Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

It is not often that I congratulate the Greens political party on anything—in fact, I will not break my long-held ‘paranoia’—but I will congratulate Senator Siewert, who, without embarrassing her and putting the kiss of death on her future, is the one member of the Greens political party who is a genuine environmentalist and who actually knows something about environmental management. In fact, I humbly suggest that she knows more than practically anyone in this chamber about the issues she was just talking about. I am very pleased to support Senator Siewert in what she has said on the report Natural resource management and conservation challenges, which, as she said, she initiated and which the coalition wholeheartedly supported.

I agree with Senator Siewert that the Caring for our Country program certainly did need review. It somewhat annoys me. The previous government was advised by the same bureaucrats who advise this government. As Senator Siewert mentioned and as I often conceded, when we started on the Natural Heritage Trust there were a lot of different approaches and some things did not work. But, working with the bureaucrats when we were in government and, more importantly, listening to people like Senator Siewert and, perhaps even more importantly than that, listening to the groups on the ground who were at the coalface, we implemented changes over time. Whilst no-one can ever say we had it perfect, I think we had it pretty close to what it should have been.

A new government came into power and—I think for no other reason than that a new government must wipe away anything good that the previous government did, said or initiated and have a new name for a program and new rules—we seemed to go almost right back to where we had started with the Natural Heritage Trust five, six or seven years before. Because of political influence, if I can say that, because of the need for a new government and a new minister to be different and not take on a program which I think had stood the test of time, we had the new Caring for our Country program. Change the name if you must, but do not change the basis of the delivery of the program. But that is what happened, so we have had a hiatus now of almost three years while we have struggled with the new rules and people have demonstrated clearly that it does not work.

I think this is the second inquiry we have had into this sort of thing. We have flown people all around the countryside to give the committee and, through the committee, the government the benefit of real advice. I am told by those close to the ground that the government, through the bureaucracy, now understands that changes have to be made. The bureaucracy—good luck to them—I think have convinced the minister that changes need to be made.

All of the problems that Senator Siewert identified in her contribution are there. The worst one that I became aware of was that, instead of various land management and natural resource management groups working together collaboratively to get a regional approach to natural resource management, they were put into a position where they were competing against one another. Whereas in the past one would have supported the other, they suddenly came to the position that they could not really support that other group because if that group won it would mean money coming off theirs. It was just a complete shemozzle.

Clearly, as Senator Siewert and other senators demonstrated during the course of the inquiry, there has been a reduction of money going to natural resource management. It is all smoke and mirrors. When you try to find it in any budget, the smoke will confuse the mirror and they will lead you round a garden path, but I think it is quite clear that there is less money being spent on natural resource management now under the Caring for our Country program than there was previously.

I regret to say that I have a feeling that the government feels that NRM, natural resource management, is not quite as sexy as it used to be. It is not the flavour of the month. You do not get much media bang for your buck anymore. It gets pushed aside a bit. It is not quite as popular a community activity as it used to be. That is a shame because the best way we can deal with our biodiversity, with our environment in the broad, and, at the same time, the best way we can help our farmers and our producers on the land to grow crops sustainably and well is to get people on the ground in the local catchment areas working together to help, to do what they all know needs to be done.

This is a collaborative effort. It needs farmers who have lived all of their lives on the land and understand that it needs to be protected. It also needs the scientists, it needs those activists and it needs those people who are committed to the environment and are very, if I might say, upwardly mobile when it comes to natural resource management. It is the best environment policy that you can settle upon without all of the hoo-ha, political correctness and political point scoring that usually happens when the environment is mentioned.

I congratulate the committee. I congratulate Senator Siewert on her initiation and on the lead role she played in it. I am perhaps over the time that I allotted myself with my whip, but in concluding I will again put on record the great work the NRM groups, particularly in my own home state of Queensland, do in managing natural resources. I am a Queensland senator and you would expect me to know more about Queensland than elsewhere, but in Queensland we have the situation, which I think is replicated in Western Australia, where community groups actually spend the money, do the work and direct the appropriate management of our natural resources. In some other states they are state government instrumentalities, many of whom do not do a bad job I have to concede, but they are state government instrumentalities and therefore they can be subjected to other influences in how they spend the money and what they do. Certainly in Queensland these community groups do an absolutely fabulous job. They are very professional. They do tremendous work for our natural resources and I never miss the opportunity to congratulate them for the work they do in my state of Queensland.

Question agreed to.