Paper Petition

The petition of residents of the State of Queensland draws to the attention of the House the proposed plan to re-zone the entire Sandy Straits area a Yellow Conservation Zone. The community is concerned by (i) discrimination to recreational fishers in the Sandy Straits by imposing heavy restrictions on their activities, while still allowing commercial beam trawling and netting activities to continue in the restricted area; (ii) adverse effects on property values and loss of revenue for the local traders reliant on the huge numbers of recreational fishers/visitors to the area each year; (iii) damage to the Straits is more likely by commercial netting operations than by recreational fishing activities; (iv) safety issues through go-slow zones in rough weather, (v) the anomaly that it is the only Yellow Conservation Zone in the GBR plan which allows commercial netting and beam trawling.

Your petitioners therefore request the House to either disallow commercial beam trawling and netting in the proposed Sandy Straits Yellow Conservation Zone, or to re-zone the entire area to Light Blue Zone for General Use, with restrictions imposed, for all (as applicable), in the more sensitive areas.