Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight in this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 to remind the new Rudd government that there is life beyond the capital cities. There was some expectation that they, the Labor government, would continue the legacy of the Howard government in committing adequate resources to protecting the environment, including the preservation of our native flora and fauna; the preservation of water and soil quality; the control of weeds and feral animals; measures to help us adapt to and ameliorate climate change; measures to sustain agriculture, to preserve our capacity to feed ourselves while still sustaining the landscape; measures to close the gap between the life experience of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians; and measures to enrich the cultural life of all Australians through the support of the arts and respect for social inclusion.

Sadly, in their first six months of government and in the framing of this, the first Rudd government budget, we are seeing the resources and programs previously committed to these critical sectors slashed or disappear altogether. The natural resource managers and environmental advocates, including those in both the public and the private sectors, the workers on the ground, the people in various research institutions, have had to sift through the rebadging and the rebundling to try and see the real picture. But now it is all too painfully clear, a few weeks later. Landcare, for example, that iconic 25-year-old environment and conservation flagship program, has 4,000 volunteer groups across Australia. For every dollar of government funding it has received in the past it has been able to leverage about $10 in private sector sponsorship and in-kind donations. Landcare has been lauded and emulated internationally. The Rudd government and the Rudd budget buried Landcare in their new Caring for our Country program, the new name for what was the coalition’s Natural Heritage Trust and National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality. The coalition of course delivered the biggest funding ever into these two programs, which we called colloquially NHT and NAP, because we understood the significance and importance of protecting and conserving Australia’s natural resources. It was the biggest funding ever committed by any government, the John Howard government, since Federation to natural resource and environmental conservation. Labor have not only buried Landcare within the Caring for our Country labyrinth; they have taken away 20 per cent of their funding.

Then there were the catchment management bodies, which the Howard government created to manage the NHT and NAP on the ground. We understood that it was essential to have the state officials, local volunteers and the agribusiness sector on the ground delivering the programs through the NHT and NAP. We also expected these catchment bodies to integrate the state government contribution expected, which was at least matched grants in the case of the National Salinity Action Plan and in-kind contributions from the states to the NHT. These catchment management bodies have been slashed by 40 per cent in this new budget, but they are still expected to deliver in the same way. Chairs of the catchment management bodies—and these bodies are Australia wide—are already putting off staff. Ten have been put off in the North Central CMA in Victoria. Over $2.5 million has been slashed from the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority, and that of course translates into human capital as well as programs. These bodies simply cannot do the job Labor apparently expects them still to do with 40 per cent less funding.

The CMAs, as they are often called, have been told that they can compete for some contestable funding to make up these shortfalls. CMA executives and chairs are now talking to the officials from the federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts and they are trying to find out where this contestable fund is, when they might expect to see it and how they access it. They are getting the same vague and blank looks that they get from each other when they try and find out what is going on, where the money is buried and how they can find out what their futures might be, because of course they have to pay their staff right now and they have to make decisions about the environmental funding on the ground. This is a not just a tragedy for the people who have committed themselves to sustain our natural resources but a tragedy if you think of the way, very quickly, weed reinfestation occurs and feral animals take back control over a lot of native habitats. You give up on the environment for a period of government—in this case, the Rudd government—and it takes generations to win it back, if you can at all.

Minister Peter Garrett went off to an OECD conference in Paris in April this year. In his speech there he boasted about a program the coalition had introduced, the Environmental Stewardship Program. Many environmentalists sighed with relief when they read these words uttered in Paris on 28 April, because they thought, ‘Well, although the minister for environment, Peter Garrett, has been missing in action since his election to the ministry—refusing to see delegations or to travel to regions, despite the pleading of drought ravaged communities—at least the Environmental Stewardship Program must be safe.’ I will read you Mr Garrett’s words:

Australia has recently launched an Environmental Stewardship Program which focuses on the long-term protection, rehabilitation and improvement of targeted environmental assets on private land.

That was a bit of a con because, of course, it was not recent—the coalition had launched the program at least five years before. But, nonetheless, he went on to say:

Land managers are selected through auction, tender and other marketbased mechanisms. We expect significant private investment to emerge from this initiative, engaging in partnerships with Governments, NGOs and landholders.

As I say, these were words of real comfort to the Australian agribusiness sector and environmentalists who thought, ‘At least Mr Garrett understands the Environmental Stewardship Program’s significance.’ What happened a few weeks later in the Rudd budget? The Environmental Stewardship Program lost its funding. It disappeared without a trace. There was not a murmur. Gone. So you have to wonder to yourself: was it that Mr Garrett lost the battle in caucus or wherever they do the final budget deliberations, or was he missing in action there too and did not even make representations in relation to the program he boasted about in Paris just a few weeks before?

Sadly, we have this issue of slashing and burning right through the environment sector. We have the Bureau of Meteorology having to do with much less. It has to take $5 million out of its weather measures because of the extra two per cent efficiency dividend, so-called. Of course, speculation on staff cuts are rife, including in particular in the severe weather warning area. As we know, with climate change you get a lot more severe weather in the form of storms. Our capacity to forecast and let the community know about storms approaching is now severely impeded by the fact that they are going to have to slash their staff in those areas.

We of course have ongoing concerns about the whale envoy and whale monitoring. There is no funding there. The government has reneged on a key election commitment to take Japan to the International Court of the Justice with regard to whaling. We can see that it was all froth. Labor was taking advantage of a bit of a quiet time over Christmas in the media. There was no real commitment to saving one of our iconic, endangered species.

Community Water Grants have gone without a trace. We can go on and on and talk about the EnviroGrants. Right throughout Australia we have had EnviroGrants from a fund that is now supposed to be embedded within Labor’s new Caring for Country. We have searched through the spaghetti of Caring for Country to see some trace of the old $135 million Envirofund, which dealt out to small community groups, even individuals, funds for, say, revegetating a rocky knoll which was the last known habitat for a particular species—that sort of thing. The EnviroGrants are not to be found. They have disappeared without a trace.

Let me move on to the arts sector, a sector where I am also responsible for trying to keep the new Rudd government honest. Mr Garrett was a shadow minister for arts when the Howard government was in power. He is now the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. There was an expectation, because Minister Garrett does himself have a performing background, that he would have understood the importance and significance of arts funding—for both the performing and visual arts. Would you believe it, before the budget was even announced, we saw over $50 million slashed from the arts budget. This included the disappearance of the Australia on the World Stage program. It disappeared. This supported our cultural diplomacy. This assisted performers to show themselves as some of the world’s best in international places where our reputation could be built. There is no new funding for young and emerging artists. We have seen Screen Australia established. That was of course a coalition initiative. But there are going to be 28 jobs slashed, even though Mr Garrett announced, and it is in writing supported—

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