Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I have been on the record, as have the Greens, for quite some time now highlighting the necessity for the Commonwealth to take urgent action to remove cattle from Victoria’s pristine high country.

Every day that the cattle remain is a failure of government to protect our National Heritage listed places, our endangered and threatened species and our natural alpine water reservoirs.

So I welcome the decision made by the minister on Friday to demand that the Victorian state government’s decision to reintroduce cattle into the Alpine National Park be referred to the Commonwealth for assessment.

Even though that decision does not bring about a conclusion to this matter and even though the minister was forced to move slowly through the provisions of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act—far too slowly, in my opinion, and I will come back to the flaws in the act in a moment—his announcement is clearly a step in the right direction.

The cattle have been back in the park for three months now—they were introduced under the farcical guise of scientific research by a brand new Victorian Baillieu government determined to meet an environmentally irresponsible election deal.

We have seen a lot in those three months.

We have seen a state government scramble to put some scientific justification behind their rushed decision to reintroduce cattle, only to come up looking foolish.

We have seen hundreds of scientists publicly oppose the grazing trial, and not one publicly supporting it.

We have seen park rangers in the media distressed at having to facilitate the grazing trial at the expense of genuine conservation work.

We have seen National Party members arguing that they have some sort of state mandate from the people to let cattle run loose in the park and trash the environment, and that somehow this overrides our federal law and our international obligations.

And I am sure we are about to hear National Party members make all sorts of justifications in just a moment, and come to the defence of a state government that has managed to destroy any environmental credibility it had within moments of achieving office, but that is all beside the point:

The cattle are doing significant damage now, and it is time they were removed.

One would assume that the legal protection of the environment inside a national park would be a given. Indeed, one might assume that national parks are subject to a higher level of protection. However, given the complications of federal/state division of legislative responsibility, and given the lack of any federal law that specifically lists that which may or may not occur in National Heritage listed places, it is the at times flawed EPBC Act that we turn to to define what is and is not an acceptable impact on the environment—whether the environment is a national park or the middle of a city.

The subjectivity inherent in the act therefore has the side effect of exposing some of our most important and pristine natural places to all sorts of inappropriate treatment, sometimes without providing an adequate mechanism to urgently disallow it.

That is the situation we find ourselves in here. We have a state government which has the necessary legal resources to advise a particular course of action, knowing full well that the federal repercussions will be slow. The state government knows that the federal minister is required to use the resources of the federal department to investigate the matter at length, and exhaust any legal repercussions, before issuing any directives.

I have no doubt that the federal minister’s intentions are commendable—I have heard him speak about his own views on the alpine grazing issue—but I also realise that we have two well-resourced governments of different political parties fighting over an issue, all in the context of a flawed federal act, and this debate has become one of political grandstanding rather than a question of environmental protection.

We are approaching winter and, temporarily at least, the seasons will do that which the government is too slow to do: the snow season will require cattle to retreat from the high country until late spring.

By then, the minister will need to have worked through the act—but there are many steps involved before the minister is in a position to accept or reject the trial, and the subjectivity inherent in the act prevents any of us from predicting the end result.

We have a small window of opportunity to ensure an end to this environmental vandalism, and we need to keep open the option of a legislative backstop that will unequivocally require the removal of cattle from the Victorian high country.

This bill is that legislative backstop. It deems the minister to have received a referral from the Victorian government, and to have rejected it.

The effect of writing the provisions of this bill into the EPBC Act is to avoid the time- and resource-consuming federal/state stand off, and require the instant removal of any cattle from the park, thus finally putting an end to the practice of alpine grazing.

In concluding, let me reiterate that I am truly hopeful that the minister can get a result before the grazing season starts again. But given the lack of certainty, and given that the future of the beautiful high country is at stake, I encourage government members to leave open the option of supporting this bill in a vote when the House resumes sitting in winter.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Abolition of Alpine Grazing) Bill 2011. In doing so, I wish to highlight the absolutely overwhelming hypocrisy of the Greens and the blind subservience of the Australian Labor Party, and in particular the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.

Let us begin with the Greens. The Leader of the Greens is currently parading around Australia calling for better protection of democratic rights for people living in the territories. Senator Brown is all for protecting those rights it seems, particularly if he personally supports the issues such as gay marriage or euthanasia, which may emerge as a result. But the grand hypocrisy is exposed on this issue, where the bill proposed by the member for Melbourne is squarely targeted at removing the right of the Victorian government to take action to assess the strategic use of cattle grazing as a tool to reduce bushfire risk in Victoria’s high country.

Senator Brown is out there right now talking about equal rights for territories and the member for Melbourne is in here today trying to take those rights away from the people of Victoria. The Greens’ defence of democratic rights does not apply to the Victorian government, which, at last year’s state election, won a clear mandate for its policy of returning cattle to the Alpine National Park.

The bitter irony of this bill is the sanctimonious nature of the Greens when it comes to telling country people how to live their lives. Regional Australians have had a gutful of city based Greens when it comes to telling us how to live our lives, what industries we are allowed to have, what jobs we are allowed to have and how our communities should enjoy their particular pastimes. The Greens have never created a job in regional Australia and they are a direct threat to a host of traditional industries, including the agricultural sector, commercial fishing, mining and power generation. It is no surprise that the Greens received just six per cent of the primary vote in the seat of Gippsland during the federal election and the same in the seat of Gippsland East during the state election. We do not vote for the Greens in regional Australia because they simply do not understand us. Within the Greens they do not have any appreciation of the practical realities of living and working in a sustainable way with the environment.

The Greens’ and Labor’s approach to the environment is to lock it up and leave it—to ban anything that offends their view of the world. ‘Lock it up and leave it’ is not an environmental policy; it is a recipe for disaster as we have seen with the recent wildfires that have devastated vast expanses of public land in Gippsland and beyond.

The bill before us today is another prime example of the Greens’ failure to embrace the concept of practical environmental management. It talks about banning cattle in the Alpine National Park because of the claimed significant impact on native vegetation and animals. Member for Melbourne: seriously, give me a break! The current trial involves 400 cattle spread across 26,000 hectares of national park. Even the minister for the environment did more damage when he raced up there in his convoy of four-wheel-drives, and I do not think he even managed to find a herd of cows while on that photo opportunity!

The Greens and the minister are getting all hot and sweaty about 400 cattle but not a word is said about the other environmental issues facing the national park. There was not a word in the member for Melbourne’s address about the thousands of feral horses, which the Parks Victoria website notes have severe environmental impacts such as erosion, damage to bog habitat and soil loss. There was not a word about the wild deer which live in the high country. An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 samba deer are estimated to live in the high country causing damage. There was not a word from the member for Melbourne about wild dogs, which a recent report indicated are costing the community $18 million per year and are feasting on native wildlife every day of the week. There was not a word about the environmental damage caused by the ski fields. But that would probably be something the member for Melbourne supports, because no doubt his constituents are visiting the ski fields on a regular basis. In the Greens’ twisted logic, it is okay to have hundreds of thousands of snow skiers, construction of chalets and the building of ski runs, but heaven forbid if our regional communities seek to graze a few hundred head of cattle to help reduce the bushfire risk.

If the Greens were genuine about their desire to protect the environment they would be knocking on the door of the minister for the environment and demanding that he reinstate the $11 million he stripped out of Landcare when he was the minister for agriculture.

This is the grand hypocrisy that we have come to expect from the Greens—there is absolutely nothing new about that. But what is also emerging in this debate is the complete subservience of the Labor Party to its Greens masters. The Labor Party may be in government but there is no doubt the Greens are in charge. The member for Melbourne has whistled and, like a faithful dog, the minister for the environment has raced across the chamber to lick his face. Those opposite are just so obedient when the Greens want action. But it is no surprise when more than 40 of the Labor members in this place rely on Greens preferences for their political survival. The heritage, culture and knowledge which have been built up over more than 100 years are assets to our community and the mountain cattlemen should not be vilified by the Labor Party and the Greens in this place. (Time expired)

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

National parks have been one of Australia’s great assets, and one that I have enjoyed greatly, and I would like to say to the previous speaker, the member for Gippsland, that they were created and have existed and been protected in Australia long before the idea of the Greens party was a light in the eyes of Bob Brown’s parents. National parks have been around in Australia for many, many decades and we still have an obligation to protect them.

But this is not about state rights, this is about law. If the Victorian government wanted to reintroduce cattle into the Alpine National Park, they were required to refer the matter to the department for environment for assessment under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The opposition often spouts about rights and obligations. Well, the Victorian government had an obligation under the law when it came to this matter. The proposal to introduce cattle should have been assessed as to whether it would significantly impact matters of national environmental significance. That is a requirement under the law: one of the obligations of a state government is to adhere to the law. Businesses have to do it and governments are not exempt no matter what their private views. The Victorian government did not do this. They allowed 400 head of cattle into the national park in January, and there are many people around the country, including people in my electorate, who are very concerned about this.

The private members bill introduced by the member for Melbourne, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Abolition of Alpine Grazing) Bill 2011, suggests that we assume that the Victorian government did refer the matter to the government and that the minister has considered it already and rejected it. I would like to say that I would prefer that the Victorian government was made to refer it and that the minister actually did consider it. I find that the precedent of dealing with each of these matters on a one-off basis can go both ways. We could equally have a bill next week that moved that the matter had been referred and the minister had rejected it. When the Victorian government in 2004, the Labor government of the day, announced that it was planning to remove cattle from the national parks, the national coalition government of the day floated the idea of moving a special act to declare it heritage preservation because of the history of the Man from Snowy River. It is a slippery slope once you start moving down a situation where governments of both persuasions start to deal with larger matters of environmental or heritage protection on a one-off basis.

But I do understand the need for speed. I have spent some time in those national parks, and the idea that cattle would be anywhere near a sphagnum moss swamp in particular is alarming not only because of the protection of the vegetation itself, but also because the role that sphagnum moss has in water purification. It absorbs the snow melt and releases it slowly over about 12 months. In fact when the cattle were removed from the Kosciusko National Park back in the sixties, it was because cattle were damaging the purity of the water in the Snowy Mountains. So there are many matters to consider when it comes to cattle in national parks and it is absolutely appropriate that all of them are considered in full.

For the information of the members opposite, I want to refer to the Kosciusko National Park fire management strategy 2008-2013. If they do not know, the Alpine National Park and the Kosciusko National Park meet at the Victorian border. The parks might be governed by two governments but it is the same ecology and what applies to the Kosciusko also applies to the Alpine, except that the cattle were removed from Kosciusko in 1960. I just want to read a little section of this report:

The arrival of graziers and early settlers from about the 1820s saw significant change in the frequency of fire.

It did, it caused a significant change in the frequency of fire.

The overall recorded frequency of fires increased substantially in the late nineteenth century and twentieth century until the 1960s and has decreased since. Evidence as early as the 1890s indicates that the increased frequency of introduce fires during the grazing period resulted in substantial negative ecological impacts—

et cetera. In the unplanned fire history you can also see a dramatic increase in the number of fires in that region during the period that cattle were there. All of the research indicates that that is not necessarily due to the presence of the cattle; but was due to the presence of people and introduced fires. It is an extraordinary part of the world. (Time expired)

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Abolition of Alpine Grazing) Bill 2011. The member for Melbourne has sponsored this bill in response to the Victorian state government’s trial to return grazing as part of a bushfire mitigation study. That same member has described the return of cattle grazing to the Alpine National Park as ‘an act of environmental vandalism’. This comment is ridiculous, as until 2005 grazing was conducted in the Alpine National Park for more than 100 years and played a vital role in the management of fuel loads.

This is a trial using 400 cattle in a very small proportion of the total park, and 400 cattle for four months of the year for the next six years. The cattle will be distributed across six sites over thousands upon thousands of hectares—just one head per many, many hectares of land. Further, the research sites have been selected to avoid or minimise environmental impact and to use only sites where cattle have grazed previously. These cattle will not be tearing up the bush as Labor and the Greens would lead people to believe. The Greens would like to see the national parks locked up and are anti everything Australians love about the great outdoors and hold near and dear to them. If the Greens get away with this bill then our national parks will be locked up and left for feral animals to rule and noxious weeds to spread over. With all the litter left lying around it would take only one spark for Black Saturday to be repeated—and no-one wants to see that again.

The areas and ecosystems the Greens claim will be damaged by grazing cattle in the Alpine National Park are the exact environments where controlled burning is not an appropriate measure to reduce the risk of bushfires, as above a certain altitude the use of this measure is not recommended. In fact, burning can do more damage, and cattle grazing is possibly the only tool which can reduce fuel loads in these areas. To those who claim that cattle will do significant damage to the environment, I say: a bushfire will do far worse. There has to be a balance. If grazing cattle will help reduce the chances of deadly fires then I fully support this measure.

The Greens and others opposed to the grazing have said that the research being conducted in this trial has been compromised. The overseeing scientist, Professor Mark Adams from Sydney University, has dismissed this claim, stating:

… there are plenty of areas where there aren’t cattle, where you can use as a reference for the areas where cattle have been introduced.

Claims that cattlemen are being paid, or paying, to participate in this trial are incorrect. The Mountain Cattlemen’s Association of Victoria supports the measure to allow grazing in the high country again, but they are neither being paid for its support nor paying to be included.

This bill is just further proof that Labor may be in government, albeit a very minor one, but the Greens are the ones definitely in power. Labor is pathetically subservient to the Greens’ agenda. This country was opened up by stout-hearted stockman, the mighty men of the Snowy River, on their horses—brumbies that run free. Do the Greens want the brumbies to go also? What about the hard-hoofed deer? Or do they just have a grudge against cattle because of the methane they produce?

These stockmen have grazed cattle in this area for decades and have managed high country ecosystems over this period. Only recently has it been decided that this should not continue. Why, I ask? Because this Labor government is being kept in power by the Greens and therefore they have to be seen to be doing something on this issue. The Greens are certainly setting the green agenda, but we don’t know what dangers are hidden in their social agenda. One thing is certain: it will be regional Australians who will bear the brunt of costs.

The Victorian government went to the polls on 27 November last year. A mandate was sought for this trial and not one Greens member won a seat in the lower house. People set the mandate: they do not want this bill to be passed. It is about time the Labor government started listening to the people and not the Greens, who govern for nobody.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What do a herd of cows with a sense of humour and the Baillieu government both have in common? Answer: they are both a laughing stock. The so-called scientific trial unveiled by the coalition government, with the return of 400 head of cattle to the Alpine National Park in January this year, is intended to run for six years. What sort of trial runs for six years? I know David Hicks waited six years for a trial, but the idea of a trial for six years is laughable.

Scientific research in national parks normally follows well-established processes. You have, first and foremost, priorities for research established by park managers in consultation with scientists. Standard procedures setting up scientific research programs were not followed. There was no peer review of the projects designed, no ethics clearance, no budget priority assessment and, most importantly, no baseline monitoring before cattle were introduced. This makes a joke of the whole notion of a scientific trial—no baseline data.

The park rangers are concerned that their normal work looking after the park has been falling by the wayside due to the need to monitor the cows. The cows have been fitted with tracking devices, which reminds me: why do cows wear bells? Answer: because their horns don’t work. This ‘scientific’ trial mirrors Japanese ‘scientific whaling’ in that what is described as a scientific study is constructed around a commercial agenda. Indeed, this is a commercial agenda which could expand if the state government accepts the advice of a draft report by the Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission, which has recommended hotels, restaurants and other facilities be allowed inside Victoria’s national parks. This is a recommendation to a state government that introduced quickly and secretly 400 cattle into the Alpine National Park just a few days before the 2011 cattlemen’s annual get-together, attended by nine coalition parliamentarians. At the time of the reintroduction, according to the Weekly Times of 13 January, cattlewoman Christa Treasure said:

Mountain cattlemen had been told to keep the news under wraps until the stock were in the park to prevent any potential Federal Government injunction.

It seems that the Liberal Party has learnt nothing from the Kennett era, when conservation groups had to mount a ‘Hands Off the Prom’ campaign to protect Wilsons Promontory from plans for privately operated tourist facilities. It seems that they have learnt nothing from Point Nepean. I recall as shadow environment minister at the time working with the Victorian Labor government and local residents to force the Howard government to back away from moneymaking proposals for the Defence land at Point Nepean.

The Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission and the Victorian government should stop eyeing off national parks—which are public assets, public property—and thinking, ‘How can we exploit them and make a private dollar out of them?’ Our national parks public assets bring joy and comfort to the soul of this generation, and they are held on trust for the enjoyment of future generations. They are not for the exploitation and private profit by the friends and supporters of governments or political parties. As Executive Director Matt Ruchel of the Victorian National Parks Association has said:

The core reason for national parks and the reason why people like them is it is about the protection of natural values—not whether you can get a latte there.

I congratulate environment minister Tony Burke on his announcement of Friday last week. This is an announcement which will protect the Alpine National Park. He has given the Victorian government 15 business days, until 8 April, to refer its current cattle-grazing actions for Commonwealth decision. The minister has said:

The Victorian Government was wrong to reintroduce cattle to the Alpine National Park and I have now determined that it needs to be fully scrutinised under national environmental law.

It is extraordinary how little information the Victorian Government has provided.

The referral will allow me to determine whether the impacts of cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park have a significant impact on matters protected under national environmental law.

That is a responsible course of action for the minister to take. I welcome it. It is the right action for the protection of the Victorian Alps which are a magnificent heritage for us all.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak against this motion by the member for Melbourne. I would like to draw an analogy, following the speech by the member for Wills. What do his speech and alpine cattle have in common: a huge amount of methane-infused male bovine excreta—and that is to put it as politely as I can.

Very rarely do we get to deal with levels of such great hypocrisy as we do today in this motion for the second reading of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Abolition of Alpine Grazing) Bill 2011. It is interesting to note the speakers in this debate. We have the member for Melbourne, inner Melbourne; the member for Wills, inner Melbourne; and the member for Parramatta. There are great areas of environmentally pristine alps and grazing in those electorates! And apart from the environmental debate and the common-sense debate, this is about states’ rights. We have heard Bob Brown trying to trample over the Commonwealth, saying that we should listen to the territories about gay marriage and euthanasia. But when a state government goes to an election, gets a clear mandate—the Green party is completely wiped out—and implements what they clearly went with to the election as a promise, we now have the Greens, from the confines of Canberra, trying to trample all over states’ rights.

It is interesting: do we ever hear from the Greens and their followers on the other side, the blind acolytes of the Greens, an environmental proposal that affects one of their electorates? It is always someone else making a change to ease their conscience. And the only benefit from this motion will be to the margin of the member for Melbourne at the next election, as his latte-sipping supporters down there get a warm glow about some part of Australia they have supposedly cured. If we are serious and if the member for Melbourne is serious about protecting the environment, why don’t we restore the Yarra to the condition it was in when John Batman went there? We would only have to remove 40 per cent of the population. We could retrain them in tourism. They could go to TAFE and get other qualifications. That is the language we hear from the Greens and the Labor Party about what we are going to do with regional Australia.

The member for Parramatta talked about the wonderful national parks and was taking great credit for them. It was not the Greens; we did it first. But what about in my electorate? Bob Carr locked up 360,000 hectares in the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion. Two years later, guess what happened? It burnt—koalas barbecued, kangaroos wiped out. The biodiversity was wiped out. Not that it was the first time there had been a fire—it was the first time there had been a fire of that intensity.

The member for Parramatta talked about fire. We are not talking about not having fires in national parks; that is a part of the cycle of life. The parks can get struck by lightning; all sorts of things can start a fire. But it is the intensity of the fire. After what happened in Victoria on Black Saturday after the Green influence on local government planning and state government planning, and after the loss of life and devastation that happened, I am surprised that the Greens could even come in here and show their faces and start talking about legislation that is supposed to give some environmental benefit.

If we were serious about protecting the alpine regions of Victoria, we would be banning skiing. We do not see cows churning straight up a hill, cutting a track 30 centimetres deep in their four-wheel-drives. When was the last time we saw a cow doing that to destroy the environment? But we saw the environment minister do that two weeks ago. His little sightseeing trip to the alpine regions would have done more damage to the environment than the 400 cows would do in a hundred years.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was a photo opportunity!

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, a photo opportunity! This is gross hypocrisy. When are we going to see some fair dinkum environmental policies from the other side and from those behind? When are they actually going to do something about the environment and not just shore up their margins in inner urban areas? The closer that people live to the environment the less they vote for Labor and the Greens. This is about shoring up support in concreted bitumen jungles. The only time they ever think about the environment is when they tick the box on election day to vote Green. They get a warm glow, go and have a latte and think what a great job they have done. But someone in regional Australia always pays the price. And it is not just the people in regional Australia who pay the price but the environment which pays the price. (Time expired)

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for the debate has expired.