Champion surfers battle for law to create world surf reserve on Gold Coast

Joel Parkinson.

Australia's top surfers have won the battle to save one of the best waves in the world, but the war to save the Gold Coast's surfing future is just beginning.

Mick Fanning and Joel Parkinson are celebrating the Queensland Government's decision to can a cruise ship terminal and resort near the world-famous Kirra Beach.

But they've vowed it's just the first step to protect the natural assets that pump A$3.2 billion ($3.4 billion) into the Gold Coast economy alone each year.

The surf champions have now turned their sights on stopping another cruise ship terminal from being built on the Broadwater, saying it will affect the the famous TOS South Stradbroke break.

They have also put themselves up as ambassadors - alongside surf legend Kelly Slater - for a world surfing reserve to be declared from South Stradbroke Island to Snapper Rocks on the NSW border.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott lent his support to the declaration of a world surf reserve at Manly in Sydney in 2012.

Now the pressure is on him to back a much larger reserve off the southeast Queensland coast, and consider more similar reserves elsewhere around Australia.

Fanning and Parkinson both rate Kirra as the best wave ride in the world.

They say the threat to its future has revealed how vulnerable Australian beaches are to development threats, and new laws are needed to safeguard them and the billions they generate for the economy.

"We want the premier to guarantee there'll never be a cruise ship terminal on the Gold Coast full stop," Parkinson told reporters after the Kirra project was canned on Thursday. "He must say no developments like this from Stradbroke to the border."

Brad Farmer, who heads the National and World Surfing Reserves and founded the Surfrider Foundation Australia, says there are 18 national surf reserves in Australia and one world surf reserve at Manly.

But that's not nearly enough given the economic benefits the nation's 11,761 beaches generate, he says.

"What was proposed on the Gold Coast was the beginning of privatisation of the Australian coast," he told AAP.

"All Australians [abhor] the concept of selling off the sovereign right of access to a beach, as has been done in Asia and parts of the United States.

"We are calling on the Prime Minister to endorse a Gold Coast world surf reserve and also to enact legislation to recognise world surf reserves."

Farmer said Abbott must also begin drafting a national coastal act to ensure no other beaches face the kind of threat the Kirra project posed.

Jim Wilson, who heads the Save Our Southern Beaches Alliance, says the next step will be to stop the Broadwater terminal from going ahead.

But he says the broader push for new legislation, and more recognised surf reserves, is where the war will be fought and won.

"We've won this round. We won the fight against a marina at Kirra in the 80s. But there will be another one," he said.

"You can't let go, because politicians come and go. What doesn't come and go is the land, the sea, the foreshores, the beaches and the swell. We must not destroy it."

- AAP