George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The battle for fair access to their island home continues for the residents of Keswick Island. On Friday, I arranged another meeting to help address some of the issues. Keswick Island, 30 kilometres off the coast of Mackay, sits within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and is part of the South Cumberland Islands National Park. Twenty per cent of the island is leased for tourism and residential development. In 2019 the Palaszczuk Labor government approved the lease being transferred to foreign-owned company China Bloom. There are reports of numerous breaches to the lease agreement since then, resulting in some devastating environmental impacts, not only to the island itself but also to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

Keswick Island is used as a nesting site for turtles that lay their eggs above the high-tide mark between October and January. Despite this, a beach on the island was actually graded in November 2019, tearing up native dune vegetation and changing the relief of the beach by removing a bank of sand. The change in relief resulted in a turtle nest being inundated with water, destroying the nest.

That's not the only site of devastation. There has been clearing to make way for a new boat and trailer parking area after the lessee closed the existing boat access and built a new unapproved boat ramp. Another serious breach involved the excavation of a hillside to provide fill for road construction on the island. It appears that no approvals were sought, no engineering survey work was completed and no sediment controls were put in place. On one road, the soil and rubbish were pushed between existing rocks to make the road, but much of this was washed straight into the marine park during the next high tide event, and continuous erosion has occurred ever since. As a result, large sediment plumes can be seen in the marine park. There was even cleaning and maintenance work done on a ferry right over the top of the water off the island—no bunding or anything put in place—with debris going into the drink.

On Friday last week I arranged for residents and members of the Keswick Island Progress Association to meet with the CEO of GBRMPA and other key staff to discuss their concerns about the actions of China Bloom, particularly around the sediment run-off. The residents showed footage and photos to GBRMPA and to me of corals close to the island completely smothered in the sediment. I believe GBRMPA were alarmed to see this, but rightly told us that the right authority to police it was the state Labor government. However, GBRMPA were concerned enough about the reports and material they saw to be going to write to the state government asking for the matter to be investigated. They also said they would have their investigation team look over it in case there were any breaches.

Conditions of China Bloom's lease agreement with the department of resources involves conserving physical, biological values; not clearing vegetation; and protecting the land from erosion. That isn't happening, so, once again, I call on the Palaszczuk government to act and terminate the head lease to Keswick Island.

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