Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Patterson reminds me that she is one of the few senators who had the courage to take on travel to the Antarctic on the Aurora Australis. Her influence and the influence of then Senator Knowles proved instrumental in ensuring that the government focused on the Antarctic and the Antarctic Division. All of the input from people like Senator Patterson and Senator Knowles has helped achieve a great story for Australia.

I want to turn to the report and comment on a couple of areas. Recommendation 3 was about the government allocating an additional $50 million, the committee said, to the budget of the department over a 10-year period to be administered under Australia’s Antarctic program specifically for remediation of past work sites in the Australian Antarctic Territory. The government’s response indicates that that recommendation is supported in principle. The government response goes on, quite rightly, to point out that the total cost of remediation of past activities has not yet been fully determined and any budget implications can only be considered when all requirements are known.

Australia is leading the way in remediation of former sites down in the Antarctic. I know there are other countries—I certainly will not name them—who go there, do some things, build some buildings, commit some environmental vandalism with the waste they leave about, and then do nothing about it. Australia’s original bases were left better than most, but still are a problem. It has been a major concern of the Howard government to try and remediate some of those. We have actually put a lot of money into it. It is not a cheap exercise. Once you get people down there, how do they remove material from the sites without exacerbating some of the problems and then ship it back to Australia for disposal? What do you do with that material when you get it back to Australia for disposal? There is a bit of the NIMBY—shades of the uranium waste debate—in the decisions about where you put this waste. But the Australian government and the Antarctic Division have done a sensational job over the years in doing the right thing as good world citizens in remediation of past works. I certainly congratulate them.

The other matter I want to refer to briefly is recommendation 4, which talks about the cultural heritage management of Mawson’s Huts. I was delighted yesterday that Mr David Jensen, who is the chairman and chief executive officer of the Mawson’s Huts Foundation, just happened by sheer coincidence to pop into my office to renew our acquaintance and the very close working partnership that he and I had back in the times when I was the Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment and he was, at the time, I think, the chairman of the board of AAP, operating out of Sydney. Mr Jensen has a passionate commitment to Mawson’s Huts as a very significant part of Australia’s heritage. Although few Australians will ever see Mawson’s Huts in the flesh, so to speak, the work that has been done by Mr Jensen, members of his foundation board, and other committed people like him, in preserving Mawson’s Huts is creditable in the extreme.

Those huts form a very significant part of the history of Antarctica. I am privileged to have on a wall in my office a photograph signed by Sir Edmund Hillary of Mawson’s Huts and some of the restoration that was done. They were issued as a fund-raising gesture some 10 years ago by the Mawson’s Huts Foundation. Having that photo on my wall continually reminds me of Mawson and the great work he did as one of Australia’s pre-eminent explorers down in that very special continent.

Over the years, the foundation—and there are other groups that have been involved, too—has done a lot of work in restoring the huts that Mawson once used. It is expensive work. It is not easy. Anything you do in Antarctica is expensive. You have to get very special equipment. Because it is a heritage construction, you have to deal with it in a way that heritage architects would approve of. Then you have to get them and the equipment down there. The place where these huts are is remote from other Australian bases at the current time. It is an enormous problem. A lot of work has been done. A lot of money has been raised. There have been a lot of very generous corporate donors who have contributed to the foundation. As well as that, Peter Costello, as Treasurer over the past 11 or so years, has also been very generous on behalf of the Australian people. A lot of government money has gone in to support the foundation.

The foundation, Mr Jensen was telling me, is sending another expedition down there in the not too distant future through a kind favour of a tourist ship that goes down there. I wish I had my notes so I could indicate the name of that ship, because I would like to give that organisation a bit of a plug. They take tourists down there. They are allowing this expedition, which is going to do restoration work at Mawson’s Huts, to get on board. That will facilitate their attendance at Mawson’s Huts and enable them to do that restoration work. That work will require extra money. I have no idea what is in the budget, particularly these days, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that the approaches to the Treasurer for some additional government funding for Mawson’s Huts restoration work come to fruition. I will be watching the budget very closely to see if the great work that the foundation does will again be supported by the government.

I enjoyed the speech from Senator Hogg on this issue. He has obviously become an Antarctic fanatic, as most people tend to become once they get involved. Senator Patterson knew nothing about the Antarctic until she went down there, and now she is one of the most knowledgeable people—