Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, the member for Grayndler. They actually fed a lot of the deception that created this problem and made no effort at all to try to do anything to save the situation. He talks about ‘a forward-looking government’ that would protect the industries and people depending on a healthy reef. What a load of nonsense! You do not see a forward-looking government on the other side, I can assure you of that, when we are talking about this. This was not about protecting the reef; this was all about pushing the lock-out views of the extreme greens. Unfortunately, some sections of the bureaucracy were captured by it and so many individuals’ healthy businesses that were very dependent on a healthy reef were destroyed unnecessarily. As I said at the beginning of my speech, had there been any issue as to sustainability then each and every owner of those businesses would have more than willingly walked away from the industries involved and started again, accepting that they could not afford to impact on what was their livelihood.

So I am pleased to see these legislative amendments coming through. I hope that by bringing these amendments through we do not allow this type of fiasco to occur again. I hope that we can resolve the outstanding problems of so many of those businesses that are struggling to survive. The government has been very generous in dealing with this issue, but unfortunately in some cases making assessments has taken far too much time. As I can understand the complexities of some of these businesses, I am sure there was no understanding by their owners at the beginning, given the misinformation that was being provided by the bureaucracy at the time, of the changes. There was no way that they would have been able to appreciate their impact and the damage that was being done.

On a final point, I refer to another matter raised by the member for Kingsford Smith. It was a little red herring, which was right up there with all the doom and gloom, about drilling on or around the Great Barrier Reef. This is a perpetual chestnut. Every time when they run out of good ideas they slip this one in. The reality is that the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is protected in a way that it has never ever been protected before and there is absolutely no risk whatsoever of it being drilled or impacted. There is legislation in place that makes sure that will not and cannot happen. But it is all part of their scare tactics. When they have no ideas and they are looking at these ideological agendas that they try to push, they come out and push this nonsense about drilling on the reef, trying to frighten people. Those that know know it is absolute nonsense and there is no basis of fact whatsoever in it.

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