Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Labor supports this bill, the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust Amendment Bill 2021. This bill will ensure that a range of nationally significant heritage sites within the Sydney Harbour area will remain publicly-owned and managed by the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust in perpetuity. These amendments will also revise the eligibility criteria for appointment to the board of the harbour trust to better ensure that members have the skills and expertise required for this important task in the future, including expertise in areas such as heritage, tourism, military service and business development. Insofar as these changes help protect Sydney Harbour, they are sensible and I welcome them.

Sydney Harbour, as the Leader of the Opposition said, is a special place, not just for those lucky enough to live on its shores but for all Australians. I think tourists coming to Australia from around the world have that image of Sydney Harbour—the Harbour Bridge; the Opera House; our New Year's Eve fireworks; the beautiful jewel of Sydney Harbour—in their minds when they first think of coming to Australia. Labor's essential approach to our beautiful harbour is to make sure that that beauty can be available to as many Australians and as many visitors as possible.

Lloyd Rees, one of our best-known Australian artists, did so much of his work around Sydney Harbour, and he said of the harbour: 'The first glimpse, a picture of a circular frame, opal blue water, a band of golden sand, another of silver-green trees; above them a skyline of coral pink, shimmering against the limpid air. In that first long look Sydney cast her spell and it remains with me ever since.' Lloyd Rees was an extraordinary painter of Sydney Harbour. He had a long friendship with Tom Uren, whom the Leader of the Opposition was talking about earlier, and one of the things that brought them together was that love of Sydney Harbour.

It is a natural site that is close to the heart of most Australians, but we Sydneysiders are particularly in love with our harbour. It is a place of immense heritage value as well as immense natural value. Of course it has tens of thousands of years of First Nations history right along its shores: beautiful hidden paintings and carvings all along the shores—special places with thousands of years of history. It has convict history right along its shores, too. And it has an industrial history. Those of us in the Labor Party have always supported a working harbour. We are in love as much with the old machinery on Cockatoo Island and around the dry docks of Sydney Harbour on Garden Island—the beautiful old buildings—as we are with the natural history. And of course it has that naval history as well. I was again recently at Garden Island seeing the phenomenal work that's going on to upgrade the wharves and other facilities there. From the history of the Eora nation, to the first sight of British settlement, to the docks where immigrants arrived after World War II, to the global city that Sydney is now, the story of Australia can be told in Sydney Harbour, where natural beauty meets that very deep history.

In supporting this bill, Labor calls on the government to ensure that any future commercial activities that may be proposed within these sites are strictly compliant with the values of the sites and the wishes of our communities around the shores of Sydney Harbour. Of course we believe that these areas should be used. As the Leader of the Opposition said, we've had great concerts on Cockatoo Island, there's camping, there's restaurants and there are all sorts of opportunities to use our harbour islands and to use our foreshores, but we have to do that in a way that is sustainable and sympathetic. These are public lands and the trust has a duty to keep them accessible and to keep them democratic.

Sydney Harbour should be a place where any Australian can go, where they don't need a dollar in their pocket to enjoy the natural beauty of Sydney Harbour, and we want that for tourists as well. We want everybody, all-comers, to be able to enjoy our harbour, whether it's our New Year's Eve fireworks, one of the biennale exhibitions on Cockatoo Island, a Nick Cave concert, camping or whatever it is. We want those things to be available as equally as possible to all Australians.

We in the Labor Party have a long history of fighting for this democratic accessibility to this beautiful natural gift. It was the first New South Wales Labor government and its Secretary for Lands, Niels Nielsen, who began the campaign against privatisation of our harbour foreshore lands, against the alienation of that land from public use, launching the Foreshore Resumption Scheme, which returned large tracts of harbour foreshore land to the people of New South Wales. Niels Nielsen inspired Tom Uren in his fight for the national estate and also for a working harbour. It was the Carr Labor government that so dramatically improved the water quality of Sydney Harbour that has seen a return to oysters and other molluscs growing in the harbour, that has seen the beautiful little seahorses that have been bred up and released again into Sydney Harbour and that has seen whales and even sea lions and penguins return to the harbour. It was the Carr Labor government that returned the land on Ballast Point to the people of Sydney.

Also, more recently, my very dear friend and former colleague former Senator John Faulkner, and my very good friend Lachlan Harris helped launch a wonderful walk—and I think this will become one of the great walks around the world—from Bondi to Manly, going through all of those harbourside suburbs, passing historic homes, passing Aboriginal rock carvings and sacred places, passing through the industrial and naval historic sites and going through the remnant bushland that is so precious on the shores of Sydney Harbour. I believe that that Bondi-to-Manly walk will be—when we're allowed to travel again—one of those things that attracts tourists from all over the world to Sydney. That walk sees Bondi and Manly, two of the most iconic beaches in the world, linked by the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, the historic homes and the bushland. What a marvellous opportunity for people to do that walk. Thank you to all of the councils and the private and public landholders who have supported this walk.

We need to make sure that we continue to protect the remnant bushland along the shores of Sydney Harbour. When you look at those tracts of bush and think how fortunate we are to have kept bushland running right down to our beaches, to our coastal walks and to our harbour foreshores, honestly, we owe a debt of gratitude not only to the foresight of people like Niels Nielsen, Tom Uren, Bob Carr and John Faulkner, who have fought so hard to protect our harbour foreshore but also to the residents' groups all around the foreshore of Sydney Harbour and right up the Parramatta River who have fought so hard to make sure that our bushland is protected and public access to our beautiful harbour is protected.

Can I say, Mr Deputy Speaker, much as I love Sydney Harbour, and I think you've probably picked up that I do, and as much as I value the opportunity for every Australian and every visitor to Australia to have the see our beautiful harbour, swim in it, view the fireworks and so on, there is one thing that I do believe is missing from Sydney Harbour. There is something that I would like to see either on one of the harbour islands or in an appropriate place somewhere on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, and that is a national museum and cultural facility for First Nations Australians' culture and history. When you look at great museums like this around the world, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC or the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, you think about what we could have on Sydney Harbour, particularly if it was on one of the harbour islands. I can imagine arriving by boat, as you quite often do at the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, such a fantastic tourism draw to Hobart. You can imagine Sydneysiders and people from around New South Wales, from around Australia and from around the world coming to this gateway to Australia and seeing the depth and the richness of 60,000 years of First Nations culture and history. I think Sydney Harbour would be an amazing backdrop for such a museum and I would hope that one day we will see such a museum in Sydney.

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