Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

This question's been asked so many times and it's been answered by the minister again and again. I just remind the honourable member a submission was brought by the Minister for the Environment and Energy in the normal way through the cabinet process. The Great Barrier Reef Foundation, as the honourable member knows very well, is extremely well known to the Department of the Environment and Energy, having dealt with it for many years and particularly in the administration of a grant made to the foundation at the time the honourable member was minister.

So the grant was made pursuant to a cabinet process. It's been fully documented. The due diligence process the minister has described. But the important thing is it is going to protect the Great Barrier Reef. This is the point that the honourable member fails to pay due regard to. The Great Barrier Reef, under the Labor government, got to the point of being on the edge, as it were, of falling onto the endangered list of UNESCO. A very, very considerable effort had to be undertaken in order to persuade UNESCO that the policies and programs being applied to the reef, both currently and prospectively, were going to maintain its health. This is part of that commitment. The money is going to a foundation very well known to the department and indeed to the minister and it will be administered over six years to protect the Great Barrier Reef. And you would think that that is an outcome that honourable members opposite would be supporting.

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