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

I know, he is a good guy, he has got good taste. Swamps are great places if you are into the wonders of nature, they are quite special. But the alpine swamps are very, very special. They are special because they are almost a mistake. They happen because, just below the snow melt, the land is flat, and as the cold air comes down it stops the vegetation from growing. As the snow melts the sphagnum moss swamps develop. The material, called sphagnum moss, which is actually used in nappies because it is so absorbent, extends quite significantly far below the land and absorbs the snow melt and then releases it slowly over a period of time. They are phenomenal, almost a mistake of nature, a fluke of nature and something that human beings would never have thought of and could not have created. They are something that happens where they are needed and need no maintenance. I dare any human engineer to come up with something so extraordinary.

Yet, at the moment, we have the New South Wales government following the path of the Victorian government and bringing cattle back into those swamps. As a person who has spent considerable time in those areas marvelling at this wonder, this functioning part of our ecosystem,—not just for the natural environment but for the human beings who live on the springs and watercourses that flow from those sphagnum moss swamps—that you would put cattle back into something that is that fragile and that special is quite beyond my comprehension. Similarly, we have the New South Wales government agreeing now to bring shooters back into our national parks. I joke about it, although it is not funny, that I will be looking for lyrebirds in hi-vis vests in our national parks, but we do actually have a government that is allowing shooters back into our national parks.

I want to return to the bill because I want to talk about the role of the Indigenous traditional owners in the way they care for the land which is their custodial home. We have seen an extraordinary display of this over many years when it comes to Koongarra, something that all of us, as a nation, will benefit from. We will all benefit from the care that they show.

In my electorate of Parramatta we have a number of clans of the Darug nation. Where I live, I am on the traditional lands of the Burramattagal clan of the Darug nation. It was a very small clan, it varied between about 50 and 200 people, and its lands were a really quite small area which extended down the river from a place called The Crescent, which was a natural amphitheatre on the Parramatta River—where surprisingly we have actually built an amphitheatre and a stage—to the mouth of the Duck Creek. It is a tiny little area. We still have some descendants of the Burramattagal clan that live in the area, but very few. As a group they have lost the history of their clan because they have moved so often and they have come and gone. We have a number of people that come from elsewhere, whose relatives lived in the area at various times who have some of the history, but we lost a considerable treasure when we lost tens of thousands of years of history in relation to the land on which we live. We know that there are some very special places on the Parramatta River. We know that the site of the original female convict factory was the sacred women's site, for example. We built the convict factory for women on the sacred women's site, which is interesting. We know that where we build the government house was the sacred men's site. That is perhaps an interesting statement on us. Our knowledge of our land and the way in which it was cared for and the stories about its creation are something that is lost to us. So, when we as a nation see these extraordinary examples of a people standing up and arguing so strongly for their heritage and their history and assisting to protect it for all of us, we should all be profoundly grateful. We have lost so much as a nation, and this is an example of something of incredible value to us all.

Can I commend the minister for the environment Tony Burke. It was a great week last week. We have had some extraordinary achievements as a government. The marine parks is one of those moments I will probably remember in years to come. But this is a very, very special one, because Kakadu is in our hearts as a nation. It is part of who we think we are. It is an image of this continent that we live in which sits in all of our minds, and it is now a little more complete than it was because of the work of these traditional owners. I personally thank them for the years of work and commit to getting up there at some point. It is on my bucket list, in fact it is at the top of my bucket list. Mr Perrett is nodding as well. I think it is on the top of all of our bucket lists. And now it is an even more extraordinary place to visit.

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