Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Initially I was not going to speak on the motion moved by the member for Gippsland to disallow the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment Regulations 2011 (No. 1), but I have been quite interested to hear what a number of speakers have actually said and, in particular, what the member for Hume has said because I was in that parliament in 1992 when a number of those issues were raised. Enough time has passed to show that on some of the issues that were raised back then—and I would like to think I was one of those that raised those issues at that time—mistakes were made in land management. Even though this debate is about whether or not a cow should be allowed in a national park and whether or not the cow can actually have some impact on fires and biodiversity, I think the broader debate that does need to be had is the one about land use since Aboriginals—and the member for Hume touched on this. We have a landscape that has been based largely on interference by humans—those humans being, of course, Aboriginals. I think most of us would be aware of the Aboriginals' checker plate type of burning arrangements—which is what I think the member for Hume was talking about—to attract kangaroo and other animal activity for hunting purposes and also to preserve their own lives so that massive bushfires would not take place. As to whether the cow actually replaces the Aboriginal in these areas that we are talking about, I am not qualified to say, but I think we should have a very close look at it in considering our broader land management issues.

The member for Hume would remember all that. And we still have a time bomb ticking in the Blue Mountains, given the warning signals that have gone out. The groundcover and debris loads in parts of the Blue Mountains will eventually lead to absolute destruction of some of those areas, including the communities that live in them. All of us who sit in this place have heard, 'Let it return to nature; let nature take its course.' The nature that we are talking about has been created by humans—the Aboriginal people. Even though we neglect them in many ways, perhaps, before it is too late, we should consult with these people on how to manage some of these systems, because the very biodiversity that we are talking about has essentially been created by them. I have got such areas in my electorate, the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. There have been debates, just as we had in the nineties in the New South Wales parliament—and I am sure they were carried out in other states as well—and arguments about lantana and blackberry control, as have been mentioned by various members today, and about what occurs as to the biodiversity and the weed and feral animal issues when you remove humans from that environment. Some suggest that if you leave it long enough it will all return to the way it was. It was a managed system in some sense and we are doing our best to take Aboriginals out of the landscape rather than putting them back into it. We cannot return it to the way it was, so in some sense this city based view that you do nothing—that is, let nature take its course—has a misguided objective.

The other instance that I would raise—and I know this might be a little bit outside the debate but I think it is pertinent to the wider land management debate—is the absolute desecration that is taking place in Central Australia as I speak. Because the majority of people do not go there—although I do; that is where I go on holidays, and it is magnificent country—they do not see the impact of feral camels and the climate change issues that are happening in some areas where in recent decades there has been more rain than in the past. That situation will not last forever. But there has been a massive explosion in camel numbers with massive destruction. I have had the pleasure of going up and down the Canning Stock Route a number of times and along many of the old desert tracks and whatever that are out there, and the destruction of natural waterholes and natural vegetation is just appalling. So I, here and now, make the plea that something has to be done. I know there are issues before the current government in terms of carbon farming initiatives and methane, so it could be by that or by direct bounty or vermin control.

There has been a lot of preoccupation with this particular issue before us as to whether a cow is going to create the future or desecrate the future, but I think there are other issues out there that should be looked at much more closely. I think the city should start to pay some attention, because a lot of this is about politics. Whether it be National Party donations or the green vote, it is about politics rather than land management. From time to time the landowners who are park neighbours and whose land is plagued by a whole range of other things—the feral animals and weeds that come out of some of these areas—get a little bit burnt up about the way that politicians respond to some of the national park management issues.

Last night I happened to run into a great Australian. I refer to Keith Payne, whom I had met before and I think most people would know by name, so I do not have to describe who he is. He had flown into Canberra yesterday from Western Australia via Alice Springs, and I met him last night. I had not realised that he has been very involved with Aboriginal communities in feral animal control, particularly camels, and they had been out yesterday and had shot 457 camels. Keith made the plea, and I agree wholeheartedly with him, that we have to do something about this issue. Although people on this side of the chamber will probably disagree, I think carbon farming initiatives are probably the vehicle that should be used. But whether it is the carbon farming initiatives or something else we have to inject some funds into solving this problem. When that country dries up again, that is when the politics will kick in. If you have been in Docker River when it is dry and seen a mob of camels go through town, you will know that it is not a pleasant sight, because they take the toilet bowls with them. That is when the politics and the expense of repairing some of these desecrations will occur.

I will be supporting the member for Gippsland's motion, not that I am a scientist in terms of this issue but because there are two broader issues that are crying out to be addressed here. The member for Melbourne is quite right: the Victorians spent a lot of money recently on a royal commission looking into fires. Fire management post Aboriginal occupation has to be examined. Some people think that everything is just going to return to nature. It cannot. It would take thousands of years to get back to something that, possibly, looked like what was there before the fire-stick technology brought in by the Aboriginal people. They did not do that just to preserve the biodiversity; they did that to preserve themselves.

We have all got some pristine and magnificent areas in our electorates. We have to make sure there is some degree of management in those systems to prevent the loss of life and the loss of that very diversity that we are all talking about saving.

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