Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House notes that:

(1)Australia has over 500 national parks that protect our unique and precious environment;

(2)Sydney's Royal National Park (RNP) was established in 1879 and is Australia's oldest national park and the world's second oldest national park;

(3)the 16,000 hectare RNP has unique cultural, heritage and environmental values;

(4)the RNP:

(a)is the traditional country of the Dharawal people;

(b)has one of the richest concentrations of plant species in temperate Australia with more than 1,000 species; and

(c)is rich in wildlife such as birds, reptiles and butterflies and exemplifies the biodiverse Hawkesbury Sandstone environment;

(5)the RNP's importance to the nation was recognised with a National Heritage listing in 2006;

(6)the values of the RNP deserve World Heritage protection;

(7)federal Labor will consult Traditional Owners and the local community on nominating the RNP for the World Heritage List; and

(8)with the consent of the Traditional Owners, Labor will prioritise a World Heritage nomination.

I move this motion as somebody who has had a love of the Royal National Park his entire life and in the context of there being a very real threat to the Royal National Park right now from the New South Wales government. The New South Wales government, under Premier Berejiklian, has a proposal to, effectively, get rid of 60 hectares of the park to make way for the proposed F6 extension. It's a plan that was produced without public consultation, and that highlights the government's reckless and destructive approach to the natural environment of New South Wales.

With a proposal like that, World Heritage is clearly the only mechanism available that can stop a coalition government from environmental destruction. We know this because we've watched it in the last few years. It used to be the case that, when anything was put under protection, there would be an argument as to whether the protection should go ahead; but, once it was in, there would be a principle of 'no backward steps'. Even on a World Heritage listing, this government was willing to try to take backward steps; but a World Heritage listing is the one thing where a line is drawn and they are prevented from doing so.

We saw it with respect to the areas of Tasmania that had been added to the World Heritage List during the previous government when I was Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water and Population. One of the first actions of this government was to go back to the World Heritage Committee and say: 'We know you looked at these beautiful rainforests, and we know you thought they were World Heritage, but we'd like to log them anyway. Can we just take them out?' The World Heritage Committee dealt with it in a few minutes. Embarrassingly, the delegation from Portugal described the submission from Australia as 'feeble', and it was thrown out. Those forests, as a result, were protected.

It doesn't stop the government from still wanting to engage in environmental destruction. Only a couple of weeks ago the Deputy Prime Minister was to announce a new dam in Tully which was going to involve the flooding of the Wet Tropics area. Once again it was a World Heritage area that we thought was protected, that now had bipartisan support for its protection, the battle for which had gone with the passing of the Bjelke-Petersen government. Yet World Heritage is the one thing a coalition government has not been able to undo. Similarly, with the protections that we put in place in the oceans, they are keeping the boundaries but they want to be able to kill the sea life within them. That's what's happening there.

The Royal National Park should not be up for grabs. The Royal National Park should not be up for clearing. The Royal National Park should not have areas that are up for demolition. We have a very proud legacy in Australia with that national park. We turned the national park announcement that the United States had made with respect to Yellowstone from a one-off announcement to a global movement. We made it clear, with the advent of the Royal National Park, that what was happening was going to be a global shift of country after country protecting areas. I would have thought that that action of protection was locked in and was in place. People have spent their lives, as I have, riding bikes on Lady Carrington Drive, going for picnics at Wattamolla or going to Garie Beach or Marley Beach or just driving through on their way to Bundeena. But now this incredibly precious place is being viewed by the New South Wales government as up for grabs. This resolution is about noting the magnificence of the Royal National Park and about having a pathway forward to committing to the only form of protection that coalition governments do not undo.

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