Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this motion, and I want to congratulate the member for Mackellar for putting this before the House today, because it is an issue that is so important to the future of our marine environment but also an issue that I know has touched the hearts and minds of so many Sydneysiders and indeed Australians. That's reflected in the views that I've heard loudly and clearly from my own constituents. Australia is famously a nation girt by sea. Our coastline and our marine environment have shaped the development of our nation for tens of thousands of years, and that is the case no more so than in the area that is covered by the Sydney Basin and our coastal environment. Sydney is home to the most magnificent harbour in the world, and that joins what is the most magnificent coastline of any capital city in this country, I'm confident to say.

But of course that has not always been the case. It's fair to say that, for more than a century, Australians and Sydneysiders treated their harbour and their coastline poorly. For too long our harbour was used as a drain for industrial waste and stormwater, which has been slowly addressed. Our coastline, our beaches and our seas were used as dumping grounds for sewage. It was those phenomena that led to great community activism. Sydneysiders were not prepared to tolerate a harbour that was increasingly becoming more and more polluted and not sustaining the incredible biodiversity which for so long it had sustained. Off our coastline we were certainly not willing to tolerate the fact that our swimmers shared the waters with—how can I put this euphemistically?—Mr Hankey, the Christmas poo. That's probably the best way to describe it! That led to incredible community activism which over the last three decades has seen phenomenal change in the way in which we manage our harbour and coasts, and that is how it should be. So, instead of seeing that pollution that once we witnessed, we now have a harbour that is home to seals and incredible marine diversity and we have a coastline today which is famous not for Mr Hankey but for the whales that migrate along the shoreline each year and are now a source of great inspiration to so many people.

It's no surprise that our coastline and harbour are revered by all Australians, and it's equally no surprise to me, as someone who worked in the tourism industry before coming to this place, that it is one of the things that attracts international visitors to Australia most frequently. I know that when we survey those visitors from some of our major markets and ask them what was special about their visit to Sydney, the answer is so often, 'Clean skies and blue waters.' That is something that we have an obligation to protect.

We have seen that incredible change, but we know that the risks still exist. We cannot put that at risk through activities such as exploration and drilling for gas. When I go to Barrenjoey Lighthouse in your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Falinski, as I did a few months ago, and sit in the serenity of the rocks overlooking the ocean, I want the chance to glimpse whales and dolphins. I don't want to sit there looking at drilling rigs marring the horizon which otherwise is so peaceful. I want to ensure that we, as a government, are making sure that that marine environment, which has so much improved, remains something that actually continues to improve and that the rich diversity of our marine ecosystems continues to flourish and to recover. And that's why I think this motion is so important: because the PEP 11 exploration licence does put those values at risk, not just from the impact, visually, from our coastline but also from the risk it poses to the very marine diversity that is such an important part of the Sydney experience.

So I really want to say to the governments, the ministers, that will make this decision before February next year: you have the chance to make sure that what every Sydneysider loves about our great part of the world is preserved and protected, and you can do that by doing what we did, just as the member for Wentworth alluded to, with the Great Barrier Reef, in banning exploration and drilling there, under the Fraser government. We say that exploration and drilling for gas is not and will never be acceptable for the wonderful coastal environment that is our legacy and our responsibility to protect and preserve.

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