Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Through you, Mr Deputy President, that is true. We have seen the result of what Campbell Newman has done in Queensland, Senator O'Sullivan, with the slash and burn technique that is his approach in a number of areas. The concern is what he will do if he gets control of the Great Barrier Reef. On the other side of the country the government want to give Colin Barnett control of Ningaloo Reef. These are World Heritage listed areas. They are places of absolutely magnificent beauty that we need to make sure are there for future generations—our children and our grandchildren—to enjoy and for tourists to come to this country to enjoy, but the government want to hand control of them over to the states. I do not have any faith that that is a good, effective system.

The government have also abandoned efforts to have Queensland's Cape York added to the World Heritage list. Talking about the World Heritage list, what about the debacle of the Tasmanian forests? It was amazing. The previous Labor government, of which I am very proud to have been a member, helped to ensure that there was an enhanced listing of wilderness areas in Tasmania. In my beautiful state of Tasmania we have some of the best wilderness areas in the world. We have the cleanest air. We have some of the most pristine environment. What happened when Mr Abbott became Prime Minister? The first thing on their list of things to do was to cut off 74,000 hectares from the wilderness World Heritage area. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to run a case to have those 74,000 hectares delisted. We all know what the result of that was, don't we? For those who don't, the government did not win. They did not win for a number of reasons. One is that the argument to overturn the listing as a World Heritage Area was not a substantial one to begin with. They spent a lot of money trying to do it but no effort. They put absolutely no effort into that. This is the whole problem with what the Abbott government are trying to do to our environment. They want to slash and burn, but they are not prepared to put any arguments forward. All this was happening at around the time the Tasmanian election was on. I do not want to be cynical, but, quite frankly, you do have to wonder sometimes about where these things come from, the rationale and the idea behind them. We have a problem where we have a government treating our environment like a sideshow. It is not a sideshow; our environment is precious. We cannot turn it back. We cannot repair it once it is ruined. We cannot alter things once they are damaged. And we have to put particular processes in place to protect the environment moving forward. But we have a government who do not seem to be worried about that.

On other issues the government have been intent on, they have shut down the Climate Commission. Also, they want to axe the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. This body, in particular, is making a very positive return to government coffers—but, no, that does not matter because it does not fit with the agenda to slash and burn and get rid of the environmental processes that Labor so very carefully put in place. Labor put these in place to make sure that we are not only in step with ourselves but in step with the world in terms of the climate moving forward and protecting our environment into the future. But, no, they want to slash and burn all that. They want to shut the doors on the Renewable Energy Agency. They are talking about reducing the RET. These are things that will ensure the future of our pristine environment. When my grandchildren grow up, I want them to be able to breathe the beautiful fresh air that I can. I want to make sure that we do not have sea levels rising to an extraordinary degree. I want to be able to say that I was part of a government and part of a generation that protected this environment and that looked after it for people around the world. People in Kiribati, for example, are going to have to move off their island because of climate change, global warming and sea levels rising. In Antarctica—where the minister thinks walruses live—we are seeing a whole range of ice melts down there attributed to global warming. So I want to be part of a government that looks after that. I am hoping that, after the next election, I will be part of a government that will protect the environment that has been so callously disregarded by the current government. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason as to what they are doing. They say they want to save money—and there is no issue with governments trying to make and save money—but it should not happen at the expense of the environment for future generations.

If we look at the protection of turtles and dugongs, for example, there needs to be greater protection for them. However, we need to make sure that Indigenous groups are able to police their own communities on land and sea. Consulting with traditional owners about the environment is, I think, a very important point. If the minister had bothered to consult, he would have found out very quickly that the real need is in resourcing current management plans and enabling the enforcement of the law rather than merely increasing the penalties for the protection of turtles and dugongs. In Labor, we want to also make sure that marine turtles and dugongs are not impacted by a range of enduring threats. In government, Labor did effectively address these issues as a high priority, and the work continues, in close association with state and territory governments, with traditional owners and other stakeholder groups, such as commercial fishers. But, again, this is why the handing over of environmental controls to states is fraught with danger: many of the environmental issues in this country lap across a number of states and a number of jurisdictions. Without that Commonwealth approach, we are faced with problems. With one-stop shops, states will be able to make decisions without fear or favour about impacts on other jurisdictions. The issue for us is to make sure that the Commonwealth not only has the ability to have control but also the ability to look after the environment when it crosses over jurisdictions.

I talked a little bit about the Tasmanian wilderness proposal. As I said before, the Tasmanian wilderness is an area of high beauty. I do not know whether Minister Hunt has been down to the Tasmanian wilderness. I am sure that he has. If he has not, then I hope he gets a chance to go down and view it, because these are some of the most beautiful areas in Australia. He needs to see these things so that, when he makes decisions about the environment, he understands what the environment means to Australia—and, hopefully, it would change some of his slash-and-burn techniques on the environment.

If we have a look at some of the other things, we see they have ripped out Commonwealth funding from the environmental defender's office. That provides a means for concerned Australians to challenge environmental approval decisions and to protect the places they love, so why has this minister taken that out? Why has he taken us backwards on climate change? Why has he taken us back with how he wants to axe ARENA and get rid of the Climate Change Authority, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the RET? Why are these things happening?

They ripped nearly half a billion dollars out of Landcare. I was actually on the environment committee when we did the inquiry into Landcare and I have to say that a lot of the submitters were really concerned about what this meant for local communities and for the environment generally. They were concerned about replacing local volunteer work and the strategic networks they had set up to look after the environmental issues in their community and running it through the Green Army program. There were issues around the concerns about the training and the commitment to the environment, but there were also many people who provided evidence to that committee who had over 20 years of experience involvement in Landcare and who genuinely cared about their community. That is the reason they had provided 20-plus years to Landcare groups. They now have concerns about whether or not they are going to be responsible for doing the paperwork and providing the project information rather than getting out into the environment and doing what they really love: looking after it from their community's perspective. (Time expired)