Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Abbott government's assault on our World Heritage areas, and, in particular, the Great Barrier Reef in my home state of Queensland. As we speak, the World Heritage Committee is debating this matter overnight to determine the future of the Great Barrier Reef and to decide whether or not to give this government a further extension until February to try to avert a World Heritage in Danger listing for the reef.

We all know that a World Heritage in Danger listing would be an absolute atrocity. It would, unfortunately, completely destroy the Great Barrier Reef tourism industry, threaten those 63,000 people who rely on a healthy reef for their livelihood and send a message that Australia simply does not care about its World Heritage obligations. It would be an international list of shame that Australia would be included on, joining war-torn nations like Afghanistan, the Congo and Yemen as one of the only developed nations with a site on that list.

It is not like we have not had any warning. For the last two years, the World Heritage Committee has been issuing stronger and stronger warnings and urging and pleading with both the federal and the Queensland governments to change direction and stop this mass industrialisation of the reef and avert that World Heritage in Danger listing. Just last month, the draft decision of the World Heritage Committee made some very, very clear recommendations, which we are anticipating will be adopted tonight.

They made special mention of the approval of the Abbott Point coal port—what would become the world's largest coal port, that so happens to be located in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. They begged the Australian government to hurry up and deliver a long-term sustainable plan for the future of the reef. They urged the Australian government to not ditch its powers to protect matters of national environmental significance and just palm them off to states or local governments, to postpone that and to reconsider it. The draft decision urged the government not to cut reef water quality programs, which, sadly, this government has done. And they urged the Australian government to lock in limits on damaging new and expanded ports into law.

But what does this government do? Instead of actually listening to those recommendations, acting upon them and putting them into law, they mount a lobbying effort to try and water down that decision. We have had folk from the Australian government over there for several days now trying to have that strong draft decision watered down so that it is less embarrassing for Australia. It would be less embarrassing for Australia if you fix the problem rather than lobbying to change the criticism. We will find out tonight how that lobbying effort went.

Last week Minister Hunt and the Queensland environment minister, Andrew Powell, released the annual reef water quality report. They tried to spin this as good news by saying that the reef's water quality had improved. It had gone from 'very poor' to 'poor'. I am afraid there is no way you can spin that. The inshore reef's water quality remains poor. Instead of actually backing in the reef rescue plan, the program which had helped start the trajectory of improvement by working with farmers to try to reduce run-off, the Abbott government has instead taken out 20 per cent of the funding for that program. Forty million dollars has been slashed from that program to go into some as-yet unidentified program, Reef Trust. In budget estimates they could not even tell me who was going to administer that program and what the parameters would be.

Instead of heeding the warnings that we have had for the last two years, we have seen this government approve Abbot Point coal terminal. We have seen them approve yet another liquefied natural gas facility in the World Heritage area on Curtis Island in Gladstone. This is despite input from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority's own internal scientific advice on Abbot Point which says that the offsets were unrealistic and urges rejection of the offshore dumping of five million cubic metres of sludge to be dredged from the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. GBRMPA were ready to reject it; they said it had the potential to cause long-term irreversible harm to areas of the marine park.

It is not just the internal science that GBRMPA tried to tell the minister about. The industry actually knows that this is bad news. We have already had Rio Tinto, BHP, Anglo American coal and Lend Lease pull out of Abbot Point. They do not want the bad PR. They have heard the science, they have heard the community, and they have also cited the fact that there is excess port capacity and they actually do not need these extra ports, because the coal price is dropping, the world is embracing renewables, and they simply do not have enough to justify the need for new ports. We have just got Adani and GVK Hancock left at Abbot Point—Adani who are mortgaged to the hilt and who have been sued in own home country for breaching environmental conditions about port developments. These are the guys that this government has let loose on the Great Barrier Reef.

We know that, further south in the reef, Mitchell Group and Xstrata have also pulled out of their plans to put ports in the Fitzroy delta—that beautiful, pristine region that the World Heritage committee has singled out and said should be protected and should be off limits for ports. We saw some wonderful news in recent weeks. International banks are now saying they do not want anything to do with Abbot Point either. They will not put their money and the money of their investors into these damaging developments. I would like to praise Deutsch Bank, HSBC and, today, the Royal Bank of Scotland, who have ruled out using their money to fund this destruction. This comes off the back of other superannuation funds who are also divesting from fossil fuels that damage the reef and our climate.

We saw yesterday a pretty sneaky attempt by this government to try to fool the World Heritage Committee by deferring the decision on the Southern Hemisphere's biggest coalmine proposal, the Carmichael mine, proposed by Adani—that same mob that clearly have no respect for environmental rules. This is a 60-megatonne coalmine that would operate for 60 years. Minister Hunt has all the information he needs to reject that climate atrocity that would also damage the reef and have a terrible effect on groundwater. Instead, he sought to put it off until after the decision of the World Heritage Committee tonight. But the committee will not be fooled. They know what is going on, and we are anticipating a recommendation from the World Heritage Committee that we have until February to do better. Sadly, the approval of the Carmichael mine, which I expect this government to issue, will be forthcoming in a matter of weeks.

I have a bill before this place to implement the recommendations of the World Heritage Committee to try to save the reef and keep it off the list of sites in danger. It is a very simple bill, because they were very simple recommendations. They simply say: no new ports, no damaging port expansions. Just press 'pause' on development until you finish doing your long-term plan for the reef, and any development that is approved should have a net benefit. That is what the World Heritage Committee recommended to this government last year. I anticipate that they will repeat those very simple and very reasonable recommendations tonight. When will this government clean out its ears and start to listen?

Unfortunately, it seems that the government is continuing to favour the big mining companies and their overseas shareholders, the interests of those private profiteers, ahead of the interests of the Great Barrier Reef and of the 63,000 people who need the reef healthy for their livelihoods. This is, sadly, a theme that we see repeated on Cape York, in another attack on World Heritage value land. We see, sadly, that the Abbott government has reduced the staff working on that potential nomination from 5.8 down to 1.5. There is no commitment to World Heritage listing on Cape York by this government, despite the clear wishes of the traditional owners, who were so close to agreeing on a nomination and the boundaries and the lines on the maps before this government pulled the rug out from underneath them by ceasing and failing to continue the funding for that consultation.

There is no hiding from it. This government is launching an all-out assault on Australia's environment, and world heritage is at the top of its list. Tonight I fear that we will once again have a strong warning from the World Heritage Committee, and I fear that this will be the last warning that we will get. Three strikes and I think we are going to be out for the reef. We have until February. Please, this government needs to start listening to the hundreds of scientists, the internal advice of their own marine park authority, and the thousands of Australians who are concerned about the future of the Great Barrier Reef. Do what is necessary. Implement the World Heritage Committee recommendations, and start realising that Australians can be proud of their government again because it is looking after the environment rather than simply assaulting it from every angle.