Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am trying to argue why this measure should be exempt from the cut-off—so that these matters can be dealt with. You might remember that they were blocked by the opposition and Senator Xenophon yesterday. I am arguing as to why it is urgent that these be dealt with today and that we get the exemption from the cut-off. If we do not get the exemption from the cut-off, we will not get that $200 million package and the 6,000 to 7,000 jobs across Australia that would be created as a result of it.

The exemption would also allow us to proceed to discuss the $50 million extra to assist low-income earners and the unemployed. There is $10 million for bioremediation—Senator Hanson-Young and Senator Siewert were very keen to see something get done for the lower Murray—which will create jobs in the very area worst affected by the impact of drought on the lower Murray River.

If we can get the cut-off, there will also be $40 million extra for bikeways, as discussed. This is a major breakthrough in government thinking at the national level. It will be a precursor to a much bigger allocation in Infrastructure Australia for bikeways in cities and towns, and that includes rural areas right across Australia, as we catch up with the rest of the world in an age of climate change and such simple things as tackling obesity. Bikeways help enormously there. They improve the lifestyle of cities and get cars off the road at the same time.

There is also $60 million for heritage. Let me tell you why the cut-off should not be applied here. If it were, it would mean that this $60 million would have to wait for some future day. Rosslyn Beeby, the science and environment reporter from the Canberra Times, wrote this on 4 October last year:

Australia’s cultural heritage has been plunged into a crisis of neglect, as federal funds drop to their lowest level in more than 30 years, leading experts say.

A letter to heritage minister Peter Garrett, signed by 37 of Australia’s heritage heavyweights, says funding is:

… only going to major sites with powerful lobbies or to military sites overseas.

The letter also says that heritage conservation funding has been slashed. Now was this, under the Howard government. Members of the opposition might note that the letter states:

Heritage funding has been slashed to $200,000 for the whole of Australia this financial year, with no support for research or skills critical to protecting Australia’s historic heritage.

The Greens are rectifying that. It has taken the Greens. The opposition could have taken this position, but it did not. It has taken the Greens, with the good offices of the government, to bring in here $60 million, as against $200,000, for refurbishing Australia’s national heritage—its built heritage and its natural heritage.

There is much more in here, including a reassurance of $5 million per annum to Australia’s Bushfire Research Centre in Melbourne—and hopefully to upgrade that to a global bushfire research centre in an age where catastrophic fires, unfortunately, are predicted not only to become more frequent but to become more devastating, not just in this country but around the world.

So this is a package we are proud of. It is a package all five Greens senators have worked hard, with our staff, to achieve. We came forward with ideas and we met a positive response from the government. We want to see this cut-off applied so that these ideas can reach reality and get out there to help Australians who have either lost their jobs, are threatened with losing their jobs or need reskilling in an age of the greening of the economy so that they will have jobs in the future. So I support the motion.