Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have a lot of respect for the minister at the table, the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, and I am disappointed to hear what he has been saying about national parks. Why am I disappointed? Because his attitude is like the attitude of ministers of the Crown in the Greiner government in 1992, when I warned them that a fire of a magnitude that they would never have seen before was going to occur in the Kosciuszko National Park. I warned my volunteer firefighters, when I was representing that area, not to go into the park under any circumstances, because there was that much fuel in there that, if a lightning strike hit it, it would create a massive problem, not only for their safety but also for biodiversity.

In 2003, as a result of incompetence within the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, that fire happened. It created a massive problem for the park and had a massive impact on its ecology, to the extent that, in some sections of the Kosciuszko, particularly on the Victorian side, the ground is sterilised 15 to 16 feet below the surface, and the soil, if you pick it up in your hands, is like talcum powder. There was more biodiversity destroyed in that fire than has ever been destroyed or threatened by mankind before.

History has shown that, when the cattle were grazing in the high country, the fires were lesser than they are today. It is okay to have an ideological view that might be friendly to and appreciative of the Greens—that you and your government are holding very desperately onto government with, Minister—but the reality is that the sort of dogma and nonsense that you are espousing in this chamber today will have a massive impact on the Kosciuszko. You talk about future generations and protecting the biodiversity of places like the Kosciuszko by keeping cattle out. Minister, I say to you what I said to the Greiner government in 1992: you are going in the wrong direction. If you want to save the Kosciuszko for future generations, stop this nonsense about locking people out and letting the weeds and feral animals within proliferate.

I have been up in the Kosciuszko many, many times. In fact, I made a short film about the Kosciuszko and the history of mankind in the Kosciuszko. You go up into the Kosciuszko today and, because of the feral cats and wild dogs there, you cannot hear a bird. There are no birds up there in some sections of the Kosciuszko, because of the incompetence of successive governments, at both the state and federal levels, who do not seem to understand that man can live in harmony with the environment. It has been done for over a century in the Kosciuszko National Park. I can tell you, Minister, it breaks my heart to hear you in this chamber today blame people like the cattlemen of this country, who not only have created history but with their cattle grazing have also done more to protect the national parks than anybody else. The Aborigines used to burn the parks in the past. Why did they burn them? They burnt them to get the sweet grass growing so that the kangaroos would come down and make it easier for them to take the kangaroos for food.

I am passionate about this; I probably sound passionate about it. Let me say to you, Minister: please rethink your direction because, if you do not, not only are you going to threaten the maintenance of biodiversity in the Kosciuszko National Park; you are going to place in danger volunteer firefighters, who are the people who will go in there and fight the fires. It will not be the Greens, or you as a minister, or a politician—it will be volunteers, who give their time freely, who because of the nonsense that you have espoused here today will go in and try to put out what is inevitably going to be another wildfire in the Kosciusko National Park. I say that with a heavy heart, Minister, because I do respect you. I think you are a highly intelligent individual and I am surprised that you have brought this sort of debate into this chamber.

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