Bateman, Sam --- "Australia s Oceans Policy and the Maritime Community" [1999] MarStudies 8; (1999) 108 Maritime Studies 10

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I am most honoured to have been invited by the Company of Master Mariners and the Navy League to deliver the 1999 Boulton Lecture. Through their publications and other promotional activities, these two organisations are eloquent and forceful members of the maritime community in Australia that do much to promote maritime awareness among the wider Australian community. This Boulton Lecture provides an excellent opportunity to share some ideas with you on Australia’s new national oceans policy and to explain why this policy should be welcomed by everyone who has some interest in the oceans and Australia’s maritime affairs.

Australia’s Ocean Domain

Australia has one of the largest marine jurisdictions in the world and we are at the heart of the region of the world where maritime problems are most acute. Table 1 shows that Australia is entitled to an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around the continental land mass and island territories of 8.6 million square kilometres (mill.sq.km). This is the one of the largest EEZs in the world and may be even the largest depending on the basis for comparison. Our EEZ increases in size to 11.1 mill.sq.km if the EEZ claimed around the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT) is included as well. Australia also has a legal continental shelf of 12.3 mill.sq.km around the continent and territories (or 14.8 mill.sq.km if the one around the AAT is also included). These figures mean that the maximum marine area over which Australia has some sovereign rights and jurisdiction (i.e. 14.8 mill.sq.km.) is nearly twice the size of the continental land mass of Australia itself of 7.8 mill.sq.km.

These are sobering statistics, particularly if one goes even further and includes Australia’s claim to the AAT land mass. Then Australia becomes the country in the world with the largest jurisdictional claim to an area of the earth’s surface - approx 28.5 mill.sq.km of which

about half is over ocean or sea. (Russia is second with a claim to the earth’s surface of 21.5 mill.sq.km and the United States is third with a claim of 20.0 mill.sq.km.) The AAT is nearly one half of our land territory but, even without this area where Australia’s sovereignty is disputed by many countries, Australia would still rank second in terms of the area of earth’s surface under some form of national jurisdiction.

Table 1
Australia’s Ocean Domain

	Mill.sq.kms
EEZ
Continent + Territories	8.6
Australian Antarctic Territory	2.5
Total	11.1
LEGAL CONTINENTAL SHELF
Continent + Territories 12.3
Australian Antarctic Territory 2.5
Total 14.8
TO BE COMPARED WITH:
Australia’s Continental Land Mass 7.8

Source: P A Symonds and J B Willcox, ‘Australia’s petroleum potential in areas beyond an Exclusive Economic Zone’, BMR Journal of Australian Geology and Geophysics, vol. 11, no. 1, Table 1, p. 14.

Managing this large area of ocean poses a great challenge for Australia that cuts across State and Federal jurisdictions and involves the interests of the various sectors of industry that either use the sea or seek to exploit its resources.

The activity in recent years to develop a national oceans policy is well overdue as, despite being a large island continent with extensive maritime interests, Australia has focused much more in the past on continental concerns, particularly farming and mining, with scant attention to maritime issues. Or as Frances McGuire, the Australian naval historian, once noted,

Although making great use of the sea and the beach for recreational purposes (swimming, surfing, sailing, fishing, etc.), Australians do not seen themselves as maritime people, and it is often said that Australia lacks a maritime culture. Until comparatively recently, major sectors of Australia’s marine industry, particularly shipping (including associated activities, such as stevedoring and towage) and fishing, were left largely in the hands of foreign interests. In periods in the past, marine industry, with the obvious exception of the service to trade provided by shipping, contributed relatively little to Australia’s economic growth and prosperity. These have been driven mainly by primary industry from the earliest days of colonial settlement, and more recently, by mining, another mainly continental industry.

The impetus to lift the profile of maritime affairs and the oceans as important elements of public policy in Australia can be explained by several factors. First and most specifically, there is growing national (and political) awareness of the reality that Australia was one of the great ‘winners’ with extensions to the national maritime domain allowed by the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

A second factor that contributes to the new maritime emphasis in Australia is the recent

success story for some sectors of Australia’s marine industry, particularly offshore oil and gas, shipbuilding, fishing and marine tourism. The Marine Industry Development Strategy, released in 1997, shows that:

• About 90 per cent of Australia’s oil and gas production is sourced from offshore areas with exports in 1995-96 estimated at about A$2,474 million and accounting for nearly 40 per cent of total domestic production.

• The shipbuilding industry in Australia is highly export-oriented (exports account for about 85 per cent of the current production level of nearly A$650 million per annum). It supplies about one-third of the world’s high speed ferry market.

• Wild capture fisheries now represent a major primary industry for Australia with exports in 1994-95 valued at A$1,366 million. Although Australian waters are relatively unproductive in international terms, the fisheries that do exist are often of high value (e.g., rock lobster and tuna). The share of aquaculture is already substantial with very good prospects for growth.

• Marine tourism had an export value of over two billion dollars in 1993-94 and, on the basis of past growth, is considered to have excellent prospects of further growth.

Lastly, the new focus on maritime affairs in Australia may be part of general public awareness of the ecological diversity of Australia, as well as an appreciation of the extent of Australia’s territorial claim to land and marine areas. (The seminal and highly readable work on Australia’s biodiversity is Tim Flannery’s The Future Eaters.) The Australian journalist, Paul Sheehan, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald on 16 August 1995, even went as far to argue that Australia has a claim to the status of an ecological superpower.

Australia has certainly been active in the area of the preservation and protection of marine environment, including at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). For example, Australia has been taking a strong stand at the IMO with the need for controls to prevent the introduction of foreign organisms through discharge of ballast water and compensation for oil-spill damage from ships other than oil tankers. Reasons for the strong Australian position on the preservation and protection of the marine environment are not hard to find:

• The Australian marine environment is relatively pristine and includes three areas currently on the World Cultural and National Heritage List - the Great Barrier Reef, Shark Bay and Fraser Island.

• Australia’s exports are mainly bulk ores and grain, and thus Australia has a high demand for the services of bulk carriers which are generally regarded as the most sub-standard class of ship posing relatively higher risks to the marine environment than other classes of vessel. This is because of both their greater use of ballast water and their higher incidence of failure of Port State Control safety inspections.

• Shipping accidents in Australia waters, such as the Kirki, an oil tanker which lost her bow off the coast of Western Australia in 1991, and the Iron Baron, an ore carrier which went aground off the coast of Tasmania in 1995, attract considerable media attention.

The development of management and legal regimes for using the oceans and seas of the world has received much attention in recent years. This is a result of the expansion of economic activities at sea, growing concern over the health of the world’s oceans, excessive fishing, tensions between different uses of coastal and sea areas (i.e., shipping and ports, dumping, aquaculture and fishing, tourism, etc.) and the emergence of the idea of ecologically sustainable development (ESD) that treats all natural environments as interacting systems. It is now recognised that managing oceans on a purely sectoral basis (i.e., each industry sector and ocean user doing basically ‘its own thing’) is dysfunctional with ‘a tyranny of small decisions’. It does not recognise the ‘inter-connectedness’ of ocean uses and submerges the conflicts of interest that can emerge, particularly the basic tension that invariably arises between wealth creation interests (or economic uses) on the one hand and marine environmental protection on the other. Resolution of these problems may be facilitated by the over-arching framework of a national oceans policy.

Australia’s Oceans Policy

The work to develop a national oceans policy for Australia was initiated in December 1995 when the (then) Prime Minister, Paul Keating, announced that the Commonwealth Government had agreed to a proposal for the development of a coordinated policy on the management of Australia’s marine resource. Having included the idea of an oceans policy in its environment platform prior to the Federal election in March 1996, the incoming Howard Government assigned the responsibility to develop this policy to the (then) Department of Environment, Sport and Territories (DEST). After a lot of hard work and comprehensive public consultation, Australia’s Oceans Policy was released by Senator Robert Hill, the Federal Minister for the Environment, in December 1998.

The objective of the new national oceans policy is to provide a strategic framework for the planning, management and ecologically sustainable development of Australia’s fisheries, shipping, tourism, petroleum, gas and seabed resources while ensuring the conservation of the marine environment. At the core of the policy is the development of Regional Marine Plans, based on large marine ecosystems, which will be binding on all Commonwealth agencies. The first Regional Marine Plan will be developed for the south-eastern region of Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Broadly this will include waters off Victoria, Tasmania, southern New South Wales and eastern South Australia. The promulgation of Australia’s Oceans Policy makes Australia the first country in the world to develop a comprehensive, national plan to protect and manage the oceans.

The marine science community played a strong role in advocating the need for a national oceans policy. A National Marine Science and Technology Plan was developed concurrently with Australia’s Oceans Policy and the final version of this was released a few months ago.

Marine scientists and technologists were certainly the most assertive of the disciplines and interest groups in promoting the importance of both their contribution to oceans policy and the need for such a policy. It will be important to ensure that this does not lead to a bias in the implementation of the policy towards marine science and away from other disciplines involved in oceans policy research. While marine scientific and technological research is essential for effective oceans management, it is equally essential that the necessary legal, economic, human resources, social and public policy research is also conducted.

Oceans policy has a role in balancing national interests and ensuring internationally that Australia does not lose more than it gains by new measures. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include, on the one hand, Australia’s concern for the preservation and protection of the marine environment, and on the other, Australia’s interest in the freedom of navigation through the EEZ and archipelagic waters of other countries, and the exploration and exploitation of offshore resources. International rights and freedoms of navigation are important to Australia because of the dependence on seaborne trade and the fact that Australia is surrounded by archipelagic states to the Northwest, North and Northeast. Environmental concerns, legitimate or otherwise, are increasingly being used by coastal states to justify new controls over shipping and a sharp contrast exists therefore between our position on the importance of the freedom of navigation and our interest in the protection and preservation of the marine environment.

A focus on marine environmental protection is not necessarily at the expense of balanced exploitative uses of the sea. These two interests are not mutually exclusive and there is a positive side to increased environmental concerns as far as the development of marine industry is concerned. This is both in terms of the general benefits of more effective management and legislation for ecologically sustainable development and in terms of some specific benefits which may result for industry. Not only are there direct opportunities with the demand for goods and services for marine environmental management, including the establishment of surveillance and monitoring arrangements, but indirect benefits could result through a shift in community perceptions against the relative environmental ‘unfriendliness’ of some land-based industries. For example, seabed mining of sand and gravel may be preferable to the utilisation of land quarries and beaches, and greater use could be made of coastal shipping because it is more energy efficient and with markedly less Greenhouse Gas emissions than road transport. Unfortunately there may be industry resistance to these preference shifts if the same companies are involved both in road and sea transport.

Implications of Oceans Policy

Australia’s Oceans Policy has significant implications for the maritime community. Goals of the policy include the promotion of ecologically sustainable development and job creation and the promotion of public awareness and understanding. It could be said that the policy represents the beginning of a new era of maritime awareness for Australia although realisation of this goal will depend on the ongoing commitment of the Federal Government to community awareness activities. The policy also provides guidance for the development of Australia’s marine industries and the resolution of disputes over different uses and interests in the oceans. With regard to the oceans generally, the policy notes that:

In a fairly balanced way, the oceans policy acknowledges the potential environmental impacts of the shipping industry and the

importance of appropriate environmental controls and marine safety. In the early stages of policy development, there was some concern that because this process was the responsibility of the Federal Environment ministry, the resultant policy would be excessively ‘green’. I do not think that this was the outcome. As far as far as I know, the two peak industry groups represented on the Ministerial Advisory Group on Oceans Policy (MAGOP) established by Senator Hill to provide input to the policy from stakeholder and other interest groups (the Australian Shipowners’ Association and the Association of Australian Ports and Marine Authorities) were both fairly happy with the outcome.

Although the policy pre-dates the problems that emerged this year with the high level of ‘boat people’ incursions and the revelation of apparent deficiencies in the arrangements for civil coastal surveillance, Australia’s Oceans Policy expresses concern about trends in illegal movement into and out of Australia and the need for an effective surveillance and enforcement capacity. It indicates an intention to increase surveillance and enforcement measures in the Great Barrier Reef and that the Government:

Australia’s Oceans Policy also poses consideration of Australia’s capacity to manage our maritime interests, whether we have sufficient skills and expertise and whether we will be able to maintain these in the future. It acknowledges that the people involved in managing our oceans and maritime interests come from a diverse range of backgrounds and disciplines. On maritime education generally, the policy notes that:

Clearly we need marine scientists and maritime lawyers to manage Australia’s ocean domain, as well as economists and social scientists with experience and knowledge of the maritime environment, but the requirement that is sometimes overlooked is the one for people with experience of actually working at sea. A study conducted in 1996 of this requirement in the economy of the United Kingdom found that a serious shortfall was emerging in the supply of people with seafaring experience.^[4] The demand for people with this experience exists in a great number of land-based maritime related sectors, including ship management, marine surveying, classification societies, port management, piloting, salvage, ship broking. marine pollution control, and education and training. The UK study found that while merchant navy service still appears to provide the most cost-effective training for these shore-based jobs, neither third party training nor the employment of foreign seafarers was likely to provide a ready remedy to offset the shortage of national officers. With the decline in the number of Australian-flag vessels, a similar situation probably exists in Australia and should be recognised in the programmes of marine skills and development and training to be implemented within the framework of national oceans policy.

Australia’s Oceans Policy is also significant because it proposes a leadership role for Australia in helping to ensure that international ocean management regimes are effectively implemented in the three great oceans around Australia - the Indian, Pacific and Southern Oceans. The policy states that:

Regional Ocean Interests

I would like to turn now to some of the international considerations with national oceans policy. These are important because, due to the interconnected nature of the world’s oceans, no one country can have a truly independent national oceans policy. Nations must consider, for example, the impact of their oceans policy on their neighbours and on the ships of other nations that legitimately use their waters.

The Report last year by the Independent World Commission on the Oceans, entitled The Ocean - Our Future, emphasised the importance of the oceans to the future of the world. However, the oceans are also the setting of major problems. Territorial disputes that threaten peace and security, global climate change, illegal fishing, habitat destruction, species extinction, pollution, drug smuggling, congested shipping lanes, sub-standard ships, illegal migration, piracy and the disruption of coastal communities are among the problems that confront the international community. The issues involved are particularly important for Australia as we have one of the largest marine jurisdictions in the world and Australia is at the heart of the region of the world, the Asia Pacific, where maritime problems are particularly acute.

Despite the rich potential of marine resources in the Asia Pacific region, the development of these resources, particularly in East Asian waters, is troubled by major jurisdictional problems, and ‘beggar thy neighbour’ attitudes which have led to over-fishing, and the marked degradation of natural habitats of coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass beds. Marine pollution originating from the land is a serious and largely uncontrolled problem in the region. The preservation and protection of the marine environment, the conservation of species, and the exploitation of marine resources is seriously complicated by conflicting and overlapping claims to marine jurisdiction and the lack of agreed maritime boundaries. These problems will only be overcome by a changed mindset based on a greater preparedness to cooperate in the management of regional oceans and seas.

Major maritime issues in the Asia Pacific region include shipping, fishing, marine safety, marine environmental protection and the exploitation of offshore hydrocarbons. Shipping is essential in the region for both inter-regional and intraregional trade. Most Asia Pacific countries have a high dependence on fish and related marine products as a source of protein. More than half of the world’s fish are caught or bred in Asian waters and slightly more than half are consumed in the region.^[5] East Asian countries, in particular, are increasingly looking towards oil and gas reserves beneath the sea for future economic prosperity, and to ease the problem of a growing energy shortage. However, the driving force for regional maritime cooperation and the key interest of all regional countries should be the fundamental obligation of all states to protect and preserve the marine environment.

The complexity of the marine environment in the Asia Pacific region results both from enduring features of strategic geography and from dynamic aspects of the contemporary regional scene. Enduring geo-strategic features of the region include enclosed and semi-enclosed seas (such as the Yellow Sea, Gulf of Thailand and Arafura Sea), numerous archipelagos and islands, the number of international straits and confined shipping channels, complex oceanography, and a relative abundance of marine resources, although these are under considerable pressure of unsustainable development.

Dynamic aspects, particularly in the Western Pacific, include continued growth of regional naval forces and seaborne trade (despite the economic downturn of recent years); greater exploitation of marine resources; progressive development of regional maritime regimes (such as joint development zones, cooperative marine environmental protection measures, and procedures for archipelagic sea lanes passage); and increasing stresses on the marine environment through higher levels of land-based marine pollution, degradation of marine habitats and over-fishing. In both the South

Pacific and the Indian Ocean, the small island countries are faced with major problems in developing their capacity to manage very large EEZs (for example, Kiribati has an EEZ of 3.5 mill.sq.km and the Marshall Islands one of 2.1 mill.sq.km with ratios of land to sea area of 1:5,175 and 1: 11,700 respectively).

These dynamic aspects of the marine environment suggest the difficulty of managing regional seas and oceans effectively and the need to strengthen maritime cooperation in the region. Without this strengthening, there are strong possibilities of both maritime competition and tensions over maritime issues intensifying in the Asia Pacific region. An almost insoluble situation exists with the resolution of maritime boundaries in East Asian waters and there is still a long way to go with the delimitation of maritime boundaries in the South Pacific. The drive for sovereign rights over offshore resources and conflicting claims to offshore territory and maritime space all constitute a serious threat to regional stability and inhibit the processes of ocean management, cooperation and regime building.

These problems will only be overcome by the greater preparedness of regional countries to cooperate yet significant barriers to maritime cooperation exist and they may be becoming even harder to overcome. Any failure to co-operate on the solution of maritime problems, particularly with marine environmental protect-tion, sustainable development and the conserva-tion of marine biodiversity, will lead to a ‘tragedy of the commons’ as a result of each country pursuing its own self-interests. If all countries act solely in their own self-interest in the maritime domain, all will eventually lose.

The crisis in East Timor is likely to lead to a major re-thinking of our defence and foreign policies. It has been what the editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald on 17 September called ‘a wake-up call to Australian politicians, defence planners and the public in general’. As our political leaders seek to reshape the role that Australia might play in the region, it is to be hoped that they will be conscious of the role that Australia might play in the management of regional oceans, including activities that might

reduce the risk of conflict at sea. The Report mentioned earlier by the Independent World Commission on the Oceans, The Ocean - Our Future, has a lot to say, for example, about the role of navies in promoting peace and security in the oceans.

Australia has the skills and expertise to play a leading role in oceans management and dispute resolution in the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean region, South East Asia, and in the Southern Ocean but to date the maritime environment has not been an area of high priority for Australia’s foreign policy and international aid program. By comparison, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) assigns a high priority in its programs to assistance in marine and coastal fields. As a consequence, Canada and Canadians have a high profile in these fields in both the South Pacific and South East Asia, and Australia is probably not deriving the full political benefit for the work it actually is doing in maritime fields, such as resource assessment, marine scientific research and coastal zone management. Australia’s Oceans Policy gives some grounds for believing that this situation. may change, noting that the Commonwealth Government will:

Concluding Comments

The most common map of the world is the Mercator Projection centred on the Greenwich meridian. The large land masses of Europe, Asia, Africa and the two Americas are the main eye-catching features of this map. Australia is tucked away in the bottom right hand corner with the largest of the world’s oceans, the Pacific Ocean, split in two. The Western Pacific barely appears on the right-hand side of the map with a little more of the Eastern Pacific on the left-hand side. This map is the continental view of the world.

An alternative map of the world is one centred on the meridian of longitude of 180 degrees. This gives a very different perspective of the world. The eye is caught by the immensity of blue that dominates the land masses. The Pacific and Indian Oceans are now the most prominent features of the world. Such a map provides an oceanic or maritime view of the world giving a true impression of the 70 per cent of the earth’s surface covered by water. This oceanic or maritime view of the world is the one that Australians should have. It is a powerful visual image both of the importance of the oceans to Australia and of the emerging need for Australia to play a leading role in the management of oceanic affairs in the adjacent oceans. While the map puts Australia near the centre of the world, it also places Australia at the heart of a great oceanic domain formed by the Pacific, Indian and Southern Oceans.

At long last, Australia is starting to get its maritime act together and to appreciate where we stand in regional and global oceans affairs. The words of Psalm 107 are familiar to all seafarers, ‘They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters’. Australia has considerable business to do in great waters but we have been remarkably slow in getting down to the sea and to grips with the oceanic domain. Captain Boulton was a great champion of the maritime cause in Australia and I feel sure that he would welcome recent initiatives in Australia to put maritime issues firmly on the national agenda.

From being behind in the general area of oceans policy and management, Australia now has some justification in claiming world leadership in the promulgation of a coherent and consistent strategic planning and management framework for dealing with ocean interests. Australia is well placed with the appropriate skills and expertise to play a more active role in regional oceans governance and resolving the maritime problems that exist in the Asia Pacific region at present. With Australia’s Oceans Policy we have the framework and the plan, it is essential now that we are also able to follow through and implement the plan.

Major References

Australian Marine Industries and Sciences Council. Marine Industry Development Strategy, Canberra, Department of Industry, Science and Tourism, January 1997.

Commonwealth of Australia, Australia’s Marine Science and Technology Plan, Canberra, the Marine Science and Technology Plan Working Group, Department of Industry, Science and Resources, June 1999.

Commonwealth of Australia, Australia’s Oceans Policy, vols. 1 and 2. Canberra, Environment Australia, 1998.

Flannery, Tim, The Future Eaters - An ecological history of the Australasian lands and people, Chatswood, Reed, 1994.

Independent World Commission on the Oceans, The Ocean - Our Future, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

McGuire. Frances, The Royal Australian Navy - its Origin, Development and Organization, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1948.

Sheehan, Paul, ‘Arise, Australia the Eco Superpower’, The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday, August 16, 1995, Spectrum pp. 1 A and 4A.

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, opened for signature 10 December 1982, U.N.Doc.A/CONF.62/122(1982), reprinted in Official Text of the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, U.N. Sales No.E.83.V.5 (1983).

Endnotes

[1] The Annual Boulton Lecture 1999, presented to the Company of Master Mariners of Australia in conjunction with the Navy League of Australia (NSW Division) in Sydney on Thursday, 30 September 1999.

[2] Sam Bateman is now an Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow with the Centre for Maritime Policy, University of Wollongong NSW 2522.

^[3] Frances McGuire, The Royal Australian Navy - its Origin, Development and Organization, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1948, p. 5.

^[4] B.M. Gardner and Dr S.J. Pettit, A study of the UK economy’s requirements for people with experience of’ working at sea, commissioned by the Department of Transport, the Chamber of Shipping and the Marine Society, Cardiff University of Wales, May 1966.

^[5] ‘Fishing for Trouble’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 13 March 1997, p. 50.

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