Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I do so to draw the attention of the Senate and the community, and particularly the new government, to the serious and significant challenges faced by the Wet Tropics Management Authority. As I trust all senators are aware, the Wet Tropics World Heritage area is in the far north of Queensland. It goes from north of the Daintree and Cape Tribulation. That is probably the part of it that is most well known, but it is actually quite a large area, reaching almost as far south as Townsville, past places like Mission Beach.

The Wet Tropics Management Authority has an interesting set of governance arrangements linking to both the Commonwealth and the state government. The key issue that I want to emphasise out of this report is the need, in my view, for more significant and stable funding for the authority. Without trying to sound too pejorative, in my view it has pretty much limped along for a number of years with inadequate and unpredictable levels of funding. Significant components of its ongoing funding actually have not been ongoing in one sense; they have been reappearing on an annual basis via annual grants through sources such as the Natural Heritage Trust. It is simply inadequate for such an important body that oversees such an absolutely crucial area—not just environmentally but culturally—as the Wet Tropics World Heritage area to operate on unknown funding, not knowing what it is going to be getting from one year to another. The authority has had serious problems with unfilled staff vacancies and an inability to plan long term with regard to those vacancies because of uncertainty over the totality of its funding, as well as some issues with regard to board level.

I presume this area comes under the responsibility of the new Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Mr Garrett. I know he is very familiar with the wet tropics—certainly the Daintree but I think the wet tropics more broadly—and I urge him to look at the possibility of providing more reliable and more significant funding for this authority and perhaps negotiating with the Queensland government about some shared arrangements with regard to that funding. I also make the point that, whilst most of the focus about the Wet Tropics World Heritage area is on its extraordinary environmental values, it is one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet, and I think the most biodiverse area in all of Australia. It is home to a huge number of endemic species, both plant and animal, that exist nowhere else on the globe other than in this region. Some of the genesis of those species goes right back to the earliest stages. Some very primitive, literally prehistoric, species exist there and nowhere else. They are under immense threat, particularly from development, in all of those areas—I have mentioned a number of times in this place the continual impact on the World Heritage area from residential and tourism development, not in the World Heritage area but on its boundaries, with continuing car traffic and increases in people visiting. But it is just one area amongst many that are impacted and being fragmented.

Just as significantly and given far less attention is the immense continuing cultural heritage of traditional Aboriginal peoples in that area. There are a large number of Aboriginal tribal groupings that continue to have ongoing connection to country in that area. A number of native title claims have been recognised over parts of the Wet Tropics World Heritage area, most notably with regard to the Kuku Yalanji claim in the far north of the Wet Tropics World Heritage area around Wujal Wujal and elsewhere. The Democrats have long made and supported calls for the World Heritage listing of the wet tropics area to also include its ongoing Indigenous cultural values as well as its environmental values. We urge the new government to continue that process.

But there is no point acknowledging all of the fabulous environmental and cultural values of that area if you do not adequately resource and manage it. I believe the Wet Tropics Management Authority has been hamstrung in its ability to do that in recent years. It does need extra support in that regard, and I call on the new minister and the new government to provide that.

Question agreed to.