Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Malabar Headland is the sacred green shoulder of Maroubra Beach. Beloved by our community, the headland has played host to recreational shooting activities and the Anzac Rifle Range since 1850s. Australian troops since the Boer War have trained on Malabar Headland. The headland is home to the endangered eastern suburbs banksia scrub and the site of significant Aboriginal heritage and cultural artefacts of the Bidjigal people. There are also historical World War II monuments, including the Malabar Battery, a coastal defence battery built in 1943.

Malabar Headland is the last remaining tract of native bushland between Sydney Harbour and Botany Bay. It must be preserved; it must be handed back to the people of Australia. It is an important community asset that must be protected and handed back to the public as national park and public parklands. I, like many in our community, grew up exploring, riding bikes and playing around Malabar Headland, enjoying its natural beauty, and I want my children to have that same privilege. In August of 2010 Prime Minister Julia Gillard and my predecessor, former member for Kingsford Smith Peter Garrett, announced that Malabar Headland would be returned to the people as national park and public parklands. Since that time Labor worked to ensure that that process was brought to fruition, to ensure that that plan was made a reality. Labor in government remediated the western portion of Malabar Headland at a cost of $2 million, and in March 2012 that 70 hectare segment became national park. It was handed back to the people of New South Wales as, and protected as, national park. We remediated the eastern portion of the headland—out behind the target range, next to the coastline—at a cost of $11 million, making it ready to be handed back to the people as a national park. Work on a leachate drain on both the northern and southern sides of the headland was carried out to alleviate seepage from the headland, which for two decades, from 1968 to 1988, was a public landfill site.

Labor negotiated with licence holders to vacate the land to allow remediation work to begin on the headland's largest central portion. We allocated funding in the budget and got on with the plan to return the headland to the people—to create public parklands and continue the wonderful coastal walkway around the headland to ensure that people can walk from Bondi to Botany Bay unimpeded, along Sydney's beautiful coastline. But when the Abbott government was elected the progress Labor was making came to a halt. They commissioned a secret plan for the development of Malabar Headland, a plan that was only revealed in The SydneyMorning Herald on 22 January this year after a freedom of information request was put in by the Herald. The report itself was heavily redacted but some of the quotes are illuminating. One of them states that the actual return is dependent on the extent of the lot which is made available for development, and that the upper level of estimated return is based on 48 hectares of the site being made available for development and the Commonwealth undertaking remediation of the site prior to divestment.

That was the government's secret plan, commissioned earlier on in the process of this government, and delivered in September 2014—so the government has sat on this plan since that time. Needless to say, the community was fiercely opposed to this. Member for Maroubra Michael Daley and I joined with community groups, including the Friends of Malabar Headland, to stand against the push for development. The Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, then declared that the government would not proceed with the development of the headland—despite the fact that they had spent all this money on this report. But, given their history on the headland, the government's words are hollow. It is time for action. The Abbott government must allocate money in the budget to continue remediation, and to continue Labor's work and its plan to return the headland to the people. In the meantime, the Friends of Malabar Headland should be allowed back onto the eastern portion of the headland to continue their bush regeneration work with the Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub. I, Michael Daley and members of our community will work towards ensuring that this headland is protected from development and returned to the people as parkland. (Time expired)