Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Water. Congratulations, Minister, and thank you for visiting the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust sites in Warringah with me. These are iconic places, from the North Head Sanctuary to Mosman's Headland Park, ancestral Indigenous sites and the very military map rooms and tunnels where the defence of Sydney was planned in World War II. These sites need to be valued. They're falling into disrepair. Will you invest in the restoration and conservation of these sites for future generations?

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

ERSEK (—) (): I want to thank the member for Warringah for her question. I also want to thank her for going with me and with the member for North Sydney to see some of these beautiful special places on Sydney Harbour. I am honoured, as are the Prime Minister and the member for Wentworth I think, to represent, here in the national parliament, these areas surrounding our beautiful Sydney Harbour.

Sydney Harbour has deep history—65,000 years of history. Its stories are told so well by Aboriginal tour groups, like Tribal Warrior, that sail around the Harbour showing tourists the history of the place. As the member for Warringah said, we have the history—military history, convict history, maritime and industrial history—and the beautiful natural environment, the incredible biodiversity under the waters of Sydney Harbour, protected and restored so well by the Sydney Institute of Marine Science.

I am excited, as the member for Warringah is and as I know the member for North Sydney is, about two really exciting master plans that are being developed at the moment by the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust managing the land of Cockatoo Island and the North Head Sanctuary. The member for Warringah is quite right. These areas have been run down in recent years and neglected by those opposite. I know that the Prime Minister has a special interest in this, because, of course, Cockatoo Island is part of his area. He was profoundly influenced by his mentor and my friend Tom Uren. Tom Uren was a man who took up the lesson of Niels Nielsen, a very early lands minister in the New South Wales government, who thought that every Australian, every Sydneysider, should have access to the property around our harbour, to the beaches and the foreshore, the built environment and the natural environment. That is the principle that we will always use when we are considering how we best protect, restore and maintain these precious sites.