Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Macquarie would know, if she had done any research at all, because in 2009, in a joint initiative with the New South Wales Labor government, we undid the damage and brought the site back, providing National Reserve System funding to support the New South Wales Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water. Cranebrook is now managed for conservation by the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage as part of the Wianamatta Regional Park—a little bit information the member for Macquarie might want to find out about before she goes off on some half-baked criticism of the government. That of course is home for 10 per cent of the remaining Castlereagh Swamp Woodland endangered ecological community.

In addition to this, in 2010 the Gillard government committed up to $7.5 million to connect important bushland and habitat to consolidate the Cumberland Conservation Corridor. On top of that $7.5 million to buy property to connect the corridor, we are also providing support for the Western Sydney region through our flagship environmental initiative Caring for our Country. This program will invest $2 billion over five years nationally and focuses on landscape-scale measures. In Western Sydney regions the government has provided the Hawkesbury-Nepean Catchment Management Authority with over $9 million over four years from 2009-10 and $2.6 million over three years from 2010-11. This funding is for improved natural resource management, and in the Hawkesbury-Nepean region focuses on increasing native habitat for nationally threatened species, including in the Cumberland Plain Woodland. The member for Macquarie might be silent on these matters, because it certainly makes her press release much more interesting if she can claim, falsely, that the government is doing nothing. But, again, if you want to discover the environment, discover what is actually being done as well.

See this speech in context