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

I thank Senator Pratt and the Labor Party for their support for this administration bill in relation to the management of the Great Barrier Reef—the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Amendment (Authority Governance and Other Matters) Bill 2017. I appreciate that Senator Pratt and no doubt Senator Whish-Wilson, who will speak later on this, are correct in saying the Barrier Reef is our Barrier Reef—it's the Barrier Reef of all Australians. But I particularly like to think of the Barrier Reef as my Barrier Reef because I've lived all of my life on the shores of the Great Barrier Reef. I know well the people who operate on the Great Barrier Reef, be they tourist operators, fishermen or scientists out of Townsville, Cairns and Mackay, and over the years I've had a long, long interest in the Great Barrier Reef.

I know the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority well. It's based in the city of Townsville, where I have my office, and of course the Australian Institute of Marine Science is based at Cape Cleveland, between Townsville and Ayr, to the south of where I live. I pass the AIMS turn-off every day I go to work. And I'm very conscious of some of the very good work that James Cook University does out of the campuses at Townsville and Cairns in relation to marine matters. Most of their work's good. Some is what I would class as questionable and a bit politically motivated, but that's up to individual researchers.

The Barrier Reef is going fine. Senator Whish-Wilson will get up after me and tell the world that the Barrier Reef's dying, it's dead or it shouldn't be visited by the European and North American tourists who flock to that area. The Greens political party seems to have undertaken a campaign to denigrate the Barrier Reef so that one of the great sources of revenue, export earning dollars and jobs in Queensland which come from the reef is decimated. That seems to be the Greens political campaign, because most of the rhetoric that they go on with about the health of the reef, which was unfortunately also mentioned by Senator Pratt, is simply not true. Senator Whish-Wilson will get up after me and tell you it's dead and that all these horrible things are happening, but the fact of the matter is quite different. There are challenges on the Great Barrier Reef. There always have been. But that is well recognised by the government.

I know Senator Pratt, who comes from Western Australia, the other side of the country, and Senator Whish-Wilson, who comes from Tasmania, at the bottom end of the country, love the Barrier Reef as much as I do, but they could hardly be said to have the practical involvement with the reef that I've had over most of my lifetime. Senator Pratt was carrying on about how good the Labor Party is with the Great Barrier Reef. I've done this before, but I refer Senator Pratt to a document put out by Save Our Marine Life, an alliance of leading conservation organisations—not normally friends of ours—which is entitled A big blue legacy: the Liberal National tradition of marine conservation. It goes through, in some detail, the work that Liberal-National governments have done over the years: the prohibition of oil and gas operations on the Barrier Reef by the Fraser government in 1975; the end of whaling in Australian waters and the creation of the first stage of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park by the Fraser government in 1979; the World Heritage listing of the Great Barrier Reef and the creation of the Cairns section of the marine park in 1981; the creation of the Lihou Reef National Nature Reserve in the Coral Sea by the Fraser government in 1982; and the creation of further marine parks by the Howard government 1998. Coalition governments have always been more active in protecting our marine environment right around Australia, as this booklet quite clearly points out.

I've had a lot of discussions with many directors and chairmen of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park over the years. Dr Wendy Craik has conducted a recent review of the authority, and Wendy is the appropriate person to do it because she was once in the position of chair of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, many, many years ago. The idea of splitting the chairmanship from the CEO is a good one; it's something the park authority itself and other stakeholders have wanted. Most of the amendments contained in this bill, as Senator Pratt pointed out, are issues that would have been determined after long consultation with all stakeholders, and I'm pleased to see these amendments are universally supported.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority is not a specific scientific research agency, although they do a lot of scientific research. I was particularly pleased in a Senate inquiry that Senator Whish-Wilson chaired—I don't think he ever made a lot of this particular point—when the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority gave evidence that the Coral Sea was actually cooling and that the waters around the northern section of the Great Barrier Reef were actually cooling. That puts the lie to what Senator Whish-Wilson will tell you: no, the waters are all getting warmer, and there's coral bleaching and all that. Yes, there is some coral bleaching; yes, there has been a crown-of-thorns problem. There have been crown-of-thorns starfish there for 60 years that I can remember. Ben Cropp and his wife were the first ones to try and do something about that. Coalition governments have funded very considerable work for the removal of the crown-of-thorns.

I'm delighted to say that just a couple of weeks ago the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, came to Townsville. We went out to AIMS where Mr Turnbull announced to academia, people involved in the reef, tourism operators and other stakeholders in the reef that $60 million for further research and remedial action on the Great Barrier Reef would go to a number of different agencies. We haven't heard a lot about that—and you won't hear about it from the Greens.