Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I present the final report of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee, Natural Resources Management and Conservation Challenges, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the report

Natural resource management and conservation are of great significance to a number of people across the country. We have a history of around three decades of Commonwealth investment in resource management. Firstly, I thank the secretariat for the work that they did in preparing the report. It was quite a lengthy period of inquiry and their attention to detail in working with the committee was very much appreciated. Also, I thank my colleagues. There was a very collective effort on this inquiry, as there is on many of our inquiries. I particularly want to acknowledge the expertise of Senator Ian Macdonald in this area and the contribution he made during the inquiry.

We looked at a range of areas. The terms of reference were rather lengthy, but we particularly looked at the history of Commonwealth involvement in the natural resource management area and the capacity of regional NRM groups and other organisations and networks to deliver the natural resource management outcomes they were trying to. We looked very closely at whether the Caring for our Country program was a comprehensive approach to meeting future NRM needs. The committee believed it fell well short in meeting those future NRM needs.

The Caring for our Country program has been described as aiming to ‘move to achieve an environment that is healthy, well managed and resilient’. The committee’s opinion is that falls well short in achieving those aims. The transition period to Caring for our Country really was a very anxious time for all involved in trying to work for better outcomes for natural resource management. It came through very clearly that there was a real struggle between trying to maintain the physical and human resources that had been built up over time in working in this area and trying to gain the financial resources to sustain them into the future. That created some real angst, because we are talking about people who cared very deeply about what they were doing in trying to reach these natural resource management outcomes. They felt that that transition period was not managed in an optimum way.

They worked very hard. It came through clearly that there had been a lot of hard-won gains out in the community in working with other groups and networks. They really believed that a lot of those project outcomes were going to be put at risk because of the disruption in the changeover to the program and the way the program itself was being managed. One real concern was around the business plan for Caring for our Country. Initially there was a delay in the release of the business plan itself. The program commenced on 1 July 2008 and the plan was not released until the end of November 2008. This created some real difficulties for people who were trying to put together those projects but did not have any kind of plan to work to. That created some real issues for them. Also, the priorities and targets that had been identified in the business plan had been developed in isolation, mostly with Commonwealth agencies. There was a feeling that those stakeholders who really had that practical, on-the-ground understanding of the best way strategically to make this work had not been consulted. There was a feeling that there had been a lack of a strategic approach and a lack of synergy between Commonwealth, state and regional bodies throughout all of this and that that had prevented an integrated landscape management approach.

There were nine recommendations in the end. We obviously felt that a more rigorous and comprehensive approach was important to make sure national priorities were identified that were going to be optimal in terms of Caring for our Country. There were a range of other recommendations that the committee believed would improve the management of these programs and ultimately lead to better delivery of natural resource management in the future. I will end with those brief comments. I know that my colleagues from the committee want to make some statements around this. I again thank the secretariat and my colleagues on the committee for the work that went into the inquiry.

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

The Greens moved to refer this matter to the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport because we felt it was so important that Australia had a proud legacy of funding to the National Soil Conservation program, the Landcare program, the Natural Heritage Trusts I and II and various smaller funding systems under that. We have developed a very proud tradition of land care. In fact, there are 56 regional natural resource management organisations around the country, in various states and under different management regimes.

We were very concerned about what we started to hear from the bush, in particular about the Caring for our Country program. Unfortunately, through the inquiry, those concerns were validated. I hold very deep concerns for the future of natural resource management in this country if Caring for our Country continues without substantive review and amendment. There were many problems raised with us during our inquiry—which took longer than was initially anticipated because we kept getting more feedback and because some of the implications of Caring for our Country did not become manifest until further into the process, particularly after the first transition year. Regional organisations around the country are starting to feel the impact of reduced funding. Their funding has been very significantly reduced. Although the government persists in saying that 60 per cent of historical funding is going to regional organisations, it is not going to each regional organisation. In fact, that funding is going as a piece of pie to the regional organisations, and some regional organisations have taken massive funding cuts. There has been a massive loss of staff and, therefore, expertise and capacity from natural resource management organisations in the bush because they have not had the funding to keep the staff on. So we have seen a draining of that expertise. Those staff not only are important for those regional organisations but also provide capacity that we might not get back.

I have been travelling around the country, separate from the committee process, speaking to a wide range of natural resource management organisations. They are deeply concerned. They talk to me about the loss of staff, the loss of projects and, most importantly, the loss of volunteers, including long-term volunteers. People I have personally known in natural resource management for nearly 25 years are dropping out. That is a tragedy for natural resource management in this country. People who have worked on land care, water protection and water quality issues are giving up because they feel there is a lack of support and a lack of funding. These people, who have been expert at cobbling together grants and various funding sources for decades, have now said, ‘That’s it; I’ve had enough.’

We have also heard of trouble with the regional organisations. The traditional partners—groups that have worked together with agribusiness and with state, local and federal governments—are now finding themselves in competition. Instead of being partners in projects, they are now finding themselves in competition. So we have people competing for funds. In the past, we had groups cooperating to put in a joint funding application to get funding. But now they have to compete. So now they do not feel that they can talk to each other because the people they might be talking to may be competing for funds. Also, they cannot be involved as much in the consultation process, in the development of a business plan and in the development of targets because they may be applicants in the future and it will be claimed that they have a conflict of interest. That is a problem because the message from the ground is not getting through to the target centres or the people determining the business plan. So there is a very strong disconnect between the national targets for this program and the targets, programs and strategic plans of local and, importantly, regional natural resource management organisations.

In my home state of Western Australia the Northern Agricultural Natural Resource Management Group found it could apply for very little under Caring for our Country priorities. The essential priority in their region, salinity, is not a national priority. Salinity is still a priority in WA, despite the fact that the Commonwealth does not agree that it is a national priority. There is also the issue of wind erosion. They have a whole range of priorities that are not listed in the national targets, so they are unable to commit resources to those issues. That is a very significant fault in Caring for our Country.

One of the big issues is that the pie is being stretched further and further. The government committed the same amount of funding as was committed under NHT2. However, they made a series of election commitments that they squeezed into that pie, that they squeezed into that bucket of funding. In other words, it is being spread thinly. The term we used to use in natural resource management circles was that it was being ‘spread like vegemite’ over the landscape. What we are going back to is spreading like vegemite over the landscape a limited amount of funding so that the Commonwealth can feel good about doing stuff that does not actually achieve outcomes on the ground.

We also heard concerns around the application process. It is complex and lengthy. Thousands of hours are spent by voluntary organisations and volunteers generating applications that simply do not get funded, because there are thousands of applications for a very limited bucket of funding. So all those thousands of hours are for nought. So we need to change the application process and perhaps go to an initial expression of interest for those projects. People were very strongly concerned about the assessment process, saying that it lacks transparency and accountability. In general we have actually been able to find no rhyme or reason for some of the decisions that were made. The government said that they had to change the NHT2 process because of the Auditor-General’s report. They are seriously misusing, in my opinion, the Auditor-General’s report to justify going to a very centralised top-down approach that in itself lacks transparency and accountability.

The federal government and the department said that when organisations ask they give them a bit of a rundown on why their application was not successful. When you then ask regional organisations they say, ‘We got very little feedback. We did not get meaningful feedback. We do not understand why our application was not successful other than being told that we do not meet the targets.’ And, as I mentioned earlier, those targets are not able to be translated to the local and regional level. Again, this disempowers groups and undermines essential work.

What we are failing to do here is appreciate that unless we can get these people supported, unless we provide essential funding to those regional organisations and empower the community and regional organisations, we are never going to address the huge land degradation, the landscape repair job that we have to do. It is absolutely essential that we work with the community; otherwise, we will fail. The money that has been invested, the billions of dollars that this country very rightly has invested in natural resource management and biodiversity protection, will be lost because Caring for our Country does not build on that work—it undermines that work.

I am the first to say that NHT1 and 2 were not perfect. I do not even think that the coalition argues that they were perfect. But each time one of those programs was developed we learnt from the lessons of the past. We learnt that we need to work in better cooperation. We learnt that we needed to have integrated projects. We learnt that we needed to be working at the landscape scale. This new program, Caring for our Country, has thrown those lessons out. It is undermining regional organisations.

Again, no-one says that the regional organisations were operating perfectly in the past. I am probably one of the first ones to be critical of some of their operations and to think that they needed improvement. But here they are throwing the baby out with the bath water, undermining the regional organisations that we have invested millions of dollars in and have been supporting. We have spent money training staff and building up their expertise and it has all been thrown to the wind. That expertise is slowly draining out of the regional communities and we are desperately afraid that we are never going to get it back unless this government acts pronto to review Caring for our Country, putting more funding into it to better deliver those resources on the ground, to better work with the community, to change the evaluation process for the next round, to better consult with the community and take on board what they say. (Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In addressing the tabling of this report on natural resource management and conservation, I agree entirely with the submissions made by both the chair and the deputy chair of the Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee before me in this debate today. Before I get onto the substantive part of the report, I congratulate the chair on the work she did with this committee and this inquiry. Senator Nash only came into the chairmanship of the group halfway through. Also, I might say, I congratulate the previous chairman—I think it was Senator Sterle—who operated the committee very well and ably. Senator Nash came in halfway through and picked up the idea of the inquiry very quickly and made a significant contribution not only to the report but also to natural resource management in Australia by her action on the committee. I also congratulate the deputy chairman, Senator Siewert, who has just spoken, and particularly thank the staff who were assiduous, as always, as we have perhaps come to expect. They were very professional in the way they assisted the committee in its hearings and in reaching the conclusions that the committee has made.

Senator Siewert is right: this whole natural resource management issue has had a long gestation period. It was an initiative of the coalition government in the Natural Heritage Trust program, which we initiated when we first came to government. NHT1, as it was eventually known, set the scene and went in the right direction, but it was not perfect. We then became involved in what was known as NHT2, where we did focus natural resource management on community groups who had a direct connection with the landscape and with the particular environment in their region. We recognised that in a country like Australia one size does not fit all. We realised that, if natural resource management was to be effective in Australia, it really needed to be a grassroots, ground up sort of approach to the management of our natural resources. I was one of the two ministers responsible for NHT2 and I remember we had many arguments and many discussions with the Public Service and the people involved. We eventually came to the approach that was adopted by NHT2. Then there was a long gestation period in getting business plans and investment plans.

At that time, I acknowledge, we did lose some expertise that had been in the NRM management area. But I think we eventually got it right and, whilst nothing is ever perfect, it was going pretty well. It was entirely a catchment based program where money was given to, in most instances, community based resource management groups who knew and understood what needed to be done and could coordinate all the various environmental and landscape groups and people wanting to assist in their particular catchment. It was really working quite well. Regrettably, politics then intervened. The new government came into power and thought we should have change for change’s sake. They adopted an ANAO report, saying ANAO had concerns about the operations of the NHT2 arrangement. If you looked at the ANAO report, sure, there were two or three instances where they raised some problems. But principally, as I read that report, they were indicating that the department needed to pull up its socks, not that the whole program needed to be changed.

Politics being what it is, the new government came in and did not like to pursue successful programs of the previous government. So they changed the name and changed the words and, at the same time, gathered back a bit of money so they could spend it on other promises the Labor Party had made when in opposition. So what we had was that Caring for our Country came into operation with great fanfare but, when you dug down beneath the spin and the hoo-ha, you found that there was actually less money going to natural resource management in our country. Other things that had been promised by the Labor Party were added into the Caring for our Country program, but what that did was diminish the money available for the NRM work.

Throughout this inquiry it became clear from talking to people who actually knew what they were talking about that the government through Mr Garrett had adopted this ‘we know best in Canberra’ approach. It became very much a top-down approach, which they disguised under the name ‘national priorities’. It was the minister and bureaucrats in Canberra telling everyone else in Australia what they needed to be doing. Senator Siewert is quite right in what she has said—there was an enormous amount of expertise that had built up around the country, and that expertise is now being put at risk as the money is now uncertain and people who can make a real difference are moving on because of fears for their own financial future. It is not only that; the whole process has had to be started again. I do not think the Labor Party or the bureaucracy intended the consequences of their change of direction. I think they were intending it to continue in a useful way, but what has occurred is enormous disruption to the contributions that have been made by thousands of committed individuals right around our country, many of them volunteers.

I urge the government to swallow their political pride and go back to a bottom-up approach to natural resource management, rather than the top-down approach that they have adopted. The committee heard concerns from many witnesses about the cost of applying for programs, the lack of feedback, the uncertainty and the fact that groups were now competing with each other whereas in the past they had cooperated, and almost cohabitated, to get a good result for the landscape, the biodiversity and ecology of a particular catchment.

My interest in natural resource management has been around for a long time, since before I was one of the ministers involved. I want to pay tribute to all of those thousands and thousands of people who believe in what they are doing, who know what they are doing in their own area and who have a real commitment to Australia and its landscape. In Queensland I have formed very good friendships with a lot of people in the natural resource management area. I will mention a few up my way in the north: the Northern Gulf NRM and their CEO, Noelene Goss, who has been a great advocate for the environment, the Terrain NRM in Far North Queensland, the Burdekin Dry Tropics NRM and the Whitsunday group. In Queensland they have a collective of NRM bodies which is very professional and does a fantastic job of promoting the environment and resource management. That has been duplicated right across Australia. In commending this report to the Senate and urging the government to carefully consider the recommendations and to act upon them, I want to pay tribute to all those thousands of people around Australia who make a genuine commitment to the future of our great country. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.