Changes risk shark ‘peril’

SWIMMERS will no longer be protected from sharks across some of Queensland’s most popular beaches with the State Government now fearing for the lives of tourists and visitors.

Drumlines will be immediately removed from 27 beaches between Cairns and Gladstone after the Palaszczuk government failed to appeal a shock court win by a green groups in April.

The State Government has now called on the Federal Government to rush in new laws to protect swimmers, with Tourism Minister Kate Jones claiming she was sure Prime Minister Scott Morrison didn’t want “blood on his hands”.

Agricultural Minister Mark Furner said the State Government did not have grounds to appeal yesterday’s decision.

“It is not possible for us to implement the new restrictions on the Shark Control Program within the marine park without putting our contractors in serious peril,” he said.

“We will always put human safety first.”

The restrictions would require the State Government to release any sharks still alive caught on the 173 drumlines in the Great Barrier Reef.

The Humane Society International launched a successful legal challenge earlier this year in a bid to stop sharks being euthanised in the marine park, after the State Government was granted a permit allowing 19 targeted sharks snared on drumlines to be killed.

In its appeal, the State Government argued that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal took an “unduly narrow approach to what constitutes evidence” and engaged more closely with the opinions of experts rather than the “nonscientific approach of the State”.

“To act upon a belief that the so-called ‘scientific’ evidence trumped all other evidence simply because it could be so characterised, and so as to displace other kinds of evidence” was an error, the State Government argued.

But the Federal Court of Australia did not agree.

Mr Furner yesterday wrote to Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley, urging the Federal Government to legislate to allow the state to continue its program.