House debates
Wednesday, 16 August 2017
Questions without Notice
Great Barrier Reef
2:28 pm
Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I do have a question, but very briefly, on indulgence, I congratulate the Greens leadership of the Yarra Council in my electorate for doing something that will make a difference to the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Melbourne.
Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The member for Melbourne will come to his question or resume his seat.
Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
My question is to the Prime Minister. During a recent debate about coal, climate change and the Great Barrier Reef in this chamber, one of your backbenchers, the member for Flynn, stated—and I quote from the Hansard:
There's nothing wrong with the reef! I live on the reef!
Will you condemn this assessment, or is it now the government's official position? Is this why you're happy for the Deputy Prime Minister to bankroll the Adani coalmine and make global warming worse, using the drug dealer's defence that, if we don't give other countries our products, someone else will? With Adani under investigation for fraudulently siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars into offshore tax havens, why are you leaving a legally questionable minister in charge of giving a legally questionable company a billion dollars of taxpayers' money?
Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Before I call the Minister for Health and Minister for Sport, I remind the member for Melbourne that you seek indulgence; you don't simply take it. But I will be lenient on this occasion. It is certainly not the worst bit of behaviour in the House today. I call the Minister for Health and Minister for Sport, representing the Minister for the Environment and Energy.
2:29 pm
Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I am delighted to take this question from the Greens today, because they sat there when they were in a partnership with a Labor government which saw the reef placed on the World Heritage in-danger watchlist. They sat there and did nothing!
So when we came to government, the reef was on the watchlist. And they were silent. They were complicit. They were inactive. They were passive. And they were part of a monumental failure of environmental policy on that side of the House.
Mr Bandt interjecting—
Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The member for Melbourne will cease interjecting. He's asked his question.
Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I'm just warming up. What happened on our watch? The reef was taken off the World Heritage watchlist. And what did the head of the World Heritage Committee say? They said that Australia, under our watch, was a role model to the world—Minister Maria Bohmer of Germany—as to how to manage a world heritage property. Why would that be? Because we inherited five major dredge disposal projects in that reef, and we ended them all. We banned capital dredge disposal in the barrier reef, which had been a practice for over 100 years and right through the Greens partnership with the ALP—silence, inaction and passivity on behalf of not just the Greens but their beloved ALP. These two parties are tied at the hip, and they are environmental frauds. Do you hear that? Environmental frauds! They had their chance. They had six long, painful years and did nothing.
We went a lot further though. We put $210 million into the Reef Trust. We're part of a $2 billion investment in the reef over the coming 10 years and this Prime Minister announced a billion-dollar Reef Fund in the lead-up to the election, which has now been put in place. That's what we did. That's why the World Heritage Committee took Australia off the watchlist for our management of the reef on our watch. But they put the reef on the watchlist under Labor and under the Greens. At the end of the day, Labor and the Greens are environmental frauds, and they failed on the reef.