Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to support my colleagues the members for Gippsland, McMillan and Hume. It grieves me to disagree with the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, because I must say that this minister has been very good to me in my electorate. He has come up and looked at the problems I have had, even environmental problems like the bats. When we had trouble with the bats he promised me that he would try to influence the state ministers to be a bit more amenable to the problems that people had regarding the bats. I might tell you, Minister, it is still a dreadful problem. But that is not what we are talking about today; we are talking about the alpine regions of New South Wales and Victoria.

I think it is perfectly reasonable for the state government of Victoria to ask for a trial and to have a controlled trial. Why should we be worried about doing a trial in a controlled area with a controlled number of cattle? What reasonable person could object to that? I will tell you why people object to it: the risk might be that if the trial proved successful there would be pressure for other parts of the park to be opened up to grazing. So, if you do not want to do anything like that, you knock it on the head. Although the minister crafted a very interesting story about the words 'national parks', the word national was used way back, well before we developed a sense of nationalism in this country. It was a term that was used overseas, in America, and we adopted it here when the states started to put aside special parts of the country for the preservation of the ecology of those areas. I do not think it ever had the context of the federal government imposing its will of protection over it. That might be the case with Heritage areas, but it was not the case with national parks.

Who controls the national parks, when it really gets down to the practicality of it? It is the state governments. It is their environmental departments or their agriculture or primary industry departments. It is their police and emergency workers who have to go into the parks in times of fire and flood. All those sorts of workers, down to SES volunteers, rural firemen and firewomen, are godchildren of the state governments. They are the people who have to effectively carry out the work. It is all well and good for the federal government to use an international convention to bludgeon a state government. That has happened time and time again in this country—total overkill, using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The number of times that international conventions have been used to suppress the intentions of a state government is totally disproportionate.

What do we see across Australia in all states? We get governments from time to time of both political persuasions—but I suspect probably more Labor ones than not—that have the idea to name a national park. Everyone feels all warm and fuzzy and everyone says, 'Oh, good! Isn't that marvellous!' But what do you see a year or two later? You see feral animals running all over them and there are no fuel reduction measures going on. I can remember one in my own area. It cries out to heaven, in much the same way as the member for Hume described parts of the alpine region. There are some beautiful wallum and some other plants—the name escapes me for the minute. There is a magnificent national park which has huge dead craggy trees with huge eagles nests on them. Before I got into parliament I was in charge of tourism in the area. I remember the ranger came to see me in desperation. He asked, 'Is there anything you can do with the Parks and Wildlife people or with the local council?' The ranger, John Byrne—I remember his name well—said, 'We're going to lose that whole park.' All he wanted to do was put some firebreaks through it—a simple thing. No. Even though he was their ranger, Parks and Wildlife would not let him do it, nor would the local council and, as sure as night follows day, we had a bushfire—and what a bobby-dazzler it was! It burnt out 70 per cent of the national park, and those magnificent eagles and all that went with it. Why do we have to demonise all the time grazing that has been going on for 150 years? As two of the speakers before me pointed out, people have got into the park through the activities of the cattlemen and have been able to appreciate that high country. I think it is reasonable for the state government of Victoria to conduct a trial and make its findings publicly known. The minister I think was a bit florid in his description of National Party members before, and I take some offence at that because I pride myself on being a practical conservationist. I do not go around thumping my breast and saying, 'Oh, isn't this dreadful?' or, 'Isn't that dreadful?' I like to do things like getting weed machines into salvinia and water hyacinth, ripping them out of our streams and making them pristine again. Previous ministers of the Howard government helped me do that. In fact, it overflowed into areas outside my electorate. The machines went on to clear lots of streams and dams.

I have spoken to the minister at the table, the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, when he has come to Bundaberg. I want to reopen the mouth of the Elliott River because the mangroves and things are dying. I probably had more Green Corps projects in my electorate under the Howard government than anyone else because I fostered them and I felt they did good work. I had a $2 million or $3 million study into some of the birds that come from Russia down to Queensland during the season. I have done a lot of work on the restoration of beaches through various government programs. I do not see myself standing in front of a tree, in front of a bulldozer. That is not my form of green power. My form of green power is doing practical things for the environment, not only so that people can enjoy it but also so that you remove feral influences from the environment and make it better.

I think a lot of the national parks in this country are very poorly run, and the state governments in many instances do not pull their weight. But when the Victorian government want to run a trial in a controlled area of land with a controlled number of cattle I think it is wrong to demonise them. I support the members for Gippsland, McMillan and Hume in their comments today and I ask the minister to think carefully on this subject.

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