Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Thursday I was honoured to give the opening address at the second day of the WA wetland conference on World Wetlands Day in the Beeliar wetlands on Nyungar Whadjuk country. World Wetlands Day marks the date on which the Ramsar convention was signed in the town of Ramsar in Iran in 1971. It is the world's longest-standing environmental convention. Australia was one of its first contracting parties. We listed the world's first Ramsar site on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Northern Territory. But now there are 67 listed Ramsar wetlands in Australia, including 12 in WA. The call to action for this year's conference was, 'It's time for wetland restoration,' and that is absolutely right. It's right because we've already lost too much and because existing wetlands are under pressure. It's right because wetlands are crucial when it comes to protecting biodiversity, and it's right because wetlands are especially vulnerable to the impact of climate change whilst at the same time representing the best nature based mitigation through carbon storage.

The Beeliar Wetlands are the perfect place to understand all these things. The area has been changed through urban development yet remains a crucial link in the east-west chain of Swan coastal plain ecosystems that run to the sea. Not long after I was first elected, my community fought to protect those wetlands from a ridiculous, badly planned private toll road conceived by Liberals in Canberra as a first step to privatising Fremantle port. Now, six years on, we're seeing the living evidence of environmental recovery through community engagement in the work of caring for country. That's the kind of work or stewardship that is consistent with our First Nations heritage, which the Cockburn wetlands centre's elder and resident Marie Taylor encourages us to share.

The scale of that stewardship will grow nationwide because the Albanese government is doubling the number of Indigenous rangers and delivering $2 million of support for local wetland, waterway and estuarine restoration through our Urban Rivers and Catchments Program. Half of all threatened animal species and a quarter of threatened plant species are present in urban areas so building a sustainable and healthy urban environment requires conservation of the full suite of wetlands, from urban creeks and lakes to our coastal estuarine ecosystems.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Karl Haynes and all the staff and volunteers at the Cockburn wetlands centre for their work. I acknowledge everyone who participated in this year's conference, including those who bring their scientific expertise, research work and landscape management skills as well as grassroots volunteers, activists and even poets who choose to give of themselves to the cause of environmental protection. Finally, I give a shout-out in honour of all those who fought the good and necessary fight in the summer of 2016-17, all those thousands who turned up day after day in the dust and the heat, who stood up and shouted and sang and locked arms and, in the end, prevailed to protect the Beeliar Wetlands.