MEDIA RELEASE: FACT CHECK: FRYDENBERG INCORRECT AGAIN

FACT CHECK: FRYDENBERG INCORRECT AGAIN

This morning on ABC Radio National with Fran Kelly, Minister Frydenberg said Labor implemented draft marine management plans.

FRAN KELLY:

This week Minister you’ve also had a busy week releasing the new boundaries for marine park reserves. Changes to the regulations of 44 marine parks. You’ve also reduced green conservation areas around the Great Barrier Reef from 50 percent to 25 percent. Labor and conservation groups aren’t happy about that. In fact, the only people who seem happy about it are fishing industry. Should we be worried when the only people welcoming your new marine reserve boundaries are the fishermen?

JOSH FRYDENBERG:

Well it’s disingenuous in the extreme for the Labor Party to talk about cutting protections because they introduced draft management plans back in 2012 that due to their chaotic approach never got implemented.

Labor put final plans in place in 2012. We did have draft plans that were consulted on as part of our six rounds of consultation but they were finalised in 2012 and tabled in Parliament.

Josh Frydenberg should know this given that he voted six times to disallow these final plans. On each occasion the Liberal party’s attempt to stop these plans form being legally enforceable failed by one vote.

My Frydenberg has either forgotten, knows and is deliberately lying, or never paid attention to what he was voting on in the first place.

No matter which way you look at it, the Government has now spent four years engaging in the largest removal of area from conservation protection in history.