Ms Ellen McMahon:

We are very concerned about offshore renewable energy preceding the MPAs. We know that the marine environment is in a completely degraded state and is on a downward trend in a lot of areas. The national marine planning framework is facilitating that disparity. What will eventually underpin that is the marine planning and development management Bill. MPAs are not included under the current heads of that Bill. The Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage made some very welcome recommendations on that Bill, including two specific ones. First, it recommended that MPAs be allowed under that legislation so we could designate through it. The second recommendation was that interim protections be provided using sensitivity mapping. That is something we want to see included. We would look at the features, habitats and species we need to designate in our network and could do sensitivity mapping to look at the pressures that act on those features. Then we can steer offshore renewable energy away from those sensitive areas. That is what we need here, quite urgently.