House debates

Wednesday, 23 June 2021

Statements by Members

Great Barrier Reef

4:22 pm

Photo of George ChristensenGeorge Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

The claim about outsourcing parenting is false, as the other chamber has heard. Earlier this week UNESCO's China-chaired World Heritage Committee proposed listing Australia's Great Barrier Reef as 'in danger'. This bizarre decision was made without consultation or any scientific foundation, and it completely blindsided those who have actually seen the reef, including the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators, who opposed the 'in danger' listing. It's one thing for a nameless, faceless UN committee to make decisions which directly affect our natural tourism assets, but for that committee to be headed by communist China brings about a new level of hypocrisy.

The Great Barrier Reef is fine, but I wonder how 'in danger' Mischief Reef is after China pumped enough sand on it to reclaim 1,379 acres of land to build a huge military base in the South China Sea. I bet Subi Reef is thriving under hundreds of thousands of tonnes of concrete in runways and communication towers. Did China submit an environmental impact statement to the Philippines, given that that reef is part of its continental shelf? But that's not the only military base built on a reef that China killed: Fiery Cross Reef had 27 acres of land reclaimed; Hughes Reef had 19 acres of land reclaimed; Cuarteron Reef had 56 acres of land reclaimed; and Johnson South Reef had 27 acres of land reclaimed. The list goes on and on. China have no right to lecture us on environmental management because, if our reef were in their hands, it would be the largest military base on the planet.