Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Growing up in the northern suburbs of Brisbane was a great experience for me, and I love our local environment. One of the things I used to do was knock around with my mates down in Cabbage Tree Creek, looking at our local fauna and flora. That is why In my maiden speech I spoke about the work I did with many of our environment groups in our area—in particular, Redcliffe Environmental Forum and the great work that they've done there over many, many years; and, at North Lakes, the Mango Hill & North Lakes Environment Group. There really are some wonderful groups in our electorate, including the Bald Hills Bushies in the southern part.

The federal government has recently funded a whole lot of environmental projects all around Australia in members' electorates. The Communities Environment Program goes a long way to make sure that environment groups continue to do great work to ensure that our environment in Australia remains pristine. So far, more than 900 local environment projects have already been funded, through the Communities Environment Program, some $22.65 million, including in my own electorate of Petrie.

I was really happy, with my community, to be able to secure a number of projects for my electorate, one of those being a native fish program with Native Fish Australia. That project helps schools and child-care centres understand the important role that native fish have within freshwater ecosystems like Cabbage Tree Creek. Native Fish Australia have reintroduced the pygmy perch into the wild, into local waterways, to help establish the native population through their breeding program of Fish in Schools. If you are in a school or work at a school in my electorate of Petrie or perhaps in a child-care centre and you'd like to take advantage of Native Fish Australia's Fish in Schools project, please let my office know.

Also, down at St Paul's in Bald Hills we've established a new environmental education and recreation area to establish a koala corridor and enhance the local environment zone there, which is really important. This is also happening at Mueller College at Rothwell and up in Burpengary East, through the Moreton Bay Regional Council as well. Planting more eucalypts and more native plants actually helps the fauna—the native animals, reptiles, insects and so forth.

Probably the best project that's really captured the imagination of local people are the three Seabins that have been put in at Newport Marina that are capturing and collecting rubbish every day. I want to thank the marina managers for emptying those bins daily. They are helping our native waterways.