Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Abolition of Alpine Grazing) Bill 2011. The member for Melbourne has sponsored this bill in response to the Victorian state government’s trial to return grazing as part of a bushfire mitigation study. That same member has described the return of cattle grazing to the Alpine National Park as ‘an act of environmental vandalism’. This comment is ridiculous, as until 2005 grazing was conducted in the Alpine National Park for more than 100 years and played a vital role in the management of fuel loads.

This is a trial using 400 cattle in a very small proportion of the total park, and 400 cattle for four months of the year for the next six years. The cattle will be distributed across six sites over thousands upon thousands of hectares—just one head per many, many hectares of land. Further, the research sites have been selected to avoid or minimise environmental impact and to use only sites where cattle have grazed previously. These cattle will not be tearing up the bush as Labor and the Greens would lead people to believe. The Greens would like to see the national parks locked up and are anti everything Australians love about the great outdoors and hold near and dear to them. If the Greens get away with this bill then our national parks will be locked up and left for feral animals to rule and noxious weeds to spread over. With all the litter left lying around it would take only one spark for Black Saturday to be repeated—and no-one wants to see that again.

The areas and ecosystems the Greens claim will be damaged by grazing cattle in the Alpine National Park are the exact environments where controlled burning is not an appropriate measure to reduce the risk of bushfires, as above a certain altitude the use of this measure is not recommended. In fact, burning can do more damage, and cattle grazing is possibly the only tool which can reduce fuel loads in these areas. To those who claim that cattle will do significant damage to the environment, I say: a bushfire will do far worse. There has to be a balance. If grazing cattle will help reduce the chances of deadly fires then I fully support this measure.

The Greens and others opposed to the grazing have said that the research being conducted in this trial has been compromised. The overseeing scientist, Professor Mark Adams from Sydney University, has dismissed this claim, stating:

… there are plenty of areas where there aren’t cattle, where you can use as a reference for the areas where cattle have been introduced.

Claims that cattlemen are being paid, or paying, to participate in this trial are incorrect. The Mountain Cattlemen’s Association of Victoria supports the measure to allow grazing in the high country again, but they are neither being paid for its support nor paying to be included.

This bill is just further proof that Labor may be in government, albeit a very minor one, but the Greens are the ones definitely in power. Labor is pathetically subservient to the Greens’ agenda. This country was opened up by stout-hearted stockman, the mighty men of the Snowy River, on their horses—brumbies that run free. Do the Greens want the brumbies to go also? What about the hard-hoofed deer? Or do they just have a grudge against cattle because of the methane they produce?

These stockmen have grazed cattle in this area for decades and have managed high country ecosystems over this period. Only recently has it been decided that this should not continue. Why, I ask? Because this Labor government is being kept in power by the Greens and therefore they have to be seen to be doing something on this issue. The Greens are certainly setting the green agenda, but we don’t know what dangers are hidden in their social agenda. One thing is certain: it will be regional Australians who will bear the brunt of costs.

The Victorian government went to the polls on 27 November last year. A mandate was sought for this trial and not one Greens member won a seat in the lower house. People set the mandate: they do not want this bill to be passed. It is about time the Labor government started listening to the people and not the Greens, who govern for nobody.

See this speech in context