Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. The international community, including UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee, has shone a spotlight on our country's management of the Great Barrier Reef for more than a decade. In 2022, UNESCO and the International Union for Conservation of Nature made 22 recommendations to our governments to help retain the reef's World Heritage status. Those recommendations include improving our climate policies and emissions targets, improving water quality, stopping tree clearing in reef catchments and restoring coastal wetlands. The Australian and Queensland governments must now make good on those recommendations.

I want to focus today on the three major threats facing the reef identified by that report. The first is the threat of rapidly heating waters caused by climate change. Climate change is the biggest threat to our reef. Since 2016, the reef has suffered from four mass bleaching events. Corals are very sensitive to temperature changes. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that, if we allow global warming to reach two degrees, we will lose 99 per cent of our coral reefs.

The government's current target of 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 is in line with two degrees of warming, with loss of 99 per cent of the world's coral reefs. Therefore, the single most important action this government can take to protect the Great Barrier Reef is to increase its emissions reduction target to 75 per cent by 2030 and net zero by 2035 and to halt all new fossil fuel projects—coal mining, fracking and offshore oil and gas exploration.

The second major threat to the reef comes from water pollution from poor land management practices. Run-off from agricultural land includes nitrogen from excess fertiliser and sediment from overgrazing and land and tree clearing. Pesticides, nitrogen and phosphorus gel contribute to algal blooms and, subsequently, to uncontrolled spread of the crown-of-thorns starfish, which is responsible for more than 40 per cent of the reef's 3.4 per cent per year of coral decline. Sediment can smother both coral and the seagrass beds that marine life, such as threatened dugongs, depend upon. Both starfish and the sediment contribute to poor water quality, and they are major threats to the reef.

While Australia has set targets to reduce sediment and nitrogen running into the reef's waters, we are nowhere near meeting those targets. In September 2023, the World Heritage Committee again expressed serious concern regarding this delay. It has accepted the recommendation from UNESCO to give Australia until February 2024 to show progress on actions to protect the Great Barrier Reef, but we remain on notice. Government investment must be targeted towards those places that need it most. Now is the time for a major shift in the government's water quality programs, to focus on landscape restoration in the biggest pollution hot spots for the reef. Now is the time for a plan for how this government will tackle nitrogen from fertiliser use.

The third major threat comes from unsustainable commercial fishing. This is a major threat to the reef and to endangered wildlife. The Australian and Queensland governments have committed $160 million to remove all commercial gillnet licences by 2027, with most being removed this year, to create new net-free zones in areas of critical habitat. They have also undertaken to legislate for and implement independent monitoring of high-risk fishing activities. These commitments will reduce the risks of commercial fishing to iconic threatened species on the reef. They must be delivered within the committed time frames.

As a country we must soon report back to UNESCO on our progress in better protecting the Great Barrier Reef. That wonderful reef faces the fight of its life, a fight set to get harder with climate change and the forthcoming El Nino event. We must protect this unique national treasure for the sake of the reef itself, for the sake of the $6.4 billion tourism industry and for the sake of the 64,000 jobs that it supports.

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