Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about an important event that is happening on Sunday, 6 March across this country: Clean Up Australia Day. This is an important event, one that I am sure many, if not all, members of this parliament participate in on an annual basis. I certainly have enjoyed being part of Clean Up Australia Day in previous years. I wish we did not have to do this. I wish that our streets, beaches and parklands were clean all the time, but the reality is that is not the case. An event like this, Clean Up Australia Day, is not just a great opportunity to get that rubbish picked up. It is also a chance to lift awareness in our community about the importance of not dumping materials and about the damage that dumping actually does. I talk about it being this Sunday, but on Tuesday this week, 1 March, there was Business Clean Up Australia Day and tomorrow, Friday 4 March, there will be School Clean Up Australia Day. I know that a number of my schools are going to be out there tomorrow with a clean-up team. I was at Clontarf Beach State High School only a week ago and met some of the students who will be out there tomorrow helping to clean up our wonderful Redcliffe Peninsula.

The Clean Up Australia Day Council, in their press releases and on their website, have outlined the types of rubbish that are normally found in Queensland during Clean Up Australia Days. The top five rubbish items are small paper, polystyrene pieces, cigarette butts, bottle caps and lids, and plastic bags. My electorate is surrounded by Moreton Bay, a beautiful bay in which we have dugongs and dolphins. Sometimes we have the pleasure of seeing the whales swimming north. These materials in our waters are devastating. It really is quite distressing to see some of the pictures of what they do to our turtles, fish, dolphins and dugongs. We are working hard to educate our children in the schools in the surrounding area as they are told to make sure that they put their own rubbish in the bin and that, if they happen to be walking past a plastic bag that they see on the ground—whether they put it there or not—they should pick it up and put it in the bin. They know where it could end up and the damage that it could do.

In Queensland we expect to find during this Clean Up Australia Day this year—and the Clean Up Australia Day Council has noted this—different things in addition to our normal rubbish items as a consequence of the floods and what is still washing up on our beaches. Across the entire Redcliffe Peninsula our beaches are still closed. They were closed the day before Australia Day and they remain closed because of what is washing up on our shores and also because of the quality of the water. Despite it being tidal, the quality of that water is still at a level that is not healthy for people to swim in. It is going to take some time before we see those waterways improving.

I have registered this year with the Redcliffe Environmental Forum, who will be cleaning up Hays Inlet, a very important area of the Redcliffe Peninsula. It includes fishery nurseries. It is a natural water treatment system in its own right. It is an air purifier. The bushland areas around Hays Inlet are very good at absorbing carbon dioxide from the air. The scenery is exquisite. Our wildlife is amazing. Because of the importance of the wading migratory birds in the area, it is listed as an internationally significant area under the Ramsar convention. So I will be out there with my children, just as they have helped me in previous years, cleaning up this very important area. You can always leave it to the children to make the point. Last year my children said to me, as we were driving away from cleaning up around the Deception Bay area with the Deception Bay Conservation Park members, ‘Why do we only do this one day a week? Why isn’t it all the time?’ We can only hope that message will get through and that Clean Up Australia Day will not be one single event each year as each day we will all play our part. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.