Media Release

OVERSEAS nations will be hungrily eyeing the abundant bounty of Australia’s oceans as a result of the latest ‘rabid greenâ��led push’ to lock up waters that do not need protecting from the lowest seafood harvest rate of any nation on Earth.

"We are risking not only our future ability to feed ourselves, but also global food security by displacing our meagre fishing effort to heavily�exploited and less pristine international waters," said Australian Party Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter.

Mr Katter agreed that the proposal to create the world’s largest marine reserve network was "hypothetical solution to an imaginary problem under the banner of the precautionary principle", given there is no scientific evidence of any threat to our fisheries or biodiversity necessitating these closures(1).

"Everyday Australians must be shaking their heads trying to understand why our governments are bowing to foreign�led environmental agendas when we already have the lowest seafood harvest rate of any nation, and about 70 per cent of the seafood we eat is imported at a cost of $1.7b from mostly Asian fisheries far less well�managed," he said.

"Five years ago this nation was a net exporter of seafood. Governments of both sides should be condemned for strangling to death an industry that our nation could in the future be forced to look to as our most sustainable form of food security.

"Instead, overseas nations will be eyeing off our under�utilised waters, just as one of the truisms of human history is that a people without land will look for a land without people.

"It beggars belief that our governments are being complicit in killing off what is arguably Australia’s most sustainable food industry, with immense domestic and international potential value, based on erroneous claims of environmental protection.

"The tragic irony of this is that the increasingly arbitrary ‘protection’ of waters that quite simply do not need protecting will only result in greater pressure on other waters that are at far more risk. The politicians in Canberra haven’t woken up to fact that they’re further antagonising the people of Australia, who see through their hypocrisy of making a big noise to please minority interests."

(1): ‘Australia’s Unappreciated and Maligned Fisheries’ by Dr. Walter Starck for the Australian Environment Foundation, May 2012 (http://aefweb.info/data/Australias Unappreciated and Maligned Fisheries May 2012.pdf)