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

I have a series of questions for the shadow minister. A core of the budget was the $2.247 billion for the rollout of Caring for Our Country, which is the rebadging and reworking of the old Natural Heritage Trust and National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality. Of course, under the coalition government we put record funds into those two programs, which extended over some 10 years. We are now very concerned, and so we want answers about how Australians are going to deal with the chaos and job cuts that are flowing on from the fact that you have cut 20 per cent of the funding of Landcare. Already a number of people right across Australia have contacted me saying, ‘Our jobs as Landcare facilitators have gone,’ and 4,000 voluntary groups now feel that they cannot do the work that they have done for 25 years.

The Envirofund is gone and the Environmental Stewardship Program is gone. These programs are not funded. There is a 40 per cent slash in funding to the catchment management bodies which we put in place or supplemented, to manage what we called the Natural Heritage Trust and NAP.

We understand from your budget that they are also to manage your Caring for our Country program. You have slashed their budgets by 40 per cent. You have said that there will be perhaps a contestable component in the future which they can bid into to replace some of that lost funding. These catchment management bodies are now begging to know when that contestable project or program will begin, how they will tender, and what components of work they may do. They also want to know whether the old state arrangements will continue to apply—where we had matched grants, matched funding in the case of the salinity program, and in kind support with the Natural Heritage Trust. Has that been resolved? If not, when will it be resolved?

Moving on to national parks, we are very concerned to know that the Kakadu park in particular is not going to have fees introduced and we want to know whether the about-to-be proclaimed new national parks at Gregory—the two parks in Gregory plus the new reserves, which are now before the House as a bill to be declared—will attract fees, given that it seems to be a new move for this government to replace fees on Kakadu.

Let me move on to the very serious business of Green Corps. It was an absolute icon of youth participation in environmental works, a traineeship program. It had been in place for 10 years. It is to be turned into a Work for the Dole program under this government. We would like to know, in your environment portfolio, how you are going to replace that program, given the work it did and the inspiration it provided to young people. As I said, it is a 10-year-old program with hundreds of thousands of participants who have worked right across Australia.

Let me just add to this mix: the Murray-Darling Basin $10 billion, 10-point plan. You have now expanded that under the budget by several billion, and on the surface that looks to be great. Our problem is we want to know—in fact, we have to know—why or how you are going to fund the on-farm water saving measures which were integral to finding real water; that is, water that could be delivered immediately to the environment of the Murray-Darling Basin system. The on-farm water saving measures have not been mentioned out loud by this government since it came into office. Where have they gone, please? We need to know.

We also want to know how you are going to target the overallocated water, which is mostly in New South Wales on their rivers as diversion licences. We used to call them sleepers and dozers. They are no longer being targeted by the buyback moneys—the $50 million initially, the extra billions you have put in place. That is a critical problem for the Murray-Darling Basin. How are you as the minister in this area, along with Minister Penny Wong, going to deal with the overallocated water problems, given that we are told that the buyback is mostly for high-security and lower security water but not from the overallocated areas?

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