Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

Could I firstly acknowledge the motion that has been put by the member for Watson and which I have seconded. I endorse totally the member for Watson's remarks and refute the objectionable concerns expressed by the previous speaker around the member for Watson, who, as the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, was a very good minister and did a great deal, despite what the previous member said.

I know not a lot about the Royal National Park, but I do know a lot about World Heritage listing because there are a number of national parks in my own electorate. Principally, there are Kakadu and Uluru-Kata Tjuta, but there are also two other national parks in my electorate which are administered by the Commonwealth, one of which is on Christmas Island and the other on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. There's no question that two of the most iconic national parks in this country, Kakadu and Uluru, are both World Heritage listed for their natural and cultural attributes, and there's no question about their importance in preserving their natural heritage and also the cultural heritage of those two wonderful properties.

It's worth pointing out, though, that there is some concern being expressed which I think is well worth understanding. A lot of international visitors don't appear to be availing themselves of the opportunity to visit our national parks. Indeed, I discovered this morning that, of all the visitors to 15 national landscape areas featured in a recent Tourism & Transport Forum report on nature based tourism, only four per cent of these are international visitors. That raises a couple of issues, but most of all it raises an opportunity. Clearly, we're underselling our national parks and their importance as opportunities for cultural and natural tourism for the environmental values of those parks. Despite the advertising campaigns that appear to be happening regularly, we don't appear to be able to attract those tourists to our national parks.

I might point out that there are real opportunities to be garnered here. The way in which we've entered the joint management arrangements—particularly at Kakadu and Uluru—is important because it gives a primary interface with Aboriginal people in those parks and their cultural heritage concerns and makes them important sites in their own right. But there is more that can be done. Of that, there is absolutely no question. I think that, as we enter these discussions further about the attributes of World Heritage listing and the importance of our parks, and the importance of joint management and understanding the cultural and heritage values of these parks, what we need to understand is that we've got a greater capacity than we currently exercise to engage with local communities and local community members and traditional owners, in this case, in both Uluru and Kakadu. There's no reason, in my view, why new partnerships can't be forged beyond what currently exists for fire control, weed and feral animal management control—particularly in places like Kakadu—and the obvious opportunities for improving their role in cultural heritage management.

I do want to commend the national parks workers for their commitment to preserving the natural heritage and for their engagement with the local communities around cultural heritage values. Over the many years since the establishment of Uluru as a park in 1987—you'll recall we had celebrations about that recently—under the Aboriginal land rights act the land was claimed and won back and then leased to the Commonwealth for the benefit of the nation, as happened in Kakadu where:

Most of the land that was to become part of Stage One of Kakadu National Park was granted to the Kakadu Aboriginal Land Trust under the Land Rights Act in August 1978 and, in November 1978, the Land Trust and the Director signed a lease agreement for the land to be managed as a national park.

That's been the history of these two parks. They have been Aboriginal land that the Aboriginal people have given back to the nation to operate as parks for the betterment of the nation. For that, they deserve great acclaim.

The parks on Christmas and Cocos are different entirely, but both have significant natural attributes of great importance to preserving identity—for example, the rainforest on Christmas Island. On Cocos (Keeling) Islands is one particularly important site, the resting place of the Emden, the mighty ship that was sunk by HMAS Sydney. (Time expired)

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