Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker Grierson, for taking the chair early to enable me to speak to this motion. The National Landcare Network is thousands of locally based community groups who care for the natural resources of our country and do a magnificent job. Australia is proud to boast more than 4,000 community Landcare groups, 2,000 Coastcare groups and many thousands of volunteers across the country. Through Australia's people and communities, the Landcare movement is making a big difference in caring for our country and has done so for many, many years. All around Australia Landcare volunteers are proving that together we can repair, revitalise and manage our precious natural resources.

This unique partnership between communities, government and organisations is achieving many great things, including improving our farmlands. Many primary producers are active participants in Landcare, and many in my electorate of Lyons are very active and have done lots of work over many, many years. They make significant contributions in combating soil salinity and erosion through very sound land management practices and sustainable productivity. More and more people are seeing the importance of the economic benefit to be gained from doing things in a sustainable, scientific way.

More than 40 per cent of farmers are involved in Landcare and many more practice Landcare farming. Groups involved in breathing new life into our waterways work to conserve, rehabilitate and better manage our creeks, rivers, river systems, and wetlands, and there are a lot in my electorate of Lyons, which takes up about 50 per cent of the land mass of Tasmania. Groups work to conserve all those waterways in a great way, and I have seen the benefits that are achieved by people working on their weekends and holidays, putting things back together as they should be in a natural way. Around our coasts, Coastcare groups are active in improving local coastal and maritime environments, and there are many of those groups around the great amount of coastline that makes up the Lyons electorate—the whole east coast, basically, of Tasmania and some of the northern and southern coasts as well. Every year, Landcare plants many millions of native trees, shrubs and grasses for a range of benefits, including improved soil and water quality and, of course, to stop bare land being there and blowing away or being eroded. They restore bushland and conserve sensitive areas on both public and private land.

So today I would like to recognise Landcare Week, which ran from 3 to 9 September, and to give recognition to the thousands of volunteers who work all year round to keep our land and waterways clear of weeds and erosion and restore them to good health. Using the words from their website, 'From the farm to the city, Landcare is for everyone.' Landcare connects community groups, farmers, governments, business, industry, scientists, researchers, schools and youth groups to work together to protect our land and coast for future generations.

I think it was Joan Kirner in Victoria who actually started a pilot program of Landcare, and we should give some recognition to how that occurred. I think my colleague who preceded me, the member for Capricornia, brought in what occurred later on in the Hawke government, who took it on and made a commitment for 10 years. Since then, the coalition governments have taken it on, because these are good projects. They certainly unite people to do good work in their communities and restore natural vegetation and natural processes. This is very good, and of course most of it is done in a great voluntary way in that great Australian process of all getting in, getting your hands dirty and achieving good results. I congratulate all those involved as volunteers.

Debate adjourned.

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