Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I had the privilege over the summer break to travel down to Antarctica to represent the Australian government. It was an amazing experience. In getting there, I was on a boat for most of the time and found that I did not have the best of sea legs but, like others, I made the most of that trip. I also congratulate our amazing Australian scientists, who are world leaders with their passion for the environment, and all the tradies and others who go down there for either winter or summer periods.

Antarctica will be defined forever by the golden age of Antarctic exploration of the early 20th century. We owe much to stories of men like Mawson, Shackleton, Amundsen and Scott, who sought to tame the wild white continent. Our challenge today is a different one. Our challenge is to remove the deep footprints that a century of human traffic has left upon the Antarctic landscape.

In Antarctica, rubbish has been disposed of through creating domestic style rubbish tips, open burning and what is known as sea icing, where rubbish is bulldozed onto the sea ice during the winter to be carried off when the sea ice breaks up in the summer. This practice is no longer in place and now all rubbish is brought back to the mainland. Sewage was disposed of by direct ocean dumping and by burning in gas-fired toilets. Spilt fuel and lubricants from vehicles and machinery were simply left behind. Although the environmental danger of these practices is now recognised, contaminated sites exist at active and abandoned research stations across Antarctica.

A prime example is Wilkes station, which was built in 1957. In 1969, Wilkes was closed down because of fuel seepage. Today there are a series of storage dumps and a considerable amount of rubbish has been left behind from the 12 years that the site was occupied. There are 40 icebound buildings and a tip containing literally 7,000 shipping containers’ worth of rubbish. Over the years, there have been a number of partial clean-ups and the site is currently being addressed to determine the appropriate strategy. It has been estimated that a full-scale clean up of Wilkes will cost around $35 million. I am currently urging my government to do whatever it can to provide funding for this clean-up, but perhaps I could also say that this has been a problem for successive governments.

There are also footprints at the Davis station. The Davis waste water treatment plant has not been performing to desired standards and at times has been releasing poor quality effluent into the sea. Although the waste still meets Madrid protocol standards, I believe that we should be taking the lead and doing everything we can to raise the quality of effluent outflows. I am pleased that the work to replace the Davis wastewater treatment plant has been scheduled, but it does not commence until 2010-11. That is still three to four years away and I believe that we should be doing more sooner in order to protect the fragile Antarctic ecosystem.

People have also left their footprints upon Macquarie Island, the tiny sub-arctic island that is 1,500 kilometres south-east of Tasmania. Macquarie Island’s landscape is disintegrating rapidly because of a rabbit plague. As a result, the homes of vast congregations of wildlife are under threat. This is a world heritage area. If left unchecked, this could cause environmental catastrophe. Rabbit numbers have increased dramatically since 2001 and are tearing the landscape to shreds. Rabbits eat and damage leaves, destroy flowers, kill seedlings and destroy root systems, which erodes the island’s steep peat-covered slopes and causes landslips.

On my trip, the scientists pointed out to me that this was their No. 1 environmental issue, which they wanted urgently addressed by the Howard government. I am thrilled that the Australian government has committed half the funding, at a cost of $24.6 million, of a rabbit and rodent eradication program. This is a matter I have raised personally with Minister Turnbull. I congratulate him on taking up this issue, which is so vitally important for a world heritage area; he acted very swiftly.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It being 5 pm, the debate is interrupted. The House stands adjourned until Tuesday, 8 May 2007 at 2 pm, in accordance with the resolution agreed to this sitting.