Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support this motion today because Australia is being divided by race, because of these claims over land that belongs to all Australians. In particular, I want to talk about Mount Arapiles, because that is a rock-climbing mecca amongst rock climbers. Rock climbers from all over the world go down to Mount Arapiles. I myself spent a week down there, back in 2005, where I climbed a lot of the routes, like the great Bard, which is one of the world's great beginner leads; I did all five pitches on that. I think it's an absolute disgrace that places like Mount Arapiles and the Grampians are going to be locked away from people who want to enjoy nature. Rock climbers take a great deal of care. The Arapiles is trad; there are a few bolted higher-grade climbs, but most of the Arapiles is traditional climbing, so there's no damage to the rock.

People have been climbing on rocks for thousands of years. As to the idea that someone got here first, I'll quote former prime minister Bob Hawke, who said, 'There should be no hierarchy of origin in this country.' And yet here we are, trying to divide access to Australia's great natural beauty and its environment by race, based on this notion of the oldest continuous culture, when there's actually no recorded history, prior to a few hundred years ago. We've got something like 300 Aboriginal languages, so that would clearly indicate that there were different waves of immigration throughout the thousands of years that people have been moving around the planet.

So the concept that Australia is any different to what happened in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Americas in terms of people moving around is absolutely absurd. We cannot continue to keep talking about the past. We know that First Nations Aboriginal people were colonised, but colonisation has brought many benefits, and it's extremely hypocritical to be criticising colonisation when Aboriginal people enjoy the benefits that colonisation brought with it—things like running water, clean water, shelter, protection, energy, electricity, education in terms of writing. All of these things have lifted the standard of living not just for Aboriginals but for all people. Two hundred years ago the standard of living across most of the world was nowhere—even the wealthiest people's standard of living was nowhere what it is today—so why are we continuing to divide people by race and by history?

If you want to talk about 200 years of persecution, come and talk to the Celts. We got persecuted by the Romans in BC 53. There was the great Vercingetorix at the battle of Alesia, Boudica and the Iceni tribe in Great Britain, and the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes in the fifth century. The Angles are known as the English because of the great vowel shift in the 16th century—for those of you who are wondering who the Angles are. The Normans came and gave us a touch-up again in 1096 in the 11th century, and then we had another 100 years—but we had the Vikings turning up and doing their raids throughout the eighth and ninth century. Then we had the Normans, and there was a good 100-year-war there that went on for a very long time. I must say the British turned around then they started going around and building their empire, but they had a good touch-up with the Germans again in World War I and World War II. In amongst all that were the Irish, which some of my heritage stems from. They were practically starved to death their homeland in the 1850s, which is part of the reason why I'm here. The idea that any particular race has a monopoly on persecution is absolutely absurd and it needs to stop.

By all means: I'm happy to acknowledge the Aboriginal culture and I accept that there is culture here, but we have to accept that we're all here now and we all have to live together. I do not want to see beautiful places like the Arapiles, the Grampians, Mount Warning—which is just down below the Queensland border. These were mountains. Human beings, regardless of their race, heritage or culture have been climbing mountains for years, and we need to enable people to climb these mountains because that's what we do. That's what human beings love to do. I'm sure we all go and put our nose to the grindstone throughout the working week but I went down to Mount Warning. I've climbed many mountains— Mount Kilimanjaro, Mont Blanc, Mount Karisimbi in Africa, Mount Paradiso and the Three Peaks. I love mountain climbing, and I know many other thousands of Australians like mountain climbing and rock climbing, and to think that tens of thousands—if not hundreds of thousands of Australians—are going to be locked out from accessing our great natural beauty and our national parks is an absolute outrage. It's an absolute outrage, especially when the state governments who are locking these people out aren't even disclosing the reasons they are locking people out.

The government is here to serve the people. It is not there to tell us where we can and can't go. These things are in national parks. They were created as national parks so that people could access them. It just goes to show the mentality of governments today versus the mentality of governments of yesterday that they're now trying to cut people out and deny people the right to access their own public land. It's an absolute outrage and it has to stop. We need to support this motion. I don't even know why we need an inquiry—I'm happy to have one, but to be quite frank, the state governments need to pull their heads in and allow all Australians to access national parks. By all means, we should treat any cultural sites with respect and make sure we protect those areas, but it doesn't mean that you throw the baby out with the bathwater by locking people out altogether.

The other thing I'll touch on is the goldmine. Yet again there needs to be due process. Regis Resources spent something like $190 million on trying to get environmental approvals for that mine, which the New South Wales government gave them, only for the federal government to then turn around and deny it on cultural heritage grounds. This is the problem we've got here: if the federal government want to do that, are they going to refund the $190 million that Regis paid to the New South Wales government? Are they going to refund that money?

If the federal government is going to override what is effectively—under the Constitution the environment is technically the responsibility of state governments. Or at least it was until Bob Hawke used 51(xxix) to undermine the plenary powers of the states on the Franklin dam decision. He basically said if the federal government signed any treaty with another power, foreign country, it could override the plenary powers of the states. And this is the long-term consequence of this—that is, we now have the federal government kiboshing just about any project that wants to take place, especially with regard to dams. We've had one dam built in Queensland since the Franklin dam decision, the Paradise Dam just next to Bundaberg there, and it had to be pulled down because the state Labor government at the time didn't build it properly.

Civilisation is based around the ability to control water. If you look at the great civilisations of the world—the Indus Valley, the Mesopotamian Valley with the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Nile, the Yellow River, the Yangtze River—they are all based around irrigation from the great rivers. These early civilisations are based around what they call the great flourish of the Neolithic period. We have to be able to cultivate water and yet environmental and cultural treaties are being used to block progress in this country. If we're going to have a rapidly increasing immigration rate, you have to be able to build more dams. You have to open up more mines to generate more royalties to pay for the infrastructure that is going to accommodate these people. We're not doing that.

We have power stations that are coming to the end of their lives that aren't being replaced. In Queensland, the big mining companies there are saying they're not going to open up any new coalmines, so we have a declining royalty revenue base. But we also have an increase in population. So we have extra government costs but less government revenue. That is completely unsustainable if we want to live a high-quality and prosperous life.

As I said, I'm happy to protect genuine cultural sites where they need to be protected. I spent a week climbing the Arapiles—I probably did about 20 climbs—and I didn't see any Aboriginal cultural heritage sites. I'm not saying they weren't there, but they weren't evident at the time. We don't want to close down things. It's the Arapiles today; it'll be the Blue Mountains tomorrow; it'll be Frog Buttress at Mount French in Queensland next.

There is a big rock climbing community out there. I rock climbed for five years. I lived and breathed rock climbing for five years. It's another one of those worlds within worlds where you don't really know it exists unless you're in it, but when you're in it there's a great big mecca. I know people who have basically given up their jobs and lived on the smell of an oily rag just so they can climb day in, day out. I'm a bit too old for it now, but I'm certainly going to get my sons back into rock climbing when I manage to finish whatever I'm doing and I retire. I want to be able to take them down to the Arapiles. I want to be able to take them to the Blue Mountains. I want to take them down to Mount French and Frog Buttress, down at Boonah. And I want to be able to take them to Flavours afterwards, which is one of the great cultural practices of the rock climbing community in South-East Queensland. I don't want to see these things stopped because if my children aren't out there in nature, rock climbing and bushwalking, they're going to be on iPads. I don't want them on technology. I don't want them living and breathing technology, I want them out there seeing the natural beauty of the world, and not just here in Australia but in other countries as well.

I strongly recommend that we support this motion because it's very important that all Australians have access to our beautiful country. It's very important that we can get on with developing this country in a way that is going to ensure prosperity for future generations.