Commonwealth marine reserves

National overview of public consultations on draft reserve proposals

Commonwealth marine reserves

Public consultations: May 2011 - February 2012

Between May 2011 and February 2012, the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Populations and Communities, the Hon Tony Burke MP, invited public feedback on the draft marine bioregional plan and draft Commonwealth marine reserve network proposals for the South-west, North, North-west and Temperate East Marine Regions and the Commonwealth marine reserve proposal for the Coral Sea Region.

Table 1: Consultation periods for the five marine regions

Region Consultation period
South-west 5 May - 8 August 2011
North-west 23 August - 28 November 2011
North 23 August - 28 November 2011
Temperate East 11 November 2011 - 21 February 2012
Coral Sea 25 November 2011 - 24 February 2012

Regional meetings

During the consultation periods, the department undertook numerous meetings in coastal areas of Australia. A total of 245 meetings were held with 1953 people attending across Australia. Regional consultations began with multi-sector information sessions in the major centres followed by a number of public information sessions held in regional centres. The public information sessions were open to everyone, were advertised locally and provided opportunities for members of the public to view consultation materials and talk to department staff. In addition to the public information sessions, targeted stakeholder meetings were also held throughout the public consultation period.

Table 2: Number of meetings conducted across all marine regions and attendees

Stakeholder interest Number of meetings Total attendees
Multi-sector briefings 9 160
Public information sessions 35 526
Government (State /Territory /Norfolk Island) briefings 10 75
Targeted sectoral stakeholder meetings 191 1192
Total 245 1953

Who provided feedback

When all marine regions are considered, the department received in total 566,377 submissions. The highest number of submissions (487,435) was received in response to the release of the Commonwealth marine reserve proposal for the Coral Sea Region.

Of the 566,377 submissions received across all regions, 99.7% or 564,881, were submitted as part of several campaigns, mostly organised by environmental organisations (for example, AVAAZ Save Our Oceans campaign, Protect Our Coral Sea conservation campaign, Save Our Marine Life collaboration, Save Our Tropical Sealife coalition and campaigns from the Wilderness Society); other campaigns were organised by the recreational fishing sector and commercial fishing organisations. Campaign submissions included standardised text and messages prepared by the campaigning organisation and, in some instances, included original comments by the person providing the submission; campaign submissions were mostly provided through online templates or as postcards.

Table 3: Numbers of submissions received in each marine region and in total

Region Submissions received
(including campaigns)		 Submissions received
(excluding campaigns)
South-west 39 266 224
North-west 19 702 69
North 12 861 69
Coral Sea 487 435 907
Temperate East 7 113 227
National Total 566 377 1496

Alongside campaign submissions, a total of 1496 non-campaign submissions were sent in by individuals from the general community, organisations including businesses, clubs, representative associations, State governments, Indigenous organisations and industry bodies (Figure 1). The largest proportion of non-campaign submissions was from the general community (612 or 41%) followed by the conservation sector (405 or 27%). People and organisations representing the commercial fishing sector and recreational fishing also provided a large number of submissions (152 or 10% and 126 or 8% respectively).

Figure 1: Stakeholder groups/sectors providing submissions (excluding campaigns)

Figure 1

No analysis is provided in relation to the geographic origin of the submissions because of the large proportion of submissions received via email for which there is little or no indication of place of origin. However it is known that most campaign submissions received in response to the Coral Sea reserve proposal were received from individuals residing outside Australia. For example, the AVAAZ Save Our Oceans 24 Hours campaign generated 385,695 submissions, of which 23,866 were from Australia.

Regional overviews of consultation activities and feedback

Network management plans finalised

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Last updated: Monday, 17-Jun-2013 06:35:24 EST