Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Birmingham, representing the Minister for the Environment. The World Heritage Committee gave Australia homework four years ago to show why the Great Barrier Reef shouldn't be listed as 'in danger'. On Sunday, your government sent in its homework in a glossy report pretending everything's fine and downplaying the dramatic decline in conditions as merely 'impacting' on the reef. How can you claim to be actively managing the key pressures when half of the coral cover of the reef has bleached to death, when you've set up an inquiry questioning reef science and when your own reef management authority has downgraded the long-term outlook for the reef from poor to very poor for the first time?