Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Climate Change and Water (Senator Wong) to a question without notice asked by Senator Siewert today relating to natural resource management.

Recently, in the run-up to World Environment Day, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett, was on Lateline and he was asked a difficult question about how he coped with the politics of compromise. He said:

I’ve learned that compromise can be powerful.

Then he held up the Caring for our Country program as the shining light of how powerful compromise can be. I will tell you what he is compromising. He is compromising NRM, natural resource management, in this country. There is absolutely no doubt about it. The government are cutting funding to natural resource management groups. The staff working in natural resource management groups and catchment groups around this country are leaving in droves. They are already leaving. The government are not funding all of the programs and projects that used to be funded. There are projects that are not winding up in June that they are not funding, or have not told natural resource management groups if they are funding.

I am aware of at least one group that has the potential of losing 22 staff. If you multiply that by 56 regional groups around Australia, that is thousands of staff that will be leaving natural resource management. As somebody from a regional group—who I will not name because I do not want to compromise them in their battles to get their funding—said to me recently in an email:

It’s not just the people – it’s the momentum, the intellectual base, the corporate wisdom, the historical knowledge – we will have to re-start a whole number of projects for 2009-13, from scratch—

that is if they get funded—

‘cos the people who are currently involved will be working for the mining companies!

We have spent three decades in this country investing in land management, natural resource management and Landcare, and now the expertise that has been built up over those years is walking out the door because they are not being funded by this government.

Three key networks that I am aware of, the Threatened Species Network—apparently threatened species are not a priority for the government anymore because they have refocused their priorities—the Marine and Coastal Community Network and SeaNet, still do not know if they have been funded again. It is now 17 June. At the end of June they will have to close their doors if the government does not tell them if they are getting re-funded. All those staff, all that expertise, will be lost. It is very important to remember, particularly with those groups that have an environmental focus, that they work across sectors. They particularly work with industry—in the marine industries, the land management industries, the agricultural industries—to forward the aims of natural resource management.

This government says it has refocused its priorities. Well, it has refocused its priorities away from salinity. Apparently salinity in this country is not an issue anymore. It is not a natural resource management issue. I would really like the government to explain that to the farmers, particularly in Western Australia, who have six million hectares at threat from salinity. The government, with a stroke of the pen, has decided that salinity is no longer a natural resource management priority. It has also decided that marine conservation is not a priority. Apparently it has refocused its objectives. It has refocused its priorities.

In estimates, the government said that the department confirmed that they had cut funding to marine conservation by half. Then they came back to me and said: ‘The government are still working out whether they are going to fund marine conservation under Caring for our Country, so watch this space, Senator, because maybe it will be re-funded under Caring for our Country.’ The point here is: when are the government going to make a decision? How can we have a strategic, sustained, holistic approach to environment and natural resource funding and management if the government are taking this ad hoc and unstrategic approach to funding for the environment and for natural resource management?

Various programs have been running for quite a significant period of time—three decades, as I said. Over those three decades, we have learnt and built up a better understanding of how we should be funding and dealing with natural resource management. We know we need to be taking a whole-of-landscape approach. We know we need to be investing in long-term programs. We know that we need to keep the expertise in place in the regions if we are going to have any hope of dealing with these programs in the long term.

It is quite clear this government does not understand natural resource management and does not understand agriculture. It has taken a series of ad hoc election promises it made, for dealing with the Great Barrier Reef, cane toads and Tasmanian devils—all of which themselves are important—thrown them together and realised that they have to be funded, and so therefore it has looked at where it can get funding from other programs to start delivering on this ad hoc process of environment programs. This is not the way that we need to be dealing with— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.