Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2025L00100:front:0:p7
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2025L00100
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 21172–24179

Country is about us, then planning, decision-making, and management must happen with us.
To be clear, with us means from the start of thinking about planning, to the end result of managing Country together, and how we keep track of the environmental, cultural, economic and other impacts of our decision-making and actions on Sea Country.
This requires a major shift in thinking about Traditional Owners as partners, and increased respect for our values, knowledge and assertions about how to best manage Sea Country; all aspects of Sea Country  from cultural heritage through to environmental stewardship and management of recreational and commercial interests. Many of us are either working on, or have in place our own Sea Country Plans that guide our work with partners, and our own communities. These are highly valuable resources as we approach partnership work for South-east Marine Parks management.
We are committed to working as respected and respectful partners with government towards growing and sustaining our South-east Marine Parks, first established in 2007 – noting that our connection precedes that time by thousands and thousands of years. In working together, we need to acknowledge this fact  that jurisdictional boundaries today can conflict with our ongoing connections to Sea Country – through millennia.
In this new era, we will work together, to improve the relationship with us, and the cultural competence of our partners and all those who care about Sea Country. We will work together to share our values, knowledge and assertions for Sea Country, and more specifically Marine Parks.
We will also work together to blend where appropriate our traditional ecological knowledge with new science and technologies. We will work collaboratively to co-design future management plans, and to build the next generation of First Nations Sea Country Guardians, planners, researchers and decision-makers.
We can do our best to remediate and address the significant damage and loss that is currently happening and that is rapidly increasing in our fragile marine and coastal environments, but we need to do this now and together.
Climate change and other anthropogenic pressures on our Sea Country do not wait. The time to act together is now.
This statement is endorsed by the following members of the South-east Saltwater Council:

The South-east Marine Park Saltwater Council is a newly established Council whose membership includes Registered Aboriginal Parties (RAP) from Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania. It is expected that membership to this Council will continue to grow over time.

  1.         Introduction
Image: Wandering albatross (Kim Kliska/Australian Antarctic Division)

  1.1                                    Introductory provisions

Name

This plan is the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (South-east Marine
Parks Network Management Plan) Instrument 2025.

Commencement

This instrument commences on the day after it is registered