Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much to the member for Herbert, who has been one of the absolute champions of the Great Barrier Reef. Let me begin in the easiest way: yes, I will commit to meet with the council, yourself and the councillor, to discuss options for improving water quality. Believe it or not just an hour ago I met with one of the great companies of Australia, GE Australia—which is a subsidiary of one of the great companies of the world. They indicated to me that they would be partnering with local councils up and down the Great Barrier Reef on sewage treatment proposals under the National Stronger Regions Fund. The simple answer is that the Stronger Regions Fund should, hopefully, be a possible source of funding; it is to be administered by a different department so I would not pre-empt that. I would encourage not just the City of Townsville but other municipal authorities up and down the reef to consider the Stronger Regions Fund. I know that one great water company is involved, GE; other great water companies may well seek to be involved in technology provision. There are real opportunities.

Stepping back to the question about UNESCO; I am absolutely delighted that the draft decision from the World Heritage Centre—which informs the World Heritage Committee, both of which sit under UNESCO—is that the Great Barrier Reef should not be listed as endangered, and there was also considerable praise for Australia. I think we should be fair and recognise that much of the work began under previous governments and has continued over successive governments. Having said that, of course, we inherited three previous decisions which had the reef on a track to endangered status, but it came off under our watch—pending, of course, the final vote. I have previously said to UNESCO that the process has helped people make reforms in Australia. I think that is the plain truth; it has helped us achieve things. Of course, the reef does have its challenges—it would be wrong of anyone not to say that—but it also has its enormous successes. If the world were establishing a world heritage list from scratch today, in my view the first natural property they should and would inscribe would be the Great Barrier Reef as it is today. It is majestic, it is extraordinary, it is 2,300 kilometres long and it is the greatest coral system in the world, by an order of magnitude.

We have done three big things. Firstly, we inherited a massive list of potential dredge proposals involving disposal in the marine park. There were five major proposals amounting to approximately 60 million cubic metres of disposal in the marine park. All those five are gone in terms of disposal in the marine park—all gone. We then put in, as part of the radical change in dredge disposal practices, a once-in-a-century ban on dredge disposal in the marine park. In my view, that practice will never come back. History will look back on this as one of the signature environmental achievements of the Abbott government. The UN has certainly said that this was fundamental to their decision.

Secondly, we then went on to develop the Reef 2050 plan. I thank the member and other members, such as the member for Leichhardt, for their involvement. That Reef 2050 plan sets out—and this was developed with successive Queensland governments—a plan for sediment reduction, nitrogen reduction and pesticide reduction. Those are real things that change the quality of seagrass and of the marine environment where fish breed, and they improve water quality for coral health.

Then we backed that up. There is a $2 billion plan over 10 years, but that has been added to with $100 million from Queensland and $140 million from the Commonwealth through the Reef Trust. That will go to sediment reduction, nitrogen reduction and pesticide reduction. For example, we recently opened a $3 million program in the Burdekin calling for tenders for nitrogen reduction on a lowest-cost-per-unit basis. It will also go to the crown-of-thorns starfish and to monitoring. I recognise that more monitoring is needed. I thank the member for Herbert. He is a passionate advocate for Townsville. He is just as passionate in his support for the reef.

See this speech in context