Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

The Department of the Environment and Heritage Australia state of the environment report 2006 is a very important document and a reasonably sizeable one. It is certainly a document that I cannot do justice to in the very short time I have available to speak to it tonight. I think every member and senator of this parliament should endeavour to read it, because it is a five-yearly snapshot of the state of play, as the title obviously says. One very important thing that I believe needs to be emphasised is that the report makes it clear that, whilst it endeavours to give a snapshot of the state of play, to a significant degree, we do not actually know what the state of play is. The report says:

Each of land, biodiversity, coasts and oceans, inland waters, and natural and cultural heritage lacks more than half the data needed to make a comprehensive national assessment.

So, if we lack more than half the data, we are at not actually sure. To me, that signals a significant problem. The report also says:

It is the emphatic opinion of the 2006 Australian State of the Environment Committee that the future role of a national state of the environment committee should be to provide data interpretation and commentary, using accessible, up-to-date, relevant national data. The year 2006 must be the last state of the environment report that starts with a committee-initiated process of indicator and data selection. Environmental data should be continuously updated and made publicly available on the web. This will require strategic responses that are tailored to national, state and territory and regional needs, and that are sufficiently understood and accepted to be sustained into the future.

That would enable us to have the capacity to assess the state of the environment on an ongoing basis, not just every five years, and to do so from a position of much more complete and comprehensive knowledge. Having said that, I certainly do not want to suggest that there is not a lot of data that is available and that is very useful. This report pulls it together.

In shorthand, a couple of key areas need to be emphasised. Firstly, whilst it looks at the state of the environment rather than looking solely at the threats to the environment, there is no doubt that climate change presents the biggest overarching threat to our natural and our marine environments and, indeed, to our urban and social environments. A failure to address that serious threat will clearly show up in major declines in the state of the environment into the future. There is a clear amount of data detailed in the report that says we are doing far less well than we should in living sustainably in the urban environment. There is a lot of untapped potential, if you can forgive the pun, particularly in recycling of water and also of waste products. There is still enormous scope for improvement in efficiencies in energy consumption, in transportation and in water usage, and we need to be doing a lot better than we are.

Outside of the urban environment, I am pleased to see the report notes the significant role that Indigenous Australians play in environmental stewardship. There is a big overlap between areas that are amongst the most ecologically important and healthy parts of certainly the terrestrial environment and those areas that are Indigenous land. That is in part an indication of the skills of Indigenous Australians in maintaining stewardship of the natural environment but it also shows the opportunities that are there. The responsibility is on governments to do a lot more to support the capacity of Indigenous communities in regard to environmental stewardship. There are win-win opportunities here, not only in providing more opportunities that have synergies with Indigenous cultures and maintaining cultural diversity alongside biodiversity, but also in maintaining that broader health of the natural environment along with it.

Those are a few key points that I think we need to draw attention to. We can do a lot better in our urban environment. We can do a lot better in supporting Indigenous Australians in their stewardship, particularly in a lot of the more remote areas of Australia. There is a lot more to the report than that, but five minutes is not really sufficient to deal with it. Perhaps another speaker will reserve their remarks and we can have another go at it later.