Re‐Imagining Australia's Ocean Life and Territories in the Fraser Years, 1975–1983

Malcolm Fraser's Liberal‐National Country coalition government enacted significant legal and policy developments around ocean matters, contributing to an intense moment of national attention towards, and re‐imagining of, ocean life and territories. Fraser appointed an inquiry on whales and whaling whose findings he used to ban whaling in Australia. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (created during the Whitlam government) came into existence to create and manage the marine park, but controversies around oil drilling in the Reef resurfaced and conflict between the Federal and Queensland governments seemingly delaye the rapid enactment of the marine park meant that the Fraser years continued to grapple with Reef politics and imaginaries. The government negotiated the Offshore Constitutional Settlement with the states to resolve constitutional conflicts around ocean sovereignty and jurisdiction which had arisen in the context of the changing international law of the sea. As this article demonstrates, taken together, these developments and moves reshaped Australia's ocean imaginaries by defining and embedding new actors, territories, sentiments, and relationships (both between people and between humans and ocean creatures and environments) in the context of both domestic social and cultural change as well as international legal developments.