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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I wish to take note of one of these reports. There are a lot of documents that have been presented that were tabled out of sitting since the end of March. I want to take note specifically of the report from the Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts committee on Australia’s national parks, conservation reserves and marine protected areas. As the Senate would know, these reports will all go across to Thursday afternoons when people can talk to them, but I thought that on a report as significant as this it was appropriate to note it at a time in proceedings when people pay a little bit more attention than they do on Thursday afternoons, when they are usually halfway to the airport.

It is an important report; it is, as the title indicates, about our protected areas and national parks, including marine protected areas. It was tabled nearly a month ago now and has received some attention. I hope it receives more attention. It is an overview report rather than a forensic examination of the finest detail of what we need to do, but I think it provides some good guidance. The report was initiated by the Senate back when I was chair of the environment references committee. As the Senate would know, the government took control of all of the Senate committee chairs and the reference and legislation committees were merged in about August last year, so Senator Eggleston was chair of the committee for the final stages of the inquiry. Without reflecting negatively on any of us on the committee, I think that significant shift halfway through the inquiry, plus the fact that it went on for so long that many people moved in and out of the committee and went on to do different things, as well as changes in the secretariat, meant that there was a bit less continuity to the whole proceedings than would have been desirable. Having said that, I hasten to add that I still believe it is a solid and very important report.

I want to emphasise a couple of the recommendations that were in the report but, before I do that, I must say that on the whole it was a unanimous report. Senator Siewert put in some additional comments and dissented from one of the recommendations but, apart from that, the report is a unanimous one and it has some important recommendations in there. Firstly, a recommendation that I particularly want to emphasise is the recognition of the need for more resourcing at federal level for World Heritage areas. As with many areas of inquiry, there is a constant battle between whether funding should come from the federal level or state level, and there is no doubt that national parks and many other protected areas are primarily the responsibility of the states. The federal government provides some backup funding in other ways through the Natural Heritage Trust and other things, and particularly through the National Reserves System program. There is a very credible argument to say that when it comes to World Heritage areas, the listing of an area on the World Heritage List is something that is done by the federal government at federal government level. It is listed on the international stage that there is a credible argument to say that there should be more consistent funding from the federal government into those World Heritage areas.

I am thinking about my own state of Queensland, which has some crucial World Heritage areas. There is, of course, funding for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park—and I should note in passing the very positive increase in funding that was announced for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in last night’s budget. But among other incredibly important areas is particularly the Wet Tropics World Heritage area centred around Cairns but going quite a way to the north and to the south of Cairns, which does not have adequate funding in my view and does not even have reliable funding. It relies year to year on what it can get from the Natural Heritage Trust. I do not think that is a good enough and reliable enough mechanism to use in ensuring the management of what is an incredibly important area, both in terms of its ecological diversity and, as the committee received evidence to demonstrate, its cultural diversity as well. As a Queenslander, I am rather prone to pointing out that, despite the attention that is sometimes received by areas such as, for example, the forests in Tasmania, without trying to get into a competition about these things, the ecological values of the Wet Tropics World Heritage area and Cape York to the north of that far outweigh virtually anywhere else in Australia as the most mega-diverse area within Australia. It is incredibly significant ecologically and it is also very important culturally. The Cairns region is an area that has very heavy population pressures, draws in an enormous amount of money to Australia through its tourism and has a lot of people living in and around those World Heritage areas. It merits better resourcing than what it gets and there is a clear responsibility, I believe, of the federal government to do that, as they should also with other World Heritage areas.

I also want to emphasise the recommendation for more resourcing for Indigenous protected areas. The inquiry found that the Indigenous Protected Areas program is a very important one and is very valuable. It has delivered a lot with quite a small amount of money. It was not just the Senate committee inquiry that found this; it was also in the Gilligan report, which was a separate report that occurred around the same time and specifically examined Indigenous protected areas. This report also found it to be an immensely valuable program: immensely valuable in delivering ecological benefits and in maintaining and building biodiversity, immensely valuable in delivering a valuable role for Indigenous traditional owners in working on their country, and immensely valuable in making use of those skills that traditional owners have in land management that are not adequately being made use of in many parts of our environmental management. In recognising culture, in employment opportunities, in showing respect—in all sorts of areas it delivers positives. It is one of the best examples I can think of of a multiple win program and it is one that the federal government deserves credit for establishing. Like many government programs at state level as well as federal level, they have relied a lot on using CDEP labour on the cheap to be able to do the program without properly funding it.

Another positive measure from last night’s budget, I note, was the funding to transform some CDEP jobs into full-time government service delivery jobs. The largest area that it applies to is in the environmental service delivery area. I certainly hope and expect that some of those will apply in areas of Queensland but also obviously in states other than my own where it will deliver results. There is still a lot of potential for expanding in that regard with further government resourcing of environmental service delivery through Indigenous people, both traditional owners and others, and also through further funding and expansion of Indigenous protected areas. That is a very important recommendation.

That links to another recommendation which calls on both state and federal levels of government to make much more meaningful use of the expertise in environmental management that Indigenous people around Australia have. It is not just some sort of feel-good measure; it is a simple fact that one of the reasons we are not doing as well as we could in managing some places around the country is that we do not know well enough what we are doing, and we have genuine expertise in many traditional owners in many parts of the country that is not being tapped into. In many cases, it is—even if inadvertently or unconsciously—pushed aside.

I note in particular the evidence that the committee received in Cairns from both the Aboriginal Rainforest Council and the Cape York Land Council about how, when things are done badly, setting up national parks or other protected areas can actually be another form of dispossession for Indigenous people. That is not only unjust but also, even from those who simply see the need for ecological management, cutting off our nose to spite our face, because we are excluding the expertise that we should be making much more use of.

I hope this report serves as an opportunity to enable that expertise to be used, and I urge the government to pick up on those recommendations and some other key ones, such as those on invasive species. One thing I have to emphasise is that it was a pretty poor reflection, frankly. The first two recommendations of this report acknowledge that the report on invasive species from 2004 has not been responded to. Finally, I thank the secretariat. In particular, I thank Jacqueline Dewar, the initial secretary to the inquiry, and Ian Holland and the many others who worked on this very important report, which I hope will be beneficial in further focusing on and making improvements in what is a very important area of environmental activity—that is, our protected areas.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks on the same report later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.