Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table an explanatory memorandum and I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard and to continue my remarks.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The Great Barrier Reef Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 implements in our national environment laws key recommendations of the World Heritage Committee to ensure the Great Barrier Reef does not get added to the "World Heritage In Danger" list. Further, the Bill prohibits sludge dredged up for port developments from being dumped anywhere within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

The Australian Greens share the World Heritage Committee's "extreme concern" that the Australian World Heritage icon, the Great Barrier Reef, is being overrun by industrialisation.

In June 2012, the World Heritage Committee stated that unless the Australian Government makes substantial progress on improving our management of the Great Barrier Reef, the Committee would have to consider inscribing the Reef on the "List of World Heritage in Danger". This concern was reiterated at the Committee's meeting in mid-2013, where they noted that the Government had made limited progress in tackling the issues facing the Reef, particularly with regard to the industrialisation of the Reef's coastline.

The World Heritage Committee is due to make its decision on whether our Reef has to be downgraded to "World Heritage in Danger" when the Committee next meets in June 2014. Such a declaration would be a tragedy for our Reef, and the extraordinary number of Australians who love this place, and the 63,000 people who rely on it for their livelihood. The only other countries that have had their World Heritage properties inscribed on this list are among the world's poorest, and war-torn nations—Afghanistan, the Congo, Yemen.

Following the World Heritage Committee's initial raising of the alarm on the Reef, the Australian Government has submitted two State Party Reports in response to the Committee's concerns. The Australian Greens have reviewed these reports, and are very concerned they contain a predominance of greenwash and obfuscation. The World Heritage Committee has clearly recommended against new ports, or port expansions where they significantly impact the Great Barrier Reef. Yet within three months of taking office, this Government approved the expansion of the Abbot Point coal terminal to become the world's biggest coal port - within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. This project will involve the dumping of five million tonnes of port sludge offshore in the Great Barrier Reef's waters, where it will drift for untold kilometres, smothering sea grass and corals – the habitat of turtles, dugongs and countless other species who call the Reef home.

In late 2013 the Abbott Government also approved yet another LNG plant to be built on Curtis Island in Gladstone Harbour within the World Heritage Area, and they've indicated support for a second shipping channel in Gladstone, involving huge dredging of the sea bottom of the Harbour, further increasing pressure on this important inshore Reef ecosystem.

Natural (pre-colonial) sediment run-off from the Reef's river catchments into the Reef is estimated at 3 million tonnes per year. On top of that, the Reef is now subject to significant increased sediment run-off due to agriculture of approximately 6 million tonnes per year – which the Reef Rescue program is making very positive steps to combat. In light of this, allowing a further five million tonnes of sediment to be dumped offshore directly into the Reef's waters, for just one of many planned port developments, completely undermines the efforts of farmers and communities to date to protect the Reef, and makes a mockery of any stated commitments to protecting the Great Barrier Reef.

The Greens take the concerns of the Queensland community, our fishers, tourism operators and reef scientists and the UN World Heritage Committee seriously. It is for this reason that this Bill proposes to ban offshore dumping of port dredging sludge within the Great Barrier Reef's waters, and this amendment is backdated to ensure that the plan to dump dredge spoil offshore at Abbot Point is stopped.

It's the Great Barrier Reef, it's World Heritage, and it's at risk. We have to step up to protect the Reef for the generations to come. It's time to stop dumping on the Reef.

This Bill proposes a number of other measures that need to be taken urgently to secure the future of the Reef. To that end, we have identified a number of key recommendations by the Committee and the UNESCO Reactive Monitoring Mission which are suitable for implementing through our national environment laws.

This Bill proposes to put in place a permanent ban on any new port development outside of the existing and long-established major port areas within or adjoining the GBR WHA, including specifically banning new port developments in the ecologically valuable Port Alma, Balaclava Island, northern Curtis Island and the entire northern section of the Great Barrier Reef. This would implement, under our national environment laws, Recommendation 5 of the World Heritage Committee's decision of June 2012 (Decision 36 COM 7B.B), and reflects the findings of UNESCO's Reactive Monitoring Mission's report, which identifies a number of pristine areas along the Great Barrier Reef coastline that should not be destroyed by industrial port developments.

This Bill also proposes to stop port expansions if they impact individually or cumulatively on the Outstanding Universal Value of the Great Barrier Reef. This implements Recommendation 5 of the World Heritage Committee's decision of June 2012 (Decision 36 COM 7B.B).

This Bill also proposes to put in place a moratorium to stop the national environment minister from approving any new developments that would seriously affect the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area until the Strategic Assessment currently underway, and a resulting long term plan for the sustainable development of the Reef, has been completed and considered by the World Heritage Committee. This implements Recommendation 2 of UNESCO's Reactive Monitoring Mission's report, which the World Heritage Committee has requested the Australian Government address (per the Committee's Recommendation 4 of Decision 36 COM 7B.B). The critical point of this amendment is to ensure that the Minister can no longer continue to tick off the very projects that have prompted the World Heritage Committee's extreme concern, while they are undertaking their strategic assessment to work out what the Reef in fact can handle. Since the World Heritage Committee first made this recommendation in June 2012, the Australian Government has flouted this request and approved expansions of Abbot Point (including 5 million tonnes of dredging), a fourth liquefied natural gas plant in Gladstone Harbour and two huge coal mines in the Galilee Basin for export through the Reef. The terms of reference for the strategic assessment currently underway to assess coastal development impacting on the Great Barrier Reef explicitly say, despite the World Heritage Committee's request, that project level assessments and approvals will continue to be progressed unhampered by the strategic assessment process. That is, anything that is applied for before the strategic assessment finishes cannot have its approval impacted by the strategic assessment—like a smoker going to the doctor and getting everything but their lungs checked. That's why this amendment requires the World Heritage Committee to assent to the strategic assessment before the moratorium is lifted, to ensure that it does adequately address the parameters which the World Heritage Committee said it should.

Lastly, this Bill proposes to amend the approval criteria for projects that will impact the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, so that projects can only be approved if they deliver a net benefit for the Reef. This amendment also requires that a methodology be developed to underpin this judgement, and that the 'net benefit' reasoning is explained by the Minister for each project that is approved. This will implement part of the World Heritage Committee's Recommendation 8 (Decision 36 COM 7B.B), which calls on the Government to ensure that developments affecting the Great Barrier Reef demonstrate an overall net benefit to the protection of the Reef's Outstanding Universal Value. The Government itself purports to be applying such a test, but its methodology to date is extremely questionable. The Minister has claimed that the Abbot Point coal port will deliver 'net benefit' to the Reef, when it involves dumping of 5 million tonnes of sludge into the Reef's waters, when the entire annual agricultural sediment run-off along the entire Reef coastline is estimated at only 6 million tonnes. Experts such as the eminent Dr John Brodie agree that the Minister's claims here really don't stack up – and it's high time such claims did.

The Australian Government has so far fallen short in acting on the World Heritage Committee's recommendations, but this Bill presents the Government and the Australian Labor Party the opportunity to stand up for our Reef, and do what the Committee has clearly stated the Reef desperately needs.

It should be beyond party politics to protect our Reef, to keep it as one of the seven wonders of the natural world that so inspires our spirit, fills our coffers with $6 billion annual sustainable—and long-term—income, and keeps employing 63,000 people. Political parties of all persuasion must take this warning from the World Heritage Committee seriously and do everything we can to avoid the Reef being placed on the "World Heritage In Danger" list. Such a listing would be a disaster for our tourism industry, and would acknowledge the serious environmental peril the Reef is in from the scourge of dredging, dumping and shipping for fossil fuel exports, and from the climate change impacts when such fossil fuels are burnt.

On behalf of Australia's Reef communities, and all Australians who love our Reef, I implore our elected representatives for their support on this Bill. Australia's Great Barrier Reef is simply too precious to lose.

I commend this Bill to the Senate.