Government Review of GBRMPA about be be announced

[kc]

The review of the GBRMPA, promised as part of the election "negotiations" will be announced during the next few days.

It is likely to take the form of a travelling "panel" which will take the views of those who have opinions (positive & negative) of the management style, outcomes and public consulation perceptions of the community in NQ.

What will come of it who knows but at least those who feel they have genuine concerns about this organisations structure and management "style" will have a chance to have input.

I will post places/dates & times for interviews when they are made known. There is also a piece in tommorrows ( Wednesday's) Time Magazine (Australian version) about RAP, The Nationals and The Fishing Party.

Regards

KC

[Daintreeboy]

sweeet, bout time. Maybe they'll be making the Townsville office a 'pink zone' :P ;D
Can't wait until they come to Cairns, should be good for a laugh!
cheers, Mark.

[cyclone]

Yeah we can give them our views again and they will file them in that big bin they have allocated for rec fishers input. Can't wait for the chance to say my bit [smiley=argue.gif] Andrew.

[gif]

Reef Act Review must go to great depths for fishermen

Leader of The Nationals in the Senate, Ron Boswell, said today that he would be closely monitoring the operation of the Review of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act to ensure continued recognition of the multi-use nature of the Marine Park, and continued protection of the Reef in cooperation and conjunction with recreational and commercial fishermen, as well as with the tourism industry.

“The Review announced today will fulfil an election commitment to the people of North Queensland and particularly to the fishing interests who feel that they were either hoodwinked or largely ignored by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority during the process of rezoning under the Representative Areas Programme,” Senator Boswell said.

“I am pleased that the terms of reference for the Review cover consultation mechanisms which I believe were inadequate to say the least during RAP rezoning and closure of a further 28 per cent of the reef,” he said.

“The GBRMPA’s use of sporting heroes, Gorden Tallis and Cathy Freeman to perform in television advertisements backing reef protection was a slap in the face for commercial and recreational fishermen and the GBRMPA-backed spin doctors claiming the ability to ‘fence off’ the reef and to discover a cure for cancer among the coral were simply over the top.”

“As a result of these and other indiscretions, some positions within the GBRMPA will rightly be placed under close scrutiny during the Review.”

Senator Boswell said that public submissions have been called for the Review and that he expected fishing organisations and businesses would have a significant contribution to make in suggesting changes to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act and the way the Authority operates.

“Submissions are due by the 30th of September and the Review members will then travel to major centres along the North Queensland Coast,” Senator Boswell said.

“In the interests of openness and accountability, Fishing industry and other stakeholders will be invited to make direct representation to the Review as part of these visits.”

The Terms of Reference for the Review and information on the public submission process are available at www.deh.gov.au/coasts/MPA/gbrmpa or by calling Senator Boswell’s office. It is expected that a report of the Review will be presented to the Minister in approximately six months.

ENDS

[gif]

Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act Review
The Australian Government made an election commitment to review the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 1975 to improve the performance of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, its office holders and its accountability frameworks.

The review will be chaired by the Secretary of the Department of the Environment and Heritage, Mr David Borthwick, assisted by Ms Barbara Belcher, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and Mr Jonathan Hutson, Department of Finance and Administration, reporting to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator the Hon Ian Campbell.

Mr Borthwick invites public submissions to the review.

Submissions should be in writing and may range from a short letter outlining your views on the issue to a substantial document covering a range of issues. Although every submission is welcome, multiple, identical submissions do not carry any more weight than the merits of an argument in a single submission.

Background information which may help you focus your submission:

Please note: the Terms of Reference and Background Paper are PDF documents. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to view the PDF files.

Media Release http://www.deh.gov.au/coasts/mpa/gbrmpa/
Terms of Reference (terms-of-reference.pdf - 11 KB)
Background Paper (background-paper.pdf - 14 KB)
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 1975
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
All submissions will be treated as public documents unless they contain clearly marked commercial-in-confidence material. Submissions will be posted on the Department of the Environment and Heritage web site.

Submissions close Friday 30 September 2005.

Please send submissions, preferably electronically in Microsoft® Word 2000 format, to: GBRMPActReview@deh.gov.au

or post to:


Dr Diana Wright
Executive Policy Advisor
Department of the Environment and Heritage
GPO Box 787
CANBERRA ACT 2601

[FNQCairns]

While I welcome ANYTHING that may shed an honest light on the past behaviors of GBRMPA this looks to me like a stack!

"The review will be chaired by the Secretary of the Department of the Environment and Heritage, Mr David Borthwick, assisted by Ms Barbara Belcher, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and Mr Jonathan Hutson, Department of Finance and Administration, reporting to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator the Hon Ian Campbell."

Who is going to review the reviewers, this gov has proved it's self outside of any honest values in the last 10 years. No behavior they cannot justify out of hand with only words.

Great that this has happened but smacks of yet another gov con job inquiry.

Yep our immoral pollies have me forever tainted.

Gotta go now back to the lab, trying to find a terminal illness that only inflicts crooked pollies/bureaucrats, suspect it will wipe out 99.95% of them, possibly the new virus lies under the water on the green portion of the reef somewhere[smiley=laola.gif] ;D

[Bosunsmate]

Hmmm sounds a bit like the review of the Child Support Agency..........

Hows it go......................Lets make it a public review have meetings all over the place and get everyone involved then we can say we listened. Then we can just say it wasn'nt feasible or cost effective and do it OUR way anyway............

(IMO) This country is becoming more and more of a capitalist republic every day, but wait, that can't be so, we had a referendum and the peole did'nt want that........Oh well Johhny Howard-Bush is still woring towards it.

Problem is I can't leave cause I love the place and the people.

[kc]

I understand and share the sceptisism and you only have to look at the 2 spins that Boswell/Nationals and Campbell/Environment Minister have put on the same basic bit of "news" to understand just how difficult this is going to be.

The upside is that the review will get the press interested and subject to the case we (TFPQ) and others put forward we might get a fair go in the court of public opinion, if not the halls of power...after all, it was the Howard Government who rammed this down our throats in the first place.

The terms of reference are very narrow but the one real chance is that the Environmental Protection & Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999...& its relationship to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park act and the management of same by GBRMPA are clearly part of the terms of reference.

Included in the EPA act are (words to the effect).......clauses which both allow and encourage sustainable use of the natural resources (ALWAYS OUR POINT)......either, by way of RAP, recreational fishing is deemed/proven/even demonstrated to be unsustainable.OR.GBRMPA has broken the LAW!!!

We could never afford to test this in a court....too much money...a Government enquiry however will test this and the media attention should make the finding a matter of public record.

This may well be all a waste of time ...AGAIN...but it feels like a little win for "our side" for a change. No amount of "lobbying"" could have brought this about, it is, was & always will be about votes.

Regards

KC

[Bosunsmate]

I hear and appreciate what you are saying KC.

I know this going O/T, do you have a Townsville contact ? Feel free to PM me any info you can.

[nonibbles]

Related, timely and interesting:
Ready to be reefed apartBy MALCOLM WEATHERUP
24aug05
THE Great Barrier Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) is bracing for some blunt and unflattering assessments of the way it does business.
Environment and Heritage Minister Senator Ian Campbell yesterday released the terms of reference for a long-promised review of legislation under which the authority operates.
He said the review was part of the Government's election promise to improve the performance of the authority, its officers and its accountability framework.
But Senator Campbell made it clear the review would not be revisiting the outcome of the recent re-zoning, which saw protective measures increase from 5 per cent to 33 per cent of the reef area.
Brian Pickup, head of the recreational fishing group Sunfish, said yesterday there were better ways of managing reef sustainability than just locking it up.
"If they try for any more than the current 33 per cent, they'll have a real fight on their hands."
Neil Green, senior vice-president of the Queensland Seafood Council, was even more blunt.
"The authority deceived us all, plain and simple, when Virginia Chadwick (authority chairman) said publicly that no more than 25 per cent of the marine park would be re-zoned and now 33 per cent is affected, with no justification," Mr Green said.
"They got bucketloads of good advice, then just ignored it."
All stakeholders and politicians contacted by the Townsville Bulletin were unanimous on one contentious point - the persistent rumours of the past two months that GBRMPA would move its main centre of operations to Canberra.
Even the Government's Member for Herbert, Peter Lindsay, said he was concerned about the review.
"I'm suspicious that this is an attempt to give policy control back to the bureaucrats in Canberra," Mr Lindsay said.
"Some people may have been unhappy with the authority's policy decisions in Townsville," he said.
"But it was infinitely preferable to have advice coming from public servants in the North, rather than in the rarefied atmosphere in Canberra."
Mr Lindsay urged all stakeholders to include the retention of the authority's main base here in Townsville in their submissions.
A review panel will be taking submissions from all interested and affected parties until September 30.
From: Townsville Bulletin http://townsvillebulletin.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,16364738%255E14787,00.html

[nonibbles]

I also find it very timely that grants are being offered for recreational fishing communities (see recent post - general chat http://www.ausfish.com.au/cgi-ausfish/yabb2/YaBB.cgi?num=1124687102) at this time. #On the surface this looks like a good thing but I wonder if the government is just generating more "don't bite the hand that feeds you" situations in order to weaken the numbers resisting/maintaining its accountability over recreational fishing issues. #;) just a thought...Paul

[kc]

The Fishing Party (Qld)
Branch Office PO Box 1311 Airlie Beach QLD 4802
ABN : 36 733 771 800

Contact Ph. 49464 260 (H) 0414 785 462 (W)
Email : kc@whitsunday.net.au

24th August 05

Election Commitment not a “get square”.

Minister Doyle’s somewhat alarmist response to the review of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority is both off the mark and dripping in the same “the sky is falling in” attitude at the very core of the environmental lobby.

“This review should hardly be news to Minister Doyle as she expressed, it was, after all, a election commitment from the Government and given it is in an area within her own portfolio she would have been aware the review was forthcoming as far back as October 2004.”

“This is not about undoing the reef protection measures or open slather exploitation of the reef, far from it”’ said Fishing Party (Qld) Chairman Kevin Collins. “It is about the very credibility and management practices of those bureaucrats who make arbitrary decisions and pay absolute lip service to the notion of public consultation”.

“GBRMPA spent a fortune enlisting high profile athletes and funding huge media campaigns designed to convince the public that doom and gloom would befall the reef unless recreational fishing was banned”.

“They framed the question “Do you want to help protect the Great Barrier Reef for future generations”, and of course the answer was yes.

“Had they asked the question, “, Do you want lives and family businesses destroyed, do you want the freedoms and lifestyles of Queenslanders effected? When all the evidence clearly proves recreational fishing has no measurable impact on the Great Barrier Reef do you fishing banned in 33% of the park?”

“I wonder if the answer would have been vastly different.”

“On Thursday 18th August the Courier Mail ran a story quoting a reef “scientist” saying 10 % of the Great Barrier Reef had been DESTROYED by cyclone Ingrid…….Chicken Little again? I rest my case”.

Ends

Media Contacts
Kevin Collins
0414 785 462

[kc]

The Fishing Party (Qld)
Branch Office PO Box 1311 Airlie Beach QLD 4802
ABN : 36 733 771 800

Contact Ph. 49464 260 (H) 0414 785 462 (W)
Email : kc@whitsunday.net.au


Press Release

23rd August 05
Fishers welcome the catch of the day

The political voice of recreational fishing in Queensland has welcomed today’s announcement by the Federal Government for a review of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA).

“This is honouring a pre-election commitment to review this organization, its management structures and decision making processes and we welcome the opportunity to be part of this review”’ said Fishing Party spokesperson Kevin Collins.

“We are not looking for a review of the zoning itself but are adamant that the process was flawed, outcomes pre-determined, and the entire, and no doubt highly expensive process, of public consultation, little more than a sham and PR exercise”.

“This was all about green driven politics and little to do with the science of reef protection and we hope the panel will expose the underlying culture within GBRMPA which clearly has made an art form of telling us the sky is falling in, all to boost its profile and no doubt budget over the last few years”.

The review will take written submissions from stakeholders and be followed by a series of interviews with a panel visiting major centres along the Queensland Coast


ENDS

[kc]

You can rest assure No Nibbles that there are no "grants" coming our way. Always a problem and one we have taken issue with with Government funded peak bodies such as Sunfish & Recfish...make too much trouble and risk your funding.

No one funds us but members and supportive industry and we will be making a much noise as we can.

KC

[kc]

The Fishing Party (Qld)
Branch Office PO Box 1311 Airlie Beach QLD 4802
ABN : 36 733 771 800

Contact Ph. 49464 260 (H) 0414 785 462 (W)
Email : kc@whitsunday.net.au


Hon Ms Desley Boyle MP
Date 24th August 05

Dear Ms Boyle,

It is puzzling to members, our supporters and us that you chosen to question the motive and potential outcomes of the recently announced review of the GBRMPA.

Clearly the terms of reference for this review would ease any concerns you have, but, none the less, given your comments in a letter sent to Bill’s Marine in Cairns dated October 2002 when you said, and I quote

“So far as the GBRMPA rezoning proposals are concerned, the decisions that are yet to be made MUST be made in full awareness not only of any need for changed practices but also of the likely impacts of the changes on recreational activities and on businesses and employment”.

we are surprised to say the least at your reaction to the announcement.

Clearly, and has been recently evidenced by the DPI recreational fishing survey, showing a 42% fall in participation rates (and expenditure) during the last 2 years, these impacts were not considered as part of the zoning proposals and we would have expected you to welcome this review as a consequence

I would also bring to your attention the lie of the draft-zoning plan for the Great Sandy Straights, which expects us to believe that recreational fishing, and subsequent expenditure will be enhanced by these rezonings.

In regards the recreational and commercial fishing fleet in the North, while you, in October 2002, acknowledged it value to the community and employment profile and went on to say, “However, I am not convinced that those in positions of authority in Brisbane and Canberra understand this”.

Ms Boyle, YOU are now in a “position of authority” and we ask that you publicly support this review in the name of bureaucratic accountability, rather than display a protectionist culture so evident in the bureaucracy of Qld Heath.

The Fishing Party does not and has never sought a review or changes to the rules and boundaries within the GBR but we do seek some honesty and will pursue GBRMPA over the shameless disregard it showed for the public consultation process.

Yours Faithfully

[Daintreeboy]

KC, you rock! Those statements are brilliant mate, well played. Time for some payback boys!!

[luigi]

Goodonya KC & The Fishing Party - it's great to see that you are continuing to try to "keep the bast**ds honest".

Although, considering the track record of politicians & bureaucrats, perhaps it's like pushing the proverbial up-hill. We can but hope that plenty of active support from the rec fishing fraternity will tip the balance in our favour for once.

[kc]

Follow up letter to Minister Boyles office after phone call from senior advisor Nick Heath this morning (re yesterdays letter & press release)

Keeping up the pressure as best we can on GSS


The Fishing Party (Qld)
Branch Office PO Box 1311 Airlie Beach QLD 4802
ABN : 36 733 771 800

Contact Ph. 49464 260 (H) 0414 785 462 (W)
Email : kc@whitsunday.net.au


Dear Nick,

Thank you for your time this morning. I understand your Minister’s disappointment with the method by which she learnt of the GBRMPA review.

This however, does not change our stance, vis: given the terms of reference, her suggestion that the GBRMPA may be disbanded or moved to Canberra is somewhat alarmist and clearly inaccurate.

That said, I reiterate the position of TFPQ that, to date, our relationship with the State Labor Government has been one of open lines of communication and encouraging.

The overriding disappointment with RAP was that the input of so many people appeared to have been ignored while GBRMPA pushed ahead with a pre-determined agenda to close 33% of the Park. I cannot see how that process has a place in a modern democracy.

The impacts on lifestyles and small businesses was likewise ignored, despite the efforts of your own Minister to ensure this did not happen. It is this ignorance of the damage to the economy and cultural values that we take strong exception to, will be the focus of our submissions to the GBRMPA review.

As I have indicated on several occasions TFPQ is here to stay. We will be a thorn in the side of Federal politics at the next election and as indicated, if we can establish a solid working relationship with the State Labor Government, we will not stand in state seats. We do however have a firm process in place to prepare to stand candidates in key state electorates.

The recreational fishing community is 25% of the Queensland community, and most importantly the $1.8b industry which supports us is rapidly coming to realise the power of a voting block and it will have both the where-with-all and support to influence a large number of state coastal marginals if it runs at a state level in the next election.

We are disappointed that discussions with the previous Minister for Fisheries started well but have not, so far, borne fruit.


I look forward at your earliest opportunity to view the final draft of the Great Sandy Straights zoning plan and we will view this document as a test of your Government’s willingness to learn from the arrogant mistakes of the GBRMPA.


I would hope, in regards the “summary” of public input fed into the GSS zoning plan, that the Fishing Party (Qld) submission is weighted in accordance with the 30,000 Queenslanders who voted for us to represent there views in the political process.

Yours Faithfully

Kevin Collins
Chairman