Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in this matters of public interest discussion to speak on the government's Asian century white paper. We live in an age of great change for the world. Like those looking forward at the beginning of last century, the changes that this century will bring will be profound. And again, like those looking forward at the beginning of last century, we will not know what those changes will be and how they will affect our lives. But there are things that we do know.

In the past 20 years, China and India have almost tripled their share of the global economy. They have increased their absolute economic size almost six times over. This is an extraordinary economic feat. By the end of this decade, Asia is set to overtake the economic output of Europe and North America combined. By 2025, Asia, the world's most populous region, will account for almost half the world's output, with the average gross domestic product per person in Asia set to double. Within only a few years, Asia will be not only the world's largest producer of goods and services but also the largest consumer of them, and it will be home to the majority of the world's middle class.

With a rising Asian middle class, the demand for services from Australia will increase, and we must take action now to ensure that we have the skills and capacity to provide those services. We cannot delay in developing the skills we need or we will simply be left behind. When the Prime Minister launched the white paper, she said:

Australia has unprecedented opportunities in this Asian century of growth and change.

We’ve already seen the first down-payment in our economy through the demand for our raw materials. It is prudent to get ready for what Asia will demand from us next, what Asians will next want to buy from our nation.

As Asia changes, as it becomes home to the world's biggest middle class, then it will want to buy the things that Australia has to sell. Whether it's high quality food, top end tourism, international education, elaborately transformed manufactures, and the list goes on.

In the future, our prosperity lies with a deep and committed engagement with Asia. It is what we need to keep our economy strong—currently the 12th largest in the world according to the International Monetary Fund. To do this, we will need a genuine understanding of those who we will do business with: the peoples, the cultures, the languages, and their approaches to business. We must be diplomatically and commercially engaged across Asia.

The Asian century white paper is the Australian government's plan to make sure Australia is a winner in the Asian century. As a nation, we face a choice: to drift into our future or to actively shape it. We cannot just rely on luck—our future will be determined by the choices we make.

The Asian century white paper outlines how Australia needs to act in five key policy areas. Australia's prosperity will come from building on our strengths, reinforcing the foundations of our society and our productive, open and resilient economy at home. That means ongoing reform and investment across the five pillars of productivity—skills and education; innovation; infrastructure; tax reform; and regulatory reform.

As a nation Australia must do even more to build the capabilities that will help Australia succeed. Our greatest responsibility is to invest in our people through education and skills to drive Australia's productivity performance and ensure that all Australians can participate in and contribute to the Asian century.

Australia's commercial engagement in the region will be most successful if highly innovative, competitive Australian firms and institutions develop collaborative relationships with others in the region. Australian firms need new business models and new mindsets to operate and connect with Asian markets. The Australian government will work to make the region more open and integrated, encouraging trade, investment and partnerships.

Australia's future is irrevocably tied to the ongoing prosperity and sustainable security of our diverse region. We have much to offer through cooperation with other nations to support sustainable security in the region. The Australian government will work to build trust and cooperation bilaterally and through existing regional mechanisms. The Australian government will continue to support a greater role for Asian countries in a rules based regional and global order.

Australia needs to strengthen its deep and broad relationships across the region at every level. These links are social and cultural as much as they are political and economic. Improving people-to-people links can unlock large economic and social gains. While the Australian government plays a leading role in strengthening and building relationships with partners in the region through intensive diplomacy across Asia, others across a broad spectrum, including business, unions, community groups and educational and cultural institutions, also play an important role.

The white paper sets out a number of ambitious targets for our country for the years up til 2025 to ensure Australia can fulfil its ambitions and compete effectively within Asia. These include, by 2025, Australia's GDP per person will be in the world's top 10, up from 12th, requiring a lift in our productivity. This will mean Australia's average real national income will be about $73,000 per person compared with about $62,000 in 2012.

By 2025, our school system will be in the top five in the world, and 10 of our universities in the world's top 100. Globally we will be ranked in the top five countries for ease of doing business, and our innovation system will be in the world's top 10.

Studies of Asia will be a core part of the Australian school curriculum. All students will have continuous access to a priority Asian language: Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese. I know how important this is personally because my son—whose birthday it is today—studied Japanese at university as one of his majors and is now living and working in Japan because of his ability to speak fluent Japanese.

As an aside, I was pleased to see in a Tasmanian newspaper today, an article about grade 3 and 4 students at the Corpus Christi school in Bellerive who have started learning Indonesian. This program is now underway in four Catholic schools in Tasmania, including via an online course to St Joseph's Primary school in Queenstown on the west coast. That is another example of how the use of the internet can be used to deliver training to remote areas. The opportunities to deliver training in this matter will only increase with the rollout of the NBN.

The Asian century white paper provides a target for our leaders to become more Asia literate, with one-third of board members of Australia's top 200 publicly listed companies and Commonwealth bodies having deep experience in and knowledge of Asia. Our economy will be deeply integrated with Asia with our trade links consisting of at least one-third of GDP—up from one-quarter today. Our diplomatic network will have a larger footprint across Asia, supporting stronger, deeper and broader links with Asian nations.

The white paper will set the strategic direction for our policy and funding measures for the whole budget. We are already investing substantial funding across the key action areas outlined in the white paper, including skills, education and infrastructure funding. The National Broadband Network will boost our ability to use our teaching resources effectively, and we will build on new and emerging technology so every child in every school has the opportunity to learn an Asian language.

These objectives will build on the work the Gillard government has already done to increase the understanding and study of Asian languages and culture, including the $62 million National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program, and Mandarin is one of the first two languages to be rolled out under the new national curriculum. To help achieve this, every school will engage with at least one school in Asia to support the teaching of a priority Asian language, including through increased use of the NBN.

For Australia to succeed in the Asian century, we need to equip all young Australians with a better understanding of the culture, history and languages of our Asian nations. Greater engagement with Asia will bring greater prosperity for Australia. I am particularly glad to see that the Premier of my home state of Tasmania, Lara Giddings, has already been proactive in trying to engage investors from Asia to invest in Tasmania and find new markets for Tasmanian products and to make the most of the natural advantages that Tasmania has.

Tasmania has enormous opportunities in the upcoming Asian century. Tasmania has world-leading products that the rising Asian middle class want. We have top-quality wines, cheeses, handcrafted timber products, fresh fruits and vegetables, artisan meats and honey, amongst others. We have natural resources that, through appropriate foreign capital investment, we can utilise to benefit all Tasmanians. There is enormous capacity for expansion of our education sector.

Already Tasmania has thousands of students from overseas gaining a tertiary education from the University of Tasmania and our TAFEs. Our proximity to Antarctica makes us a natural place from which to launch scientific exploration of the Southern Ocean, and I am sure that as Asian nations seek to increase their scientific understanding of the world, Hobart will be a perfect base to start their explorations from, working in partnership with Australian research organisations.

The Asian century provides us with unique opportunities. Only by putting in the groundwork now, to invest in education, to gain greater awareness of our Asian neighbours, will we have the opportunity to capitalise on the great economic and social benefits that the coming century will bring.

Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak about a resident of Victoria, but also about a matter that is of concern to all Australians. That resident is the Leadbeater's possum. I am afraid that this wonderful part of Australia's natural history, a wonderful part of this planet's incredible biodiversity, could soon be lost forever.

Leadbeater's possum is a tiny little marsupial. It is found only in Victoria. It is a relative of the sugar glider. It is an amazing little animal. They construct very large and intricate nests where they huddle together in families to shelter from the cold Victorian winter months. We were so proud of this animal in Victoria that in 1968 we made it Victoria's faunal emblem.

The possum's habitat is on Melbourne's doorstep in the forests of the central highlands, in our magnificent mountain ash forests. Because they are not found anywhere else in the world, the future of this animal is intimately tied to these wonderful forests. Any threat to the forests means extinction for the Leadbeater's possum. In fact no-one actually saw one of these animals for over 50 years, and it was presumed to be extinct, until it was spotted again in 1961. Since its rediscovery, it has been recorded in more than 300 locations; although many of these places have been disturbed by logging and by fire.

Healesville Sanctuary is home to a small captive breeding population, and as part of Zoos Victoria the sanctuary's biologists are attempting to fight its extinction and trying to change the fate of threatened species like the Leadbeater's possum. The work of the expert biologists is to be commended but they do face an uphill battle. The possum is listed as a threatened species in Victoria and is classified as endangered under the EPBC Act. This has triggered the preparation of a recovery plan under Commonwealth law and an action statement in Victoria. Sadly, both the action statement and the recovery plan are out of date, and neither takes into account the destruction of half the possum's habitat in the 2009 Black Saturday fires.

Professor David Lindenmayer, the country's foremost expert on the Leadbeater's possum, and his team from ANU have undertaken the longest forest-monitoring program in the Southern Hemisphere, 30 years in duration, in the mountain ash forests in Victoria. The consensus is very clear: the species is at great risk of extinction in the near future. Delays, underfunding, lack of political will and inadequacy of the Victorian government's response, including the Victorian government's systematic weakening of environmental legislation, has led Professor Lindenmayer to conclude that the possum is on an extinction trajectory within 25 years. Sadly, Professor Lindenmayer quit the Leadbeater's possum recovery team in Victoria earlier this year in disgust. It was reported that his resignation to the Victorian environment minister stated that the current policies were 'unable to appropriately protect' the animal and that he could no longer be a part of 'such a highly ineffective body'.

In 1998, 5,500 Leadbeater's possums were reported in the wild by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and today experts quote between 1,000 and 2,000 in the wild, with only five individuals—down from seven—in captivity. We are on the verge of losing this wonderful animal and our state's faunal emblem.

Unfortunately, the loss of half the possum's habitat to fires has not being factored into the regulatory regime, under which logging takes place in the central highlands. The Victorian government is dragging its feet, underfunding reviews of these regimes and, as Professor Lindenmayer put it, 'monitoring the possum into extinction'.

Victoria's state-owned logging company VicForests has been criticised time and time again for unlawful logging. Each time it was only because a small passionate group of people, community groups like Environment East Gippsland and MyEnvironment, have taken them to court. The Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, the Victorian government agency with responsibility for ensuring that logging occurs within the law, has been gutted by the Victorian government's savage budget cuts. It was recently slammed by Victoria's Auditor-General for not even knowing what it was or was not responsible for monitoring, let alone proactively auditing whether activities such as logging are occurring in accordance with the law.

As it happens, VicForests gets free access to Victoria's forest assets, and it is an economic model that creates a distortion in the market by favouring the logging of Victoria's native forests over plantation forestry. The free handouts and sweetheart deals do not end with free wood and free access to public lands. As a state-owned business, VicForests can call on the government to bail it out at any time if it is running low on cash.

Without these huge subsidies, these enormous artificial commercial advantages, VicForests would go out of business. A recent report by the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research on native forest logging in Victoria found that if VicForests were ever to face a level commercial playing field it would fail. If it ever had to compete directly with plantation timber growers, the market would strongly favour plantation timber, because plantation timber is commercially more sustainable and provides greater resource security than the logging and burning of our native forests. Plantations in western Victoria are estimated to produce no less than twice the volume of pulp logs than those available from VicForests under the business-as-usual case at any time between 2010 and 2049.

Even more shocking is the fact that despite all of these huge subsidies and artificial advantages, VicForests is losing money. I will say that again: they get their land free, they get the trees free and they still manage to lose money. This state-owned business enterprise, created by legislation with the specific purpose of returning a profit for Victoria's taxpayers, has lost money in three of the past six financial years—an incredible feat. The only reason VicForests still exists is that it has been protected by its line of credit with the Victorian government. The 2011-12 financial year was the fifth year running for which VicForests has failed to return any money to taxpayers. Victoria's priceless mountain ash forests are given away free to log and to burn. This is despite their enormous economic potential to attract tourists and to build on the region's thriving tourism sector. Those forests of great value in sequestering vast amounts of carbon for generations have also helped to maintain a clear water supply and yet all of this is being logged away.

Key areas of the Leadbeater's possum habitat face the threat of logging under Victorian state laws. Timber harvesting in these areas is now removing trees that are essential nesting hollows. Along with the direct harm caused by logging and burning, habitat disturbance due to forestry activities puts even more strain on the Leadbeaters. It is therefore alarming that moves are under way to lock in 20-year contracts to log native forests with compensation payable if contracts are altered by future governments.

Legislative efforts are also under way at a state level to weaken and dismantle Victorian environmental protection legislation to facilitate these 20-year contracts. Against all of this, I acknowledge the excellent work being done to save this unique creature and its habitat from extinction. The community group Friends of Leadbeater's Possum has been working tirelessly to raise awareness about the plight of the possum. The Wilderness Society has been encouraging businesses and individuals to protect the possum's habitat by pledging not to use Reflex brand office paper until the pulp used in Reflex is no longer sourced from Leadbeater's possum habitat. Finally, Zoos Victoria has been working on a captive breeding program for the possum. It is also worth mentioning that Zoos Victoria is the largest employer in the Yarra Valley region, with 550 people directly employed and many more indirectly employed, for example, through catering, security and cleaning operations. Sustainable industries such as tourism are the future for the Yarra Ranges, not clear-fell logging.

Against this backdrop, the Commonwealth government is about to hand environmental decision-making powers to the states, especially those decisions relating to the natural environment. Four decades of environmental protection legislation is at risk of being set aside to allow the states to pursue short-term economic gain at any cost. The handover has three parts: firstly, the Commonwealth intends to give the states power over environmental decisions by fast tracking approval bilaterals under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. These approval bilaterals authorise states to make decisions currently made by the Commonwealth. COAG is going to agree on these arrangements by December this year and implement them by March next year. Secondly, imminent amendments to the EPBC act are set to favour the rapid approval of developments ahead of protecting species and habitats. Our environmental laws are already weak enough but this process threatens to tip the balance decisively in favour of development at any cost. Thirdly, states and territories will be allowed to reform state assessment approvals to fast track major development projects.

RFAs, or regional forest agreements, are the model for approval bilaterals. RFAs are written agreements between the Commonwealth and the states that exempt logging areas from the operation of the EPBC act. The rationale for this is supposedly that environmental protection is equivalent to that offered under the act but RFAs have completely failed to protect the environment. The RFA process is flawed at every stage but perhaps most crucially, there is no enforcement. It is invariably left up to community groups and individuals to take up the battle. For example, the Federal Court found in Tasmania's Wielangta Forest case that logging has a significant impact on the Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagle, the Wielangta stag beetle and the Swift Parrot. In response, the Commonwealth and Tasmania changed the RFA. In Victoria's Brown Mountain case, brought by Environment East Gippsland, logging was found to be unlawful because it breached state laws to protect wildlife. Again, the Commonwealth took no action.

Currently, the Senate is undertaking a threatened species inquiry—a timely examination of a loss of species in Australia. It is an important example of the work of federal representatives in monitoring the status of our biodiversity in Australia and in ensuring that species like the Leadbeater's possum are not consigned to extinction as habitat destruction is made ever easier for industry and local interests.

The Leadbeater's possum is facing extinction under the Victorian state government's appalling environmental record. The Commonwealth needs to step up and strengthen its environmental laws, not hand them over to the states. Leadbeater's possum is the perfect example of why we need to do this, and do this urgently. The regional forest agreement that brought us to this point means that the Commonwealth has already excused itself from regulating in this area and the result is that the possum is now on a rapid path to extinction.

Instead of learning a lesson from this, we are set to hand over even greater power to the states. It simply makes no sense, because as far as state governments are concerned, safeguarding our natural heritage for the long term always comes behind short-term benefits, rapid development and exploitation. The trajectory is in one direction only. Like many other iconic places in Australia, such as the Great Barrier Reef, James Price Point in the Kimberley and Kangaroo Island, the Leadbeater's possum is far too precious to lose. I fear that if the Commonwealth abrogates its responsibility to safeguard these precious places it is only a matter of time before they are gone, and gone forever. The parliament might still be able to save these national treasures but if they are gone we will never be able to bring them back.

The Leadbeater's possum was named after John Leadbeater, who was the National Museum of Victoria's first taxidermist. It is my great fear that my children might only see this wonderful little animal in the way that John Leadbeater knew it—stuffed, sitting on a shelf in a museum and with future generations being deprived of the opportunity to see and experience part of this planet's wondrous biodiversity.

Sitting suspended from 13:52 to 14:00