Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I have been on the record, as have the Greens, for quite some time now highlighting the necessity for the Commonwealth to take urgent action to remove cattle from Victoria’s pristine high country.

Every day that the cattle remain is a failure of government to protect our National Heritage listed places, our endangered and threatened species and our natural alpine water reservoirs.

So I welcome the decision made by the minister on Friday to demand that the Victorian state government’s decision to reintroduce cattle into the Alpine National Park be referred to the Commonwealth for assessment.

Even though that decision does not bring about a conclusion to this matter and even though the minister was forced to move slowly through the provisions of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act—far too slowly, in my opinion, and I will come back to the flaws in the act in a moment—his announcement is clearly a step in the right direction.

The cattle have been back in the park for three months now—they were introduced under the farcical guise of scientific research by a brand new Victorian Baillieu government determined to meet an environmentally irresponsible election deal.

We have seen a lot in those three months.

We have seen a state government scramble to put some scientific justification behind their rushed decision to reintroduce cattle, only to come up looking foolish.

We have seen hundreds of scientists publicly oppose the grazing trial, and not one publicly supporting it.

We have seen park rangers in the media distressed at having to facilitate the grazing trial at the expense of genuine conservation work.

We have seen National Party members arguing that they have some sort of state mandate from the people to let cattle run loose in the park and trash the environment, and that somehow this overrides our federal law and our international obligations.

And I am sure we are about to hear National Party members make all sorts of justifications in just a moment, and come to the defence of a state government that has managed to destroy any environmental credibility it had within moments of achieving office, but that is all beside the point:

The cattle are doing significant damage now, and it is time they were removed.

One would assume that the legal protection of the environment inside a national park would be a given. Indeed, one might assume that national parks are subject to a higher level of protection. However, given the complications of federal/state division of legislative responsibility, and given the lack of any federal law that specifically lists that which may or may not occur in National Heritage listed places, it is the at times flawed EPBC Act that we turn to to define what is and is not an acceptable impact on the environment—whether the environment is a national park or the middle of a city.

The subjectivity inherent in the act therefore has the side effect of exposing some of our most important and pristine natural places to all sorts of inappropriate treatment, sometimes without providing an adequate mechanism to urgently disallow it.

That is the situation we find ourselves in here. We have a state government which has the necessary legal resources to advise a particular course of action, knowing full well that the federal repercussions will be slow. The state government knows that the federal minister is required to use the resources of the federal department to investigate the matter at length, and exhaust any legal repercussions, before issuing any directives.

I have no doubt that the federal minister’s intentions are commendable—I have heard him speak about his own views on the alpine grazing issue—but I also realise that we have two well-resourced governments of different political parties fighting over an issue, all in the context of a flawed federal act, and this debate has become one of political grandstanding rather than a question of environmental protection.

We are approaching winter and, temporarily at least, the seasons will do that which the government is too slow to do: the snow season will require cattle to retreat from the high country until late spring.

By then, the minister will need to have worked through the act—but there are many steps involved before the minister is in a position to accept or reject the trial, and the subjectivity inherent in the act prevents any of us from predicting the end result.

We have a small window of opportunity to ensure an end to this environmental vandalism, and we need to keep open the option of a legislative backstop that will unequivocally require the removal of cattle from the Victorian high country.

This bill is that legislative backstop. It deems the minister to have received a referral from the Victorian government, and to have rejected it.

The effect of writing the provisions of this bill into the EPBC Act is to avoid the time- and resource-consuming federal/state stand off, and require the instant removal of any cattle from the park, thus finally putting an end to the practice of alpine grazing.

In concluding, let me reiterate that I am truly hopeful that the minister can get a result before the grazing season starts again. But given the lack of certainty, and given that the future of the beautiful high country is at stake, I encourage government members to leave open the option of supporting this bill in a vote when the House resumes sitting in winter.

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