Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the answer given by Senator Abetz to the question I asked of him this afternoon. First of all, can I say how disappointed I was by the minister’s response. Those people who know anything about agriculture and the agricultural industry would know that the issues of invasive species and weeds are taken very seriously by industry all over Australia, and I think the trivial response that we received from Senator Abetz today did him no service at all. It certainly indicated that he really does not understand the issues that are within his portfolio. And to denigrate and trivialise the question to the extent that he did really seemed to me to be an admission of his lack of understanding of how important the issue is.

To remind the minister, and to remind colleagues here, I reinforce that there was a very substantial undertaking in this area by the Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts References Committee in 2004, reported in Turning back the tide—the invasive species challenge: report on the regulation, control and management of invasive species and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Invasive Species) Bill 2002. The report was a very comprehensive piece of work undertaken in good grace and good spirit by the committee, and it found that invasive species are generally argued to be the second biggest threat to Australia’s biodiversity after land clearing and other forms of habitat destruction. So invasive species are not only of major concern to the agricultural industry; they are also a major concern to our environment and to our environmental movement, and, as I say, a threat to our biodiversity.

In the submissions to the inquiry, some very important evidence came to light. Dr Barry Traill, the President of the Invasive Species Council, said:

... with land clearing hopefully now sorted out as a destructive problem, with controls in Queensland and New South Wales, invasive species are probably now the No. 1 threat to nature in Australia.

And we know that Minister Abetz himself said, only a few days ago, that invasive species and weeds in Australia are probably the No. 1 threat, even above climate change. So it was a bit disingenuous of him to come into the chamber today and trivialise the issue in the way that he did.

I tried to explain to both the minister and to my colleagues in the chamber just how expensive an economic impact invasive species make. Weeds cost about $4 billion every year in lower farm incomes and higher food costs. Commonwealth, state and local governments spend at least $116 million every year on the costs of monitoring, control and management of and research on weeds. The figure of $4 billion is actually a very conservative one because it does not take into account the financial impacts on biodiversity, landscape, tourism, water and on labour costs of volunteers. And as a result of the introduction of pest species to Australia, ecosystems have become much more homogenous and biodiversity has been dramatically affected.

The question that I asked of the minister today was about funding for the proposed Invasive Species CRC. It was an important question because the government has dramatically changed CRC funding guidelines, requiring them to focus much more on industry and the chance of inventing or developing or selling widgets. It has just about wiped out all of the environmental CRCs, and all the existing CRCs that deal with sheep, cattle, pigs or cotton will not be funded under the new guidelines.

The judging CRC committee that rejected the proposal for an invasive plants CRC and a tropical savanna CRC took the view that tens of thousands of grain and livestock producers do not legitimately commercialise the research findings of the agricultural based CRCs. The committee obviously did not understand and does not understand either the science involved or the time scale that is involved in weed research. I understand that Minister McGauran says, ‘Well, no-one is making a fuss about all of this,’ and it is an issue that arose when he was the science minister. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.