opposition does not believe that banning fishing is the way to resolve this problem. We understand that there was a solution in place to deal with this at one point in time, which unfortunately has fallen over, but to ban all fishing in that area is simply not the way to deal with this. We understand that falls into line with the Greens' position of having no-take marine zones around the country's coastline, but the opposition cannot support a ban on fishing in those regions.

Question negatived.