2016-08-16
MR BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — This is a small bill taking up a number of important issues. I do not plan to give the entire history of nature conservation in Victoria as part of my contribution. The previous speakers, particularly Mr Davis, have given us a very wide and broad exposition about almost everything to do with not just national parks but parks in general. The bill is clearing up some boundary issues around the Greater Bendigo National Park. It also facilitates the granting of Aboriginal title. This is after in 2013 a recognition and settlement agreement was signed between the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation and the state, which committed the state to granting Aboriginal title over the park. The bill facilitates that.
There are also some amendments to the parcels which will add approximately 245 hectares to the Kamarooka section of the park. Kamarooka is a unique landscape from the point of view of both the remaining native vegetation and also the agricultural industries that are up there. Many moons ago I went and visited the Kamarooka Landcare Group, which had some really innovative treatments for salinity that they had been working on for a number of years.
In a separate section, the bill broadens the advisory role of the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC), previously known many years ago as the Land Conservation Council (LCC). Mr Davis gave us quite a big exposition on that. He often likes to remind us of how long he has been in this place and generally speaking about his broader perspective on the world. He often tells us about the part he played in the golden era of the Liberal Party — that was the Hamer era. That was when the Liberal Premier of Victoria effectively borrowed the agenda of the Whitlam government and implemented it at the state level, so from that point of view I suppose it would be a golden era.
Around about that time a number of land use conflicts that had been working for a while were coming to be resolved, and setting up and normalising the practice of using the Land Conservation Council, now VEAC, in this bill resolves those disputes. If Mr Davis had chosen to go down that way, he would have reminded us that the Hamer government was very active in that area. But over time unfortunately things have become a lot more contested and a lot less evidence based. In particular since his party joined up with the National Party, they have more or less had to adopt the National Party policy, which is no more national parks ever anywhere under any circumstances.
That compares to the position that the Liberal Party would have taken in the past, which is that they would have used the Land Conservation Council and VEAC to get some of the evidence out on the table and sort through the conflicting claims over land. In fact so successful was this mechanism that when the Land Conservation Council recommended a number of protected areas in East Gippsland, which became the East Gippsland forest parks system, the Labor government actually brought in a piece of legislation that protected less than what the LCC had proposed, and the Liberals in this chamber — in fact the Liberal member Jan Wade — actually moved amendments to the national parks bill to put even more areas in East Gippsland into national parks and quoted extensively from the research that had been done by the LCC and other bodies.
These days they all fall over themselves to say how much they hate national parks and that national parks catch fire virtually the moment that the sign goes up declaring them national parks, along with all sorts of other unbecoming, very out-of-touch notions that they have these days.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — Well, if we are talking about it, let us talk about it. I am aware there is an inquiry by the joint committee that is occurring at the moment into pests on public land, but frankly it was the Baillieu and Napthine governments who slashed the budgets of Parks Victoria. Parks Victoria was already starting to come under fire at that stage by in fact the Auditor-General, who said that it did not really have a handle on the biodiversity works that it was doing. Since then their budgets have been cut even further.
There was round after round after round of redundancies, taking jobs out of regional Victoria in the process and leaving our parks where they are now, such that they do not really have enough staff to support them. That means that pests, plants and animals get out of control. It means that vandals and arsonists get out of control. It means that tourists are out there often by themselves with no-one to help them. We urgently need an injection of funds into Parks Victoria, but you are not going to get that from this sweep of parties over here to my right. They are so busy demonising national parks that they cannot understand the hundreds of thousands of Victorians, city and country, who visit them every year and love them. This noise from the coalition goes right over those people's heads.
The coalition are left floundering around. With two years to go in this parliamentary cycle they are left floundering around trying to come up with anything whatsoever that even resembles the beginnings of the unworked-out notes of an environmental policy. In fact you have transformed yourself into the most radical and anti-environment party that we have seen, which is an amazing turnaround when you consider where the Hamer government got to.
In fact while you are at it have a look at other pieces of environmental legislation like this and have a look at the year in which that particular piece of legislation was brought onto the statute book. As you go through the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988, the Environment Protection Act 1994 and the Environment Effects Act 1978, look at the person who would have been Premier in the year that those particular bills were brought before the Parliament. You will see actually just how retrograde and how backwards you have really gone on this whole question of the environment, while amongst the public at large the attitudes calling for stronger environmental protection just actually get stronger every year and increasingly form a big part of people's voting choices. So much for the coalition and their brief history with VEAC.
This bill establishes a more flexible process so that VEAC can provide advice or assessment on matters of limited scale or scope or of a technical nature and not just of broad land use inquiries. There is no change to VEAC's process in consulting with stakeholders and establishing community reference groups. It has always been a strong feature of VEAC that every stakeholder knew that they had had their chance to have their say and be heard. It also adds transparency to these functions by requiring the tabling of recommendations in Parliament.
There are also some changes in the bill that allow the government to be able to amend or revoke its response to the Environment Conservation Council and VEAC recommendations as long as they are tabled in Parliament, similar to how it did in relation to Land Conservation Council recommendations. We have no concerns with any of these matters, and therefore we are happy to support the passage of the bill.
To access full speeches and debates please visit http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/hansard where you can search Victorian Hansard publications from 1991 onwards.