commonwealth marine parks Northern NSW

[Black N Blue]

Below is a summary of the meeting that was held at Ocean Shores tonight, please could you send to all SPGSFC members.

The Commonwealth Marine Parks are definitely going ahead and the Greens want 30% of the area's as NO TAKE ZONES and couldn't careless who gets affected and whether any Science is behind the decisions. It is quite clear, if Greens have balance of power in the Senate then these No Take Zones will come a reality. Liberal , National and Fishing and Lifestyle Party will only define No Take Zones with full consultation of all communities and based on proven Science. This is a Political issue, so if you want the best outcome you cannot vote for Labor or Greens, make your vote count especially in the Senate.

We had the following speakers:

Senator Ron Boswell

Liberal candidate for Richmond

National candidate for Tweed

Fishing and Lifestyle candidate ( .... Douglass ??) who running for Qld Senate seat.

Doug Birt

Paul Birt

Everyone needs to get media involved on this matter and ring up Talk back radio, send letters to ministers, newspapers, etc. We have been on Radio on the GC, Sydney, etc and Gold Coast Bulletin, etc and the media is starting to take it on board. At this meeting was NBN and Gold Coast Bulletin.

The Liberal Candidate has made a undertaking to get the Liberal shadow Environment minister to come upto the Tweed to address a meeting of Commercial, Recreational fishers and all other affected parties in a few weeks. All concerned fishers should attend this rally as hopefully it will have good media coverage.

The Chairman asked the meeting that if all other clubs in Tweed, Kingscliffe, Murwillumbah, etc come and make themselves know as we want to get a united front to put a proposal together. As usual they had the meeting in a pub, so the Secretary of Tweed Fishing club starts screaming about they have been working on this for 4 years and how dare they say no other Fishing club has not done anything on this issue (she was soon told where to go by the majority, some with colourfull language), this was never said and it was re-iterated that all clubs should have their representatives sit down and work up a combined proposal that could be acceptable to everyone.

The ball has started rolling but needs to pick up a lot of momentum in 4 weeks to be heard and counted.

remember who you VOTE FOR YOU GET

[nigelr]

The area covered within the Tweed proposal is small compared to that of the Clarence proposal, but both will have an equally devastating effect on local communities within them.
Let's hope there is some major increase in general public awarenes of this issue come polling day, or a lot of people may be asking "why wasn't I told?"
Here is a link to the proposed areas within the East Marine Region.
http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts...east-afas.html
The discussion makes interesting reading...............

[samson]

I wish paul burt would use his new's,radio and paper connections to get this publised more it's the first i've seen of him doing anything maybe because his new charter is at risk he's finally come to the party, i know one thing advertising in the bulleton every week about grey nurse sightings on tweed reefs has a very detrimental effect that should be kept very quiet.

[bugman]

Black and Blue,
I live in the Tweed but couldn't attend the meeting as I'm on Fraser.
Can I ask you one question?
How do you know, as you state in your opening sentence, that the zones will happen and that 30% will be no take.....
Did the National and Liberal party candidates tell you that? Were there any candidates from the Greens there that actually said that?

Brett

[Chris Ryan]

Bugman,

Go to http://greens.org.au/policies/enviro...-coastal-areas and read point 20 shown under measures.

This is the Marine and Coastal Areas policy for the Greens.

[Chris Ryan]

Also here is the Environmental Policy

http://greens.org.au/policies/enviro...tal-principles

clearly stating that the 'precautionary principle' be used to its full extent.