Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on what I see is a disturbing and fundamental attack on our national parks. One of the very early actions of the newly elected Liberal Victorian government was to allow graziers to take their cattle back into the state’s Alpine National Park. When I first heard that I found it quite hard to believe. I went to the Victorian government’s website and, sure enough, there it is. Down the side, under the Department of Sustainability and Environment’s website, we have:

Cultural Heritage

Marine National Parks

What’s New

Cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park.

It is presented as a scientific trial to investigate the impact of the cattle on reducing fire. I have heard of scientific whaling—and now we have scientific grazing. It reminds me of the Vapors’ song of the eighties: ‘I think they’re turning Japanese, I think they’re turning Japanese, I really think so.’ On the next page of the website, they go further. It is a six-year scientific research trial that will help them meet their responsibilities to:

… ensure that appropriate and sufficient measures are taken to protect each national park and state park from injury by fire.

I would think that they also have an obligation to protect the national parks from injury by cattle. You do not need a six-year scientific research project to figure out how to do that—you actually get the cattle out. It is very simple.

Because we are talking about fire—that is a serious matter; at least the Victorian government is talking about it—we do need to have a look at whether there is any reality to this notion. I will give three reasons why this might be a political smokescreen and not really about fire. Firstly, of the 10 recommendations from the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission about the need for research, cattle grazing was not one of them. Secondly, there is already significant research done on the impact of alpine grazing on fire reduction. It was done mainly after the 2003 fires swept across Victoria’s Alpine National Park and was published in a peer-reviewed journal:

Some 100 kilometres of transects across grazed and ungrazed areas of the Bogong High Plains were measured for fire occurrence and … for fire severity.

There is a comprehensive explanation of the research done on the Victorian National Parks Association’s website. It says:

There were 108km of transect lines, 419 survey points and 4050 twig measurements, with sample points equally distributed across grazed and ungrazed country.

It was found that grazing did not significantly lower the severity of fire measured by the diameter of the burnt twigs. In fact, the research comprehensively proved that there was no statistical evidence that grazing reduced the impacts of fire.

Thirdly, when Premier Bracks made his decision in 2005 to remove cattle from the alpine parks, finally, he announced at the same time that grazing would be preserved in the high country state forests of Victoria. So there was grazing in the state forests and not in the Alpine National Parks. That had been the case since 2002. Grazing was temporarily suspended, then, to allow the national parks to recover from the fire. If it is necessary to undertake scientific research, there are already nearly nine years of comparisons available and it would be equally possibly to carry out that research in the high country state forests where grazing has been taking place for the last nine years and prior to that.

While there is significant evidence that grazing does not reduce the likelihood of fire, there is also significant evidence that grazing has a significant negative impact on the alpine environment. In fact, there are over 60 years of scientific research to prove that they trample the stream banks, springs and soaks and they damage and destroy, in particular, the fragile alpine moss beds. If members of this House have not been to the highlands to see the sphagnum moss swamps, it really is worth doing. You can see them at Namadgi, very close to here, you can see them in the south-west forest and, of course, you can see them at Kosciusko, before you get to Victoria. They are well and truly worth seeing.

There is overwhelming evidence that cattle in our national parks do serious damage. I cannot believe we are even having this conversation in 2011. This is an argument that I thought was won a long time ago. I really thought we had won this one. Our national parks belong to all of us, to all Australians, and it is about time we got these cattle out.