Bruce Baird (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My electorate of Cook is lucky enough to boast the site of first landfall of Captain James Cook and the crew of the Endeavour. It was at Kurnell that the Endeavour dropped anchor, it was there that Cook first stepped ashore and it was there that Indigenous and European cultures first met. It was from Cook’s landing and scientific surveys that the decision was made by the British government to establish the colony of New South Wales on the shore of Botany Bay. It was from Cook’s exploration of Australia that European settlement radiated out across the Australian continent—the place in which the shared history of black and white Australia began.

Kurnell has a central place in the history of New South Wales and Australia. Kurnell is of such unique and critical importance to the shire, to New South Wales and to the Commonwealth that it was the very first place in New South Wales to be inscribed on the Australian government’s National Heritage List. Kurnell was protected before the Opera House, before the site of the Eureka Stockade, before Port Arthur and before Glenrowan. Given Kurnell’s importance, the House would be right to be surprised that the New South Wales Labor government has allowed Kurnell to be largely destroyed and that it is continuing to aid and abet this destruction to ensure that the entire area is ruined.

Just a few weeks ago, I invited the school captains of all of our local primary schools to join with Senator Ian Campbell, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, and me at Kurnell to announce more than $1 million in funding for the protection and recognition of Kurnell’s importance. With the Endeavour riding at anchor a few hundred yards from the landing site, it provided a wonderful backdrop for this important announcement. This funding was provided to Kurnell on the basis that it is one of the very few sites in Australia of such unique value that is protected by its inscription on the National Heritage List. The funding will allow the Australian government to provide a more fitting replica to commemorate the landing of Captain James Cook, one of the world’s greatest explorers and navigators; it will allow the rehabilitation of the land behind the existing Banks memorial to reflect the native flora at the time of Cook’s arrival; and it will enable the launching of a national essay competition for primary and secondary students to better educate our young people on the shire’s unique place in Australia’s history.

For years, Kurnell has suffered under the excesses of government and industry alike. We have all seen the once impressive sandhills stripped and replaced with ponds and lakes. We have heavy industry alongside wetlands of international significance. We have large-scale industrial development just a stone’s throw from more than 90 per cent of the remaining salt marshes in the Sydney Basin and 50 per cent of the remaining mangrove communities. Of course, we also have the threat of a desalination plant that was proposed to be built by the New South Wales government in Kurnell. Residents only need to take a trip down Captain Cook Drive to see all of the development sites and subdivisions along the fragile neck of the peninsula.

Now after years of procrastination by the New South Wales Labor government, developers plan to build factories adjacent to Wanda Beach and Cronulla High School. The developer, Australand, has recently fenced off its 62-hectare site, which includes the heritage listed Cronulla sand dune, to prepare the site for construction. This means that sporting teams such as the Sharks and Dragons, local residents and visitors can no longer walk through the last remaining sections of the Cronulla dunes. It means that the beautiful walk from Wanda, which is used by many local residents, has been lost.

Residents have been fighting the plan for this site for years. The New South Wales Labor government had the developer’s proposal on their desk for some four years. Due to pressure from local residents, they were forced to reject it in 2004. Unfortunately, due to Labor’s lax and unashamedly pro-development planning controls over this precious area, the developers successfully sought permission to build factories from the New South Wales Land and Environment Court. While residents have known for years that there was a proposal in the abstract for the development of this site, it was made very real after workmen installed cyclone fencing, stopping the many users of this area from accessing the site. I understand that the developer, after the intervention of the Liberal Mayor of Sutherland, restored public access to the dunes and ponds late last week. While I applaud the work of the mayor, my friend Councillor Kevin Schreiber, the simple fact is that, without swift action, a valuable and beautiful part of the shire will be lost forever.

Predictably, the local Labor aligned supposedly independent political party, the Shire Watch Independence Party, has tried to blame this latest outrage on me, the Prime Minister and the Commonwealth of Australia. As with every other outrage committed by New South Wales Labor at Kurnell, the Labor-Shire Watch coalition at Sutherland council respond by calling on the Australian government to buy out the land. While I and many others would welcome any such move, we are also very aware of the practicalities of spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to right the wrongs of the New South Wales Labor government.

The front page of the local newspaper, the St George and Sutherland Shire Leader, last week carried the story which was titled ‘Plea to John Howard: buy the Australand site to save Wanda sand hills’. This story was driven by Shire Watch and the photograph featured one of the Shire Watch’s most prominent organisers. What the members of the Shire Watch team have said about a Commonwealth buyout to restore public access is nothing more than mischief making.

I recently looked through the relevant records from the Land and Environment Court case which approved the current factory development site. What has stunned me is that the developer offered to give the balance of the site to the public, including the Cronulla dune and recreation areas, in the care and control of Sutherland council in perpetuity. On top of this, the developer also offered to establish a substantial trust fund to pay for the upkeep of the area. While Shire Watch and I agree that no development should go ahead on the site, for them now to clamour about the fencing of the area and the loss of dune and recreation areas is disingenuous. They twice rejected the offers of the developers to gain for free the majority of the site, to rehabilitate it, to fund its ongoing maintenance and to ensure the dunes are protected. This is the exact same area that they are now calling on the Commonwealth to buy for many tens of millions of dollars.

I wonder what the residents of Cronulla, the visitors, walkers and sports teams who use this site will think when they learn the reason they were locked out of this site was not that John Howard failed to buy it but rather that Shire Watch wanted to play politics over the site and ignore the best interests of local people. The Commonwealth has not had nor will it in future have any role in planning decisions. It did not sell the land, it has never owned the land and it certainly has no interest in the development companies concerned.

On the other hand, the Labor Party are the consent authority, the people who sat on the original application with a view to approving it, and they are the people who accepted nearly three-quarters of a million dollars from the very people who are about to build factories on Wanda Beach. I find it very hard to follow Shire Watch’s reasoning that the Commonwealth is at fault for the continued destruction of Kurnell. The constant moves by Shire Watch to blame every state government failing on the Commonwealth show either a political alliance to Labor or, at best, a willingness to help shift the blame from where it belongs, with New South Wales Labor, onto the Australian government.

Shire Watch are willingly acting as an extension of the Australian Labor Party in their dealings both on the council and through their repeated attempts to blame every state failure on the Australian government. At election time, Shire Watch portray themselves as being independent of party politics. Their voting record tells a very different story. In the last council term, as with now, Shire Watch were in coalition with Labor. They shared the mayoralty, they shared the deputy mayoralty, they voted the same way, as I understand from one source, on more than 90 per cent of the business before the council, yet they expect us to believe they are somehow separate and above party politics. Every time Labor fails the shire—and it happens often—they try to confuse the issue by talking about federal government buyouts and so on.

I point out to the Shire Watch councillors that the New South Wales government are the approval body for this and every activity at Kurnell. Labor assumed all planning powers over Kurnell. They were the ones who wrote the planning code for the area and it was Labor that accepted a staggering $647,593 in donations from this developer since 1998. I cannot help but feel that Shire Watch ought to start living up to the ‘independent’ tag that they have registered as a party name and start to question the motives of their Labor team-mates on Sutherland council.

Let us for a moment examine the New South Wales government’s shameful history on the protection of the Kurnell Peninsula. The Kurnell Peninsula has been mined for sand since the 1930s. Due to improvements in technology and extraction processes, the mining has escalated massively over the past 15 years. While it is difficult to obtain accurate information from the mining companies, it is estimated that more than 1.25 million tonnes of sand are stripped from Kurnell each and every year. Under New South Wales Labor, every week 25,000 tonnes of our history are carted away by the truck load, yet Shire Watch seeks to blame the Prime Minister and this government.

Under New South Wales Labor, the Kurnell Peninsula has ‘For Sale’ signs from Cronulla High School in the west to Caltex in the east. Does the Australian government retain planning and development consent over Kurnell? The answer is unequivocally no. Under New South Wales Labor, the Kurnell Peninsula has been slated as the site for a trial and, no doubt, after the next election will be slated for a full-scale desalination plant that threatens the environment, migratory whales and wetlands of international significance. I draw this to the attention of the House. (Time expired)