Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. Will the minister update the House on recent developments concerning the Victorian government putting cattle into the Alpine National Park and the reasons the Victorian government has provided for its actions?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wills for the question. Members might be aware that, as a result of decisions taken at the end of last week, the cattle that the Victorian government have sent into the Alpine National Park have to be out by 8 April. The very simple basis is that, unlike the views of the Liberal and National Party in Victoria, most Australians do not wander into our national parks and say, ‘Oh, it’s a pretty nice place. All it needs to improve it is some cattle.’ The argument that came from the Victorian government was that somehow these cattle were required to reduce bushfire—notwithstanding that, of the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission’s 67 recommendations, seven dealt with land and fuel management and none of them suggested that cattle should be reintroduced. The member for Goldstein said, ‘It’s about our heritage,’ wanting to refer to the Man from Snowy River. They were brought there in a truck! This was not the Man from Snowy River going up on horseback.

The argument then came from the Victorian government that it was all about science, about so-called scientific grazing. In wanting to find out what the scientific research was about, we heard from a member of the Victorian parliament by the name of Donna Petrovich. She said that people in those areas have an intrinsic knowledge of their environment, and so do the livestock. She said, ‘In many respects, we are quite lucky that there are still a few remaining lead cows in those herds that know the areas that are being trialled. If we did not have that, we would have an environmental problem. Those cattle stick to the areas and the tracks, and they teach the other cattle the appropriate way to move through that country.’ So the line from the Victorian government is: 400 cattle walk into a national park; the calves want to go to the endangered wetlands; but the lead cow says, ‘Oh no, that is listed under the EPBC Act. You can’t go there.’

Then we got the official information from the Victorian government, and it was no better. I asked the Victorian government to provide the Australian government with the documents that caused them to make a decision in January. They gave us a document dated March. For the reason that they made a decision in January, they gave us a document that was dated 15 March 2011. It provides the next layer of the scientific research. In year 1, the placement of cattle in the selected sites was required to enable the cattle to develop and demonstrate high site fidelity and site familiarisation with these sites. High-fidelity cattle is what this trial is allegedly going to provide us with! You can almost see JB Hi-Fi: you have got the high-fidelity speakers and the high-fidelity system; they can now introduce the cattle as well, courtesy of the Victorian government.

We were promised that this would be a scientific university study, but it would not pass as high school science homework. We were promised that there would be science involved; the Victorian government have given us nothing but satire. Make no mistake: when you change the government from a Labor government to a coalition government, you get a worse environmental outcome.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.