ADJOURNMENT

Senator BLEYER (Tasmania) (19:54): I am here to protect our oceans. It must be done, it must be done right and it must be done right now. Australia is responsible for managing one of the largest ocean estates on the planet.

It is deeply connected to our way of life. More than 85 per cent of our human population live by the coast. With climate change and other adverse impacts, we have no time to waste in protecting our oceans.

The Australian Greens do not support delay tactics, as were attempted by the coalition today, by anyone in this chamber when it comes to protecting our marine environment. The federal Labor government has promised to protect 30 per cent of our marine environments by 2030, and we need to get on with it. But we do not support the proposition 'We've reached 30 per cent—job done!' by only promising new marine parks at Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island.

Those marine environments are important to protect, but protecting at least 30 per cent of Australia's marine environments means protections across all marine habitats, not just grabbing 30 per cent of any part of the sea and being done with it. By 'marine habitats', I'm talking about coral reefs, deep oceans, rocky reefs and kelp forests. They must be protected equally and based on their intrinsic value as part of the review of our marine park networks.

Most of our existing marine parks are far too remote or cover waters that are far too deep to support commercial activities. They do nothing to mitigate the harm caused by human activities and offer little by way of conservation value, particularly because the commercial activities were not going to occur there anyway. It's like identifying native forests that are too remote to log and proclaiming a national park over them just to crow about saving forests.

Science has shown that us a majority of the existing marine parks do not adequately prevent threats to biodiversity like mining, seismic blasting and commercial fishing. We are putting corporate profits ahead of our planet's future, letting extractive activities continue in our oceans at an unsustainable level. These are only parks on paper.

Marine sanctuary areas need to be created in the right places, guided by science and in line with the aspirations of First Nations people. If we do it right, we can give marine species threatened by climate change a fighting chance of survival—species like the dugong, which has made headlines lately due to its plummeting population, or Tasmania's underwater magical kelp forests, which have shrunk by more than 95 per cent since the 1970s, not to mention other marine wildlife like the sharks and dolphins that routinely become entangled in gillnets to die a slow and painful death.

Marine environments are complex, interconnected systems which go beyond lines on a map. Science has shown that properly designed, highly protected sanctuaries have benefits for the environment at large beyond their borders, like larger and more plentiful marine wildlife and populations which are more resilient to disasters like cyclones, bleaching, diseases and invasive species.

These are all disasters which are becoming more common as climate change worsens while this government drags its feet on real action. Creating these parks alone will not save our oceans. We need to urgently cut carbon emissions.

We need to urgently cut nutrient run-off. We need to urgently stop land clearing in coastal river catchments. With the advent of 30 per cent marine protection by 2030, we have an opportunity to contribute to real and necessary change for the future of our oceans.

We need to do better than paper parks. (Time expired)