Paul Calvert (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with the provisions of the Auditor-General Act 1997, I present the following report of the Auditor-General: Audit report No. 31 of 2006-07: Performance Audit: The conservation and protection of national threatened species and ecological communities: Department of the Environment and Water Resources.

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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This report is a damning indictment of the failure of this government to properly conserve and protect nationally threatened species and ecological communities in this country. The report repeatedly points to the failure of the government to, amongst other things: adequately fund the protection of listed rare and endangered species in Australia—now the list is much greater than 1,000; keep their list of threatened species and ecological communities in up-to-date condition; adequately survey species on Commonwealth land; and complete recovery plans in the required time frames. It is an enormous list of failures by this government. One cannot blame the department for this. What is clear from the department’s response is that this government has been miserly in its attitude toward the department protecting our environment and has failed to respond to its own legislation passed in 1999 for the protection of the biodiversity of this great nation.

We are in a period of ecological collapse around the world—with global warming, the potential for 25, 30 or 40 per cent of species to disappear off the face of the planet. This nation is one of 17 which have, beyond other countries, an enormous list of rare and endangered species facing threat of extinction. This report nails the government. It cannot even get its own recovery plans going. In fact, there appear, according to a graph in the report, to have been none completed in the last two years for which records are shown. It is a farrago of failures by this government. This is a world which is extremely concerned about the extinction of species. We have been talking about the destruction of forests and their rare and endangered species—financed by this government, under the signature of this Prime Minister. This is a damning report of neglect, starvation of funds, a total unfairness to the good-hearted people in the bureaucracy trying to carry out the mandate of the national legislation for the protection of species, ministerial failure and neglect and—one would have to say, from reading this report—deliberate flouting of the requirements of the law that this government not only move to list and protect rare and endangered species but develop recovery plans which actually bring the species back from extinction.

If one just goes to page 133—a random opening—in this report, one finds this statement:

Clearing of native vegetation results in the spread of dryland salinity, soil loss and erosion ...

et cetera. It goes on:

Clearing for agriculture, is the single greatest threat to Australian woodland birds. For every 100 hectares of southern woodland cleared an estimated 1 000–2 000 birds die as well as many other organisms.

Above that is a graph showing that in New South Wales in 2005 there were 30,000 hectares of woodland cleared illegally. Above that in the report it says it is very likely that that included communities that were so-called protected under this government’s legislation. This is a massive failure of government responsibility. Putting the responsibility back to the states—something it does not do when it comes to business; it wants to go the reverse direction in relation to water—is no excuse for this government. This is an appalling indictment of this government and its failure to protect Australia’s environment, its plant life, its wildlife and, in particular, those species on the brink of extinction.

Question agreed to.