COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Official Committee Hansard
SENATE
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS REFERENCES COMMITTEE
Reference: Australia’s national parks, conservation reserves and marine protected areas
FRIDAY, 21 APRIL 2006
BRISBANE
BY AUTHORITY OF THE SENATE
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SENATE ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS REFERENCES COMMITTEE Friday, 21 April 2006
Members: Senator Bartlett (Chair), Senator Adams (Deputy Chair), Senators Lundy, Marshall, Ronaldson and Wortley Participating members: Senators Abetz, Allison, Boswell, Bob Brown, George Campbell, Carr, Chapman, Colbeck, Conroy, Coonan, Crossin, Eggleston, Chris Evans, Faulkner, Ferguson, Ferris, Fielding, Forshaw, Humphries, Joyce, Ludwig, Ian Macdonald, Marshall, Mason, McGauran, Milne, Moore, Nettle, O’Brien, Payne, Robert Ray, Siewert, Stephens, Watson and Webber Senators in attendance: Senators Bartlett, Moore, Ronaldson and Siewert Terms of reference for the inquiry: To inquire into and report on: The funding and resources available to meet the objectives of Australia’s national parks, other conservation reserves and marine protected areas, with particular reference to: a. the values and objectives of Australia’s national parks, other conservation reserves and marine protected areas; b. whether governments are providing sufficient resources to meet those objectives and their management requirements; c. any threats to the objectives and management of our national parks, other conservation reserves and marine protected areas; d. the responsibilities of governments with regard to the creation and management of national parks, other conservation reserves and marine protected areas, with particular reference to long-term plans; and e. the record of governments with regard to the creation and management of national parks, other conservation reserves and marine protected areas.
WITNESSES ALLINGHAM, Mr Tony, Chair, Environment Portfolio, AgForce Queensland...... 88 BOYLE, The Hon. Desley, Minister for Environment, Local Government, Planning and Women, Queensland Government ...... 1 BRISTOW, Mr John, President, National Parks Association of Queensland ...... 26 BUCKLEY, Professor Ralf Christopher, Professor of Ecotourism, Griffith University...... 69 DE HAYR, Mr Brett, Chief Executive Officer, AgForce Queensland ...... 88 ELLIS, Mr Tim, Manager, Tenure Actions Group, Environmental Protection Agency/Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Queensland Government...... 1 FEELY, Mr Alan, Executive Director, Parks Division, Environmental Protection Agency/Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Queensland Government...... 1 GSCHWIND, Mr Daniel, Chief Executive, Queensland Tourism Industry Council...... 57 HARRISON, Mr John Charles, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Recreational and Sport Fishing Industry Confederation T/A Recfish Australia...... 48 HEAD, Mr Damien Paul, Member, Australian Workers Union ...... 112 LECK, Mr Richard Alexander, National Marine and Coastal Policy Officer, WWF Australia...... 37 MOODY, Ms Ann-Maree, Business Manager, Parks Division, Environmental Protection Agency/Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Queensland Government...... 1 PAHL, Mr Stephen Gerard, Chief Executive Officer, Ecotourism Australia ...... 57 PETRIE, Mr Malcolm, Natural Resource Management Project Coordinator, Local Government Association of Queensland...... 79 SIMPSON, Mr Christopher Francis, Industrial Advocate, Australian Workers Union...... 112 SINCLAIR, Mr John, Honorary Project Officer, Fraser Island Defenders Organisation...... 103
Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 1
Committee met at 8.44 am
BOYLE, The Hon. Desley, Minister for Environment, Local Government, Planning and Women, Queensland Government
ELLIS, Mr Tim, Manager, Tenure Actions Group, Environmental Protection Agency/Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Queensland Government
FEELY, Mr Alan, Executive Director, Parks Division, Environmental Protection Agency/Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Queensland Government
MOODY, Ms Ann-Maree, Business Manager, Parks Division, Environmental Protection Agency/Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Queensland Government
CHAIR (Senator Bartlett)—Welcome. I formally declare open this hearing of the Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts References Committee in relation to its inquiry into the funding and resources available to meet the objectives of Australia’s national parks, conservation reserves and marine protected areas. I particularly welcome the state Minister for Environment, Local Government, Planning and Women. Thank you for making the time to come here today. I also welcome the other representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency.
This is the second public hearing of the committee’s inquiry, which is due to report to the Senate on 30 November. All proceedings today are public proceedings but, if the committee agrees to a request to have evidence heard in camera or determines that certain evidence should be heard in camera, witnesses are formally advised that evidence to the committee is protected by parliamentary privilege. I am sure you are aware of what parliamentary privilege is about, but for others listening any act by any person which operates to the disadvantage of a witness on account of evidence given before the committee is unlawful and may be treated by the Senate as a contempt. The giving of false or misleading evidence to the committee may also by treated by the Senate as a contempt. If a witness objects to answering a question, they can state the grounds upon which the objection is made and the committee will consider how it wishes to respond with regard to that. If anyone wants to give evidence or answers to questions in camera, they can make that request and the committee will give consideration to that matter.
I take this opportunity to put on the record the committee’s thanks for the assistance received yesterday on our trip and the examination of a small part of the wonderful World Heritage location of Fraser Island. Minister, do you wish to make any opening remarks to the committee?
Ms Boyle—I am pleased to be here. Thank you for your welcome but, more than that, I thank you all for coming to Queensland so early in the inquiry. We really appreciate that your effort is not going to be one of sitting in a boardroom in one of the metropolitan areas of the great south- east of Australia and that you are coming out to have a look at the parks. The other particularly good news to me about your committee and your work is that the terms of reference are nice and wide and that, as I understand it, this is not a committee that has a particular agenda but rather is simply keen to discover the world of national parks—at least, Australian national parks—and how we may be potentially able to do better.
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I will start by providing some context and then I will make a couple of political remarks—not with a capital ‘p’ but in terms of where the Queensland government’s pressures, expectations and difficulties are at the moment so far as parks are concerned. You may be aware that parliament is sitting today and so, with your permission, I will take my leave after my presentation and any questions you would like to ask me and leave you in the good hands of Alan Feely. We are pretty proud of our parks’ service, I have to tell you. There has been a massive increase in the numbers of rangers, and they are indeed an eminent crew in terms of their expertise and their diverse range of skills, their numbers and the amazing environment in which they work. I dare say you all know how huge Queensland is and how diverse a state it is. Climatically and geographically we have amazing areas—from the Simpson Desert to the Great Barrier Reef, from Cape York Peninsula and the Torres Strait islands right through to Springbrook and the CERRA World Heritage area. That is a wonder but it is also one of our difficulties. We have such an area to service and so much to do within the context of such diversity.
All of you would surely be well aware of Queensland’s tremendous figures in terms of tourism—Australian tourism as well as international tourism. There is no doubt at all that in Queensland the great majority of tourists come here for the environment in one way or another, including the climate generally as part of that environment. While ecotourism has been a good and important program over the last 10 years, in fact Queensland’s tourism has always been ecotourism—since before the phrase was coined. It is important, nonetheless, when we start to move towards saying, ‘Where isn’t it perfect?’ and asking what jobs we—the broader ‘we’ of all levels of government and even the community—have yet to do in terms of parks that we keep in mind some of the contextual history that is still influencing decisions and actions and, particularly, community attitudes.
Queensland has a kind of pioneering character in many ways. Many people, women as well as men, went out and farmed the land, mined the land and planted cane everywhere. In order to plant cane everywhere, they had to cut down lots and lots of trees. Of course, the timber industry has been particularly lucrative for well over a century, and that meant cutting down lots of trees. The Beattie government are very proud of our Vegetation Management Act. We think it makes a major contribution to turning back the tide of denuding the land, which contributes to our greenhouse gas problem. That is the attitude of the present government, and it is not shared by all Queenslanders.
As well as that environmental history and culture of cutting down trees, I am sorry to admit, but we all know it is true, that in Queensland we have historically suppressed our Indigenous people. They have not been truly welcomed or had a fair go in terms of full participation in Queensland—although, of course, much stronger efforts have been made over the last 25 or so years. We think that parks, World Heritage, tourism and the environment are a natural fit with Indigenous cultures, and we have begun some initiatives to encourage Indigenous people to work with us as rangers, through management rights to the land and through tourism opportunities that flow from it. But I have to say that we have much more work to do.
We have much more work to do, in my view, in terms of having national parks in Queensland. Historically, we started from a very low base compared to some other states. I am proud, in the context of where we have come from, to say that we have just covered the 4.7 per cent of the landmass mark, on our way to five per cent, and it will be a cause for celebration when we get there. But compared to New South Wales, and especially to Tasmania, proportionally, of course,
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 3 that is way too low. In terms of the protected areas of the state generally, we have a bit over five per cent of Queensland covered.
There is much more to be done in terms of the opportunity for tourism growth and expansion of the National Estate. We are mindful, too, of the tremendous pressures from the community. There is resistance in many quarters to the setting aside of land for high-quality conservation, and that is, of course, what a national park designation means. Within our Nature Conservation Act, we have a no-take policy translated into the act, which means no non-native animals and no carting out, for example, of trees that have been felled. Even during the recent cyclone, there was no harvesting of timber. It means that, as we put more land into national parks, horse riders, beekeepers, dog walkers and various sectional groups are being assisted to find other trails or other areas to use which have designations other than that of national park. We think it is really important to have some high-level areas truly set aside for conservation purposes and with their integrity maintained as far as possible.
At the same time we recognise that, even though it is only nearly five per cent of the landmass that has been allocated to national parks in Queensland, it is a huge job to maintain the parks. There is never enough money. I can say that and not be embarrassed by it because our government each year has put in more. It has increased the number of staff, it has increased the capital works budget and it has increased the fire, pests, weeds and maintenance budgets. So we do more each year, but we are a long way from having done enough.
We have some big issues with tourism. Traditionally, we have not worked as well with the tourism industry as we might. Sometimes, government organisations are not well integrated— people are busy in their own silos, as the saying goes. Unfortunately, that has been the case between the Environmental Protection Agency/Queensland Parks and the tourism industry, but we are addressing that.
There are some key issues that we have on the table together, which I think would be of interest to you. The first is the issue of who pays and whether there should be more user-pays arrangements. This is of some interest to the community and to the tourism industry. Particularly in areas with high visitation, where there is, therefore, a need for more resources in terms of numbers of rangers and more work to ensure that the infrastructure there can support the visitor load without harm to the environment, more money is needed. Maybe the tourists, certainly from other parts of Australia but even more certainly from overseas, should contribute to that cost so that we can do a better job.
The second issue on the table, and on which we would hope to have some better news by the end of this year, is whether there can be some joint work, even on capital projects, between the tourism industry and the parks service. The third issue of some interest in Queensland is the high-visitation areas or the fragile areas. What formula do you use to set the maximum visitor number carrying capacity, who sets that and how is it implemented?
As far as our relationship with the Commonwealth government on parks matters is concerned, I have to say that I am disappointed. I had genuinely hoped as a new environment minister, with a new environment minister at the Commonwealth level also, that in this term of government we could at least for the substantial part of the terms of government leave politics aside and work well together. It is my perspective that I have made many good efforts, but they have not been
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 4 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 returned. My letters are not even replied to in any timely sense; messages left are not addressed. This is a great pity because we would manage our jobs better, of course, if there were a partnership, particularly on matters that are not of political or controversial moment.
We as the state government absolutely accept that, by and large, we make the areas that are national parks into national parks, or we put them into protected areas of state. We maintain them and we pay for the maintenance. We have a capital works program, funding for which comes out of the state budget, and we manage the areas in terms of tourism and visitation. We are not asking the Commonwealth to take those jobs from us. We think, though, that there is more complementary work that the Commonwealth could do in our partnership. The Commonwealth has not shown to us an understanding that infrastructure for national parks and therefore capital spending in national parks, or World Heritage areas for that matter, is actually tourism infrastructure. We wish that it did.
Nonetheless, we do congratulate the Commonwealth government on their initiative of the natural resource management groups. We are partners in that process, and it certainly has been a productive and matching exercise. However, in my view, we need better partnerships, certainly between the state and the Commonwealth but also more jointly with the community. Our partners should be in tourism and local government, agricultural and Landcare groups and, of course, the natural resource management groups.
If it were so that the Commonwealth would be at the table instead of operating independently we would be pleased. The sorts of jobs I see that the Commonwealth might assist with are particularly in terms of World Heritage, and I might come back to that in a moment, but also with some capacities for research and information across the nation to more broadly inform all of the states—but certainly from my perspective, Queensland—about best practice, what is being done and how we are going in that bigger picture, and maybe even contribute to the science and research into the economics of our parks and the benefits to our community. And I would like to see the Commonwealth do that on a national level rather than leave us to our own resources on a state level.
It is World Heritage, however, where I think the most serious discussion needs to be undertaken. In Queensland we have five World Heritage areas, and they are amazing places. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority is an iconic organisation at an international level. It is wonderfully regarded in the scientific community and it is of course of high standing in the tourism industry, and it is even known by many ordinary mortals around the world. There is a great nervousness in Queensland, which I hope is absolutely unfounded—time will tell—that there are some moves afoot at the Commonwealth level to dismantle GBRMPA and to make it an arm of the Commonwealth department. That would be absolutely tragic, and I have to say would be tremendously resisted if it turns out to the case.
Beyond that, however, the concerns on GBRMPA are about funding. I have received representations that Queensland’s funding should be increased, and quite frankly I think they are correct, so I am making representations through the budget process of the Queensland government. I am not yet in a position to announce any favourable outcome, but I hope that I will be. GBRMPA does need more funding—state funding and Commonwealth funding—to continue its important work, but so too do other World Heritage areas. I dare say that you will discover, where it is not already known to you, that the Wet Tropics area has been pretty well
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 5 funded over the years and it too has become an eminent body and well regarded. One of the little aspects of tourism in Cairns is a continual trade in scientific people from around the world wanting to come and work with WETMA to see the work that they are doing, to copy the management techniques that they have used in working with councils, land-holders and farmers. Their funding, however, has been reduced by the Commonwealth and our calls to talk about the other World Heritage areas are falling on deaf ears.
The particular point that I would like to make, beyond the issue of whether we need more funds and whether the Commonwealth should participate more—and the answer is yes—is that first and foremost these are essential areas for the natural environment and, secondly, they are tremendous tourism drawcards. There are such good reasons for them being looked after and funded well for all of our benefit. Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you this morning. I know I have gone on well beyond my five minutes and I appreciate the committee’s patience.
CHAIR—I have two questions. One I think you pretty much addressed, but perhaps there is extra you wanted to say, as someone who has become environment minister in the last year or two and who brings in fresh eyes. Leaving aside money and the individuals in particular roles at the federal level at the moment, are there any other aspects of the whole mix of responsibilities, management, communication, legislation and the way all of those things operate—upwards towards the federal level and also downwards towards local—that you think could be done in a more effective way? The second question is whether there is more scope for what one might call the more preventative actions being taken. Weeds has already come up a lot in submissions, even at this early stage. There are issues of trying to prevent weeds getting out into the community, desexing cats and dogs and even those sorts of things which are local government or state responsibilities. Is there more that should be done at that level of activity?
Ms Boyle—In response to your first question, my disappointment is in how many Queenslanders do not understand and do not even want to understand what is happening to the environment at the moment. While there is an attitude of grudging acceptance that climate change is for real out there, I am really surprised to discover the limited understanding of what national parks, the natural environment and biodiversity are about, why they matter, what is happening with climate change, what actions can be taken to address that and its implications. The community education process is a fairly expensive and difficult one and it is one that I wish all levels of government, but especially the Commonwealth and the state, were working together on with the scientists to give it more standing. It is really important that people in all kinds of industries understand—that the development industry understands and that those out there who still want to cart trees out of national parks understand. And they could. It is not a political matter. Surely we could set that aside and work better on public education about why the environment matters, what sustainability really means and what actions we need to take.
On the second issue—and so I suppose it is moving from the broad strategic to the somewhat banal but nonetheless important issue—of weeds, you are so right. We put more money into weeds, and we blitz here and we blitz there, but it is a bit like the finger in the dyke. The money available, through our government and through other programs that come from the Commonwealth, is barely doing that. We could take a much more strategic and integrated approach to the key weeds—I am sure in other states but also in Queensland—with the broader goal, albeit down the track, of eradicating some of those. That would be possible if we really had
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 6 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 a program of national and state significance rather than what we have at the moment, which is a kind of program of importance which does not really solve the problem.
CHAIR—Are there any other questions people want to put to the minister whilst we have the opportunity, before she dashes off to the equally important task of state parliament?
Senator MOORE—Minister, these questions will go to your staff members as well. I am particularly interested in the community consultative processes that have been put in place. You have mentioned in the past the need to really get community on side. Even at this early stage of my participation in this committee there seems to be very little common ground—some people are pushing for development and some people are pushing for absolute protection. But all the way through they are talking about having their voices heard. I know that department has a process, but just for the record I would like to hear your position on how you have consultation operating in this area and how you balance an area which causes people to take divergent and sometimes quite combative positions around the agenda.
Ms Boyle—Thank you for the question. My thinking about it still reflects my background as a psychologist—
Senator MOORE—That must be very difficult, Minister.
Ms Boyle—and my attitudes as the member for Cairns and a Cairns City councillor who had no idea that she was ever going to be the environment minister and who thought quite severe things about the EPA and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service—and I remember them well. The EPA and Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service are full of wonderful people with tremendous expertise but not in communication. That is not how they get their jobs. There is not a culture, or there has not been a culture, of good communication. There has been much more a culture of: ‘We get on with our job. This is our responsibility and this is what we know about.’ I think, quite frankly, that the communication with the community has been a very low priority. Even when done, in some quarters within the organisation it has been done reluctantly and not well by people whose job it is not particularly to communicate and who do not have high-level interpersonal community development skills.
We have started something in recent years—and it is patchy, I admit—in some areas. There is no, in my view, system of the community working together or system of partnership that will fit all the places in Queensland—not at all. So the advisory committee we have on Fraser Island is going really well, and that suits Fraser Island. It does not suit some other parts of Queensland. In a lot of the western parts of Queensland the key players are Queensland parks, the council and the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Water. Having the three work together and inform the community as to what is going on is like a whole new world, and we are having some success.
Generally, however, in areas where there is conflict I am greatly in favour of having everybody in the room sitting around the table together and laying their cards on the table. Even then, with diverse interests you often find that there is a move towards the centre. We had some problems more recently on the Sunshine Coast, and we took that approach. Community is there, business is there, council is there, various state agencies are there and some environmental representatives are there. It is a wonder when you get all the players in the room together, which
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 7 is why I put in such a plea for the Commonwealth to be working more with us and—I suppose you are right—with the community.
It is, nonetheless, a pressure for all. I think it is the right direction to take those precious dollars out of the EPA or the parks service and say, ‘We want to spend these on communication and relations with the community.’ We have such core business to do. That remains a tension and it will probably be so forever; certainly for the near future. I would have hopes, though, that within three years, were you to come back, I could say to you that all over the state, in all kinds of communities, we now have the kinds of ongoing community contact and working together arrangements that are suited to particular areas and give them a big tick. I think it is still some years away before we could say we have achieved that.
Senator RONALDSON—Minister, your adviser is perched behind you, so you might as well give him the opportunity to speak to you.
Ms Boyle—Sorry, I have to go. Thank you very much. You have been very indulgent.
Senator RONALDSON—I would not have been so gracious if I had known he was tapping you on the shoulder to go. I have one very quick question. When you say the Queensland government has still not done enough, can you detail the areas? We have talked about weeds as an area where you think not enough has been done. What other areas are there?
Ms Boyle—We are still acquiring funds. I am pleased to say that we have some good and I expect expanding acquisition funds, particularly in the cape. There are ambitions for eventually listing for World Heritage a substantial proportion of the cape, on the eastern side, but in order to get there we need to make many more agreements—land use agreements as well as management agreements—with traditional owners. They are very slow programs. Those are two of the areas. Even then, when we acquire, it would be lovely to have lots of money to really get onto that new area and get it in good order. Yet, of course, we have some additional moneys to spend on new acquisitions but not as much as I would like to have, in terms of having an intensive program for the first couple of years after our acquisition that would allow us to employ very many more people and maybe upgrade some aspects, or some areas of it, that have been degraded over the years. So the progress of our acquisitions goes too slowly for my liking.
Senator RONALDSON—Is it only the acquisitions area where not enough has been done or are there actual management issues?
Ms Boyle—In some of the high tourism areas, our capital works program is too slow from the tourism industry’s point of view, and they are probably right. In some other areas, it would be nice to expand the weeds, pests or firebreaks operations. All the time, to us it feels like it is a juggling process: this is where we think our priorities should be, but then of course something happens and you need to divert some resources and that means that something else slows down. In my ideal world, we would not have so many other areas of the state government that compete for money and I would have more and would be able to do it better and faster.
Senator RONALDSON—So do you think there should be more resources going into the areas of pests, weeds, fire management et cetera?
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Ms Boyle—Yes.
CHAIR—I am reading the anxiety of the adviser—
Senator RONALDSON—I accept that, but perhaps it is unfortunate that more time were not set aside to ask the minister some of these questions. I understand her other requirements.
Ms Boyle—We may have the opportunity to meet again along the way. I would certainly be pleased to also provide information through some other format, should you have remaining questions at the end of our presentation.
CHAIR—I am sure Mr Feely will faithfully reflect your views. We will obviously have the opportunity to put further questions and I hope we will also have the opportunity to come back to Queensland, to the northern parts of the state, later on. Far be it for me to not in any way recognise the importance of parliament, so I allow the minister to go. I apologise to the committee for cutting you off, but, nonetheless, thank you for taking the time to appear and give us some insight into the government’s perspective on this.
Ms Boyle—I thank the committee indeed.
CHAIR—Mr Feely, do you have any statements of your own that you would like to make at the start or would you like to just—
Mr Feely—No, I am happy to take questions.
CHAIR—Senator Ronaldson, would you like to keep going down the train that you were following?
Senator RONALDSON—Yes. I will again express my disappointment. If we have witnesses here, particularly someone in the capacity of the minister, they should be available for further questioning, having made comments reflecting on others. It would have been more appropriate for those comments to be put to the test. In any event, Mr Feely, the minister said that there was a rapid increase in ranger numbers. Can you detail what that rapid increase has been?
Mr Feely—There were approximately 470 rangers in 2002, and the government made a commitment to fund an additional 140 permanent rangers, so we now have in excess of 620 rangers across the state.
Senator RONALDSON—Are they permanent full time?
Mr Feely—They are not all full time; some are part time, but they are permanent. We do have the odd exception to that. For example, in some Indigenous communities we employ casual rangers because it suits the culture better than permanent jobs. But between 95 and 99 per cent of rangers would be permanent.
Senator RONALDSON—How many of those are permanent full time?
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Mr Feely—There are more than 612 permanent full-time rangers. In addition, a small number are effectively full time but are casuals from Indigenous communities. We ask them to supply a number of staff and they give us a dedicated number each day out of a larger pool. It suits some of the cultural differences there much better.
Senator RONALDSON—What information do management plans give you?
Mr Feely—Management plans give us and the community some good, high-level direction. We looked at Fraser Island yesterday. They set very clear frameworks there in terms of how we might manage the place and what we do with regard to fire—the strategic fire management plans—what we might do in terms of priorities for weeds and pests, and long-term views of what areas are to be set aside for possible high-level tourism infrastructure versus what areas are to be set aside for more remote experiences. The area we looked at on Fraser yesterday was obviously a very high tourism area to go to the north of the island and some of it is designated remote, so there is limited access there and that is done intentionally. It gives you a mix of opportunities to manage and plan and set those rules in place. I think it is important for the iconic parks like Fraser, in particular, to put those rules in place. We do not have management plans for every park. We have clear operational plans for parks for fire, weeds, pests, asset maintenance and so forth, but at those iconic parks you need management plans.
Senator RONALDSON—I think it has been indicated—and we talked about it yesterday— that only 23 per cent or 96 of 417 EPA management areas have management plans. You are saying the operational plans give you an indication about requirements for weeds, pests et cetera?
Mr Feely—They do. Management plans are a reasonably high-level document. They are more an operational plan of the stuff that the ranger in charge might utilise. Generally, they include statements of fire intent or weed or pest programs or asset management plans that roll out of their asset system, so there is a mixture. I think iconic parks benefit greatly from management plans. They are a costly document to produce; they go through substantial consultation. They also go through a cabinet process in Queensland, but they are worth it in those iconic areas. For example, Carnarvon has just gone through, Moreton Island has just gone through and Fraser Island was done some years ago as part of the Fitzgerald inquiry. We have a range of them for the Wet Tropics. You generally find that we are fairly enthusiastic to get them into the World Heritage areas in particular because, by its very nature, the declaration of World Heritage generally substantially increases visitation and that is one core reason to get your management plan right.
Senator RONALDSON—I understand that the LGAQ is an inquiry report which said that between 1993 and 1999 the area of national park increased by 28 per cent, real funding only increased by seven per cent and total ranger staff numbers increased by only 6.2 per cent. Taking into account the updated information about the ranger numbers, how much has the national park estate increased since 2000?
Mr Feely—Since 2000, 7.5 million hectares.
Senator RONALDSON—Since 1998?
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Mr Feely—Since 1998, we have added 780,000 hectares. We added 140 rangers. We have had a range of additional funding commitments. We try to steer away from the traditional simplistic measure of dollars per hectare. It does not make much sense, because there are much more important measures than that. Notwithstanding that, the amount of dollars per hectare has gone up probably 70 to 80 per cent over the last five years, as well as the expansion. In addition, we have also taken over the management of state forest areas in Queensland, and some of those are in a holding tenure for national park that we will also come across in the next year or two.
Senator RONALDSON—It has been put to us—in particular by the rangers association, I think—that these parks are, in a hands-on, ranger sense, dramatically under-resourced, now that there are roving teams as opposed to permanent rangers. Operationally their budgets are so small that they are battling sometimes to fill up the Toyota or whatever it might be with juice. What is your view of the adequacy of the ranger presence?
Mr Feely—Historically that may have been the case but, in my view, that is not correct now in Queensland. I think you are getting representations from the Australian Rangers Federation later today. It might be interesting to ask them that question.
Senator RONALDSON—What do you think they are going to say?
Mr Feely—I do not know. I have not talked to them about it. But it would be useful to get their view. I visited Fraser Island with the union probably three to four months ago and had a very positive response from the staff in the union as to what was going on there. To me, that is a bit of a litmus test for the rest of the state. But you should get those views from them, I think.
Historically, budgets were given out as discrete blocks of money to work units to manage parks as and how they may have liked. That was fine, generally, but I have a slightly different view of what should happen. I like to have the money targeted to certain things. I like to say, ‘This money will be spent on fire; this money will be spent on weeds and pests; this money will be spent on asset management; this money will be spent on Indigenous engagement and here is some discretionary money to hire a vehicle.’ I do not just like to give a large, generic lump of money. That means that, over time, people’s discretionary money does, clearly, decrease but I think you would find that we could demonstrate very clearly that their total money has substantially increased; it is just that it is targeted to certain jobs that, I believe, it is critical to undertake in Queensland—for example, weeds, pests, fire and asset maintenance. It would be interesting to ask them the question about that.
Senator RONALDSON—How much Natural Heritage Trust funding has flowed into Queensland since the program was introduced?
Mr Feely—I can talk about the World Heritage component of it.
Senator RONALDSON—I am happy to talk about the World Heritage component but could you talk about the funds overall—the total funds coming into the state?
Mr Feely—To the parks service or to the community as a whole?
Senator RONALDSON—To the community as a whole.
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Mr Feely—I am sorry, I cannot answer that. The Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Water runs the Natural Heritage Trust program. I can answer it in these terms: apart from the World Heritage part of the program, we get very minimal Natural Heritage Trust funds for anything else. I am not sure whether we keep that—
Ms Moody—We get money for the threatened species part of it, but that is off-park. The only NHT money that comes to the parks service is for the World Heritage areas.
Mr Feely—The minister alluded to her views on that. The numbers are in our submission. To be clear about it: we were at a high, I think, in 1997 or 1998, of approximately $7 million a year of World Heritage funding to Queensland. It is now less than $3 million, and $2.7 million of that goes to the Wet Tropics Management Authority. So, in terms of on-the-ground funding for things like the roads on Fraser Island, it is substantially reduced.
Senator SIEWERT—What about NRS money?
Mr Ellis—I can answer that. I am the Manager of the Tenure Actions Group, which is the land administration branch within the EPA. Since the commencement of the National Reserve System—so I am talking about funding under NHT1 and NHT2—Queensland has received approximately $15 million through that program, on top of which Queensland has spent $90 million of its own money on acquisitions.
Mr Feely—What was our funding from NRS for the last year?
Mr Ellis—The NRS budget is not allocated on a jurisdiction basis, but the entire Commonwealth budget to the NRS was $6 million.
Mr Feely—Did Queensland get anything last year?
Mr Ellis—There has not been an allocation to Queensland as yet, although we have an application pending. If the application comes off, we might get a quarter of a million dollars.
Mr Feely—And we have our own acquisition budget of around—
Mr Ellis—Two and a half million dollars for Cape York, slightly less for the Daintree area and about $2½ million for the Biodiversity Enhancement Program.
Mr Feely—And I think another substantial amount of acquisition money is to be announced in the very near future for the cape.
Senator SIEWERT—How does the Commonwealth make a decision—I know I am asking for your version of how the Commonwealth makes a decision—about where it is going to spend its NRS money? Obviously Queensland spends far more money than the Commonwealth, but how does the Commonwealth decide which ones to help you with out of the NRS money?
Mr Ellis—The Commonwealth decision process largely mirrors the Queensland decision process, which is that we have undertaken a gap analysis in terms of the representation of biodiversity in Queensland. A surrogate we use is called a regional ecosystem, which is a unique
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 12 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 combination or collection of plants species. There are approximately 1,250 regional ecosystems mapped in Queensland, and just over 70 per cent of those are represented in the existing protected area estate. The 30 per cent that are not currently represented are the priority targets. The Commonwealth recognises that the Queensland methodology is sound and therefore will consider applications where we are looking to target those as yet unrepresented regional ecosystems.
Senator SIEWERT—Do they always agree with you?
Mr Ellis—Queensland has not had applications funded only when there has not been sufficient funding in the NRS program.
Mr Feely—Cape York would be one area where there was a difference. We had agreement to spend substantial acquisition money on Cape York funded dollar for dollar—a dollar from the state and a dollar from the Commonwealth—and we purchased properties that we believed fitted the criteria of that. But for some reason which is probably best to ask the Commonwealth department about we were unable to receive our dollar-for-dollar contribution back. I think that was approximately $6 million in total, so a $3 million contribution that we thought we had did not come.
Senator SIEWERT—If they did not spend it there, did Queensland still get that money to buy something else?
Mr Ellis—No. The Cape York area is a slightly separate area. It does not generally fall under the NRS program; it falls under the specific Cape York funding component of NHT. I understand that the principles of the NRS program are used to consider Cape York acquisitions. As Alan mentioned, the state application for Commonwealth funding through that avenue was unsuccessful. The state pursued those acquisitions and fully funded them itself. So we missed out on the money, and as far as I am aware it did not go anywhere else.
Mr Feely—The acquisition under the NRS is also probably the cheapest part of buying a national park. The ongoing funding of it is the responsibility of the state, and we happily deal with that. The NRS funding at the moment is $6 million state wide. The Commonwealth department is currently having a review of the National Reserve System Program, and we have made a submission to that. We have looked at the targets required through the NRS and at the level of funding, and our view—and I think that is shared by most of the state agencies—is that it needs to be more like $30 million or $40 million a year, not $6 million if the Commonwealth wants to get to the National Reserve System target in a reasonable time frame.
Senator SIEWERT—Is that the review they are doing of the NHT2 process? Ten reviews are being carried out. It that the review that you are talking about for NRS?
Mr Feely—It is part of the NHT review, I think. It is being done by Brian Gilligan on behalf of Department of the Environment and Heritage.
Senator SIEWERT—A group of 10 are being done. They are all being let out to different consultants, and I think it is one of those. I just wanted to be clear that there was not another review occurring that we did not know about.
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Mr Feely—The review I am talking about that we submitted to was the one that is being done by Brian Gilligan through DEH.
Senator SIEWERT—We will double-check that, but I suspect that it is one of those. I want to switch topics to Indigenous management issues. My understanding of the way land rights were being handled by the Queensland system was that there was a process where national parks were handed back to Indigenous people and were then leased back to the state. I am not sure what the process was. Can you explain that very quickly?
Mr Feely—Some parks through the state process are claimable parks, and claims have been lodged. There is a negotiation process to go through, and there are matters of policy that you would need to refer to the minister that relate to—
Senator SIEWERT—I was going to ask her.
Mr Feely—The real issue revolves around the ideas of lease back and what the terms are. It might be a perpetual lease or a length of tenure lease. That is a matter of policy, and I suspect you would be better off discussing that with the minister.
Senator SIEWERT—Leaving aside the policy area, how many parks so far have been dealt with through that process?
Mr Feely—I would have to get you that number, but I believe it is about eight.
Mr Ellis—Something of that order.
Senator SIEWERT—If you could, that would be useful. When they are leased back to the state or whatever the process is, how is the Aboriginal community then involved in decision making and management of those parks?
Mr Feely—As I said, we have not leased them back. There have been several years of negotiation and some severe policy differences as to how we might resolve it. What we have done at Lawn Hill, or Boodjamulla National Park as it has now been named, the Waanyi people now have a ministerial advisory committee who have an annual on-country meeting and give us advice as to how we may manage both Boodjamulla and Musselbrook. That works reasonably well. We are also very focused on giving the Indigenous communities something real as well. To my mind, we have a very proactive program of finding living places on park, giving hunting rights on park and providing serious Indigenous employment opportunities, because they are the right people to manage the land, particularly in some of those areas in the Gulf of Carpentaria and Cape York. We go into that very proactively. We have several hundred thousand dollars set aside this year on Cape York to contract Indigenous groups to do fencing and other works for us.
With regard to some of the properties we bought on the cape, for example, Kalpower, we have employed the Indigenous community to remove the cattle from that park on our behalf as a work scheme for youth up there. It has worked fantastically well. They have done an excellent job. We have recently come to an arrangement with regard to the tenure of Kalpower and what we have been doing on the cape, which was not quite the question you asked but I think may be part of the answer. We have been arranging ILUAs with the local communities up there. We will buy a
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 14 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 substantial block of land. Kalpower was around 400,000 hectares. We have just signed an ILUA that makes half of that land Aboriginal freehold land with a conservation agreement over it and the other half will be gazetted as national park as an addition to Lakefield. That has been a really practical on-the-ground way to do it. As part of the Aboriginal freehold, not all the areas fall under conservation; there are small areas left for living areas and so forth. That has been very well received by the Cape York community.
Senator SIEWERT—I know it is a bit difficult to answer, because it is not resolved, but will Aboriginal communities be involved in decision making over parks rather than just having an advisory role? I appreciate the advisory role.
Mr Feely—I think they are now but, if you are talking about a formal process, again, that is a matter of policy tied up to the leaseback. I think you would need to ask the minister as to where we might go on that.
Senator SIEWERT—Picking up on some of the questions that Senator Ronaldson asked, is there a program for the roll-out of management plans to get to a point where all national parks have management plans? What happens in the absence of a management plan? How does decision making get made and, more importantly, how does the community know what is going on?
Mr Feely—No, there is not a program for roll-out. We are doing some. We have just put a lot of energy into trying to find a way to simplify them to ensure they are workable documents, particularly for the lower level parks. You need a substantial document for Fraser Island; you do not need the same document for a 20,000-hectare park with 100 visitors a year and no neighbours. There is no planned program. We are rolling them out over time. At the moment we are also putting our energy into trying to find ways to streamline the system so we can roll more of them out over time. In terms of how we manage without that, as I say, there are still operational plans. All the parks have fire management plans. They all have weed management plans where there are particular issues. Where there is a particular issue, most parks—for example, with 40-mile scrub there is an issue with controlling the vine scrub, so we do not lose it—have a plan to deal with it.
Senator RONALDSON—You told me before that they all had these operational plans in relation to weed and pest management et cetera.
Mr Feely—Yes.
Senator RONALDSON—Are you now saying that they only have specific plans within some of these areas—they do not have full operational plans?
Mr Feely—They have operational plans for the things that are relevant to those parks. Generally, small island parks do not need to put huge amounts of energy into fire management because there is no-one there and there are no neighbours. There are not generally issues there. Large parks out west will probably have a larger focus on weed and pest management than fire management. They all have their plans to deal with the things they need to.
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Senator MOORE—Is there a set document with all these headings? Would there be a variation between parks, which may have been what Senator Ronaldson was looking at?
Mr Feely—Over time we are moving to that. We do have statewide plans on how we deal with pests, weeds and fire, and they hang underneath those—where they do not have them. To be honest, that is where we would like to go with some of the lower level parks—that is, generic statements on how we will manage them and what the priorities will be.
Senator MOORE—With the operational plans there would be a clear understanding, regardless of which park you go to, that there would be something to look at. If I wanted to find ‘weed’, I would be able to go somewhere—either online or at each park—and find ‘weed’.
Mr Feely—At each park you would be able to find out how they would be dealing with weeds.
Senator MOORE—‘Weed’ is probably a bad example. If there was something that pertained to the Simpson Desert but not Fraser, it would just be a note in the plan that that was not relevant to the area.
Mr Feely—Yes.
Senator SIEWERT—I can speak from the Western Australian perspective and see how it applies here. In WA there is a process called necessary operations for a national park, or a nature reserve, for that matter, that does not have a management plan. The department have this capacity for necessary operations. It is highly controversial sometimes in that they go in and do things that the community knows nothing about and thinks is contrary to the objectives of the park. The community finds it very difficult to engage in that process and to know what is going on. How does Queensland manage when it does not have management plans and it has to do something that could be controversial? How does the community know about it? How do you make that decision?
Mr Feely—The plan does not necessarily solve that. We looked at a firebreak yesterday on Fraser that I think would be pretty controversial, despite the fact that it fits inside the fire management plan and it fits inside the—
Senator SIEWERT—But there is a context for discussing it when you have a management plan.
Mr Feely—We have regular meetings with the neighbours. We also have regular meetings with the peak environment groups, and the local staff meet with the community. I agree with you: over time, if we rolled out management plans, we would improve that level of liaison, which is what the minister alluded to as well, I think. We do need to do that, but we have to find a way to do it in a cost-effective way. It is no good spending millions of dollars on management planning unless you still have the millions of dollars for the job you were originally hired to do.
Senator SIEWERT—In the operational planning process do you have regional plans?
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Mr Feely—Not really, no. We have regional directors who obviously have a plan as to what they will be doing, but we try to run the generic basis of how we do weeds, pest or fire at a statewide level, not region by region. There is a set of rules and we try to maintain them as consistently as we can. The process is the same. The outcomes are different. You manage fire differently in the Simpson Desert than you do in the Noosa National Park, but the priorities are: human safety first, conservation second. In terms of fire, that principle is the same across the state.
Senator RONALDSON—Do these operational plans give you future expenditure requirements?
Mr Feely—This year, if we can manage it, we are about to start rolling out a three-year budget model. We have a three-year forward capital budget model. It has worked very well. People know what capital they are going to get in the next three years, so they can start to do the plan; you cannot just build it overnight. Annie and I have just been working on a rolling three- year budget for each individual district. At the moment it is an annual budget. Generally we get them out in mid-July, but we would like to give them a three-year budget.
Obviously, you get funding enhancements. We get an enhancement this year of $8 million, $14 million next year and $18 million the year after. We would not have known two years ago that we were getting that this year, so we still have to be flexible enough to build those things in, but a three-year rolling budget is the intent. You cannot look much more than three years ahead.
Senator RONALDSON—I understand. Are they global budgets or are they budget increases driven by specific areas of identifiable need?
Mr Feely—I will get Annie to give me the list of enhancements. There has been a mixture of both, and I will run through them if I can have your indulgence for a couple of minutes. If we go back to 2001, we got $10 million, and that was very clearly targeted to hiring 140 new rangers. We were told that that was the number we had to employ. It was not $10 million for anything else; it was $10 million for rangers. We get a range of those sorts of things. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, we got $2 million a year for enhanced fire, weed and pest management. We got $1.5 million in 2004, $2.7 in 2005 and $4.25 million in 2006 for maintenance of roads in the Wet Tropics.
By us demonstrating what we do with that money, I believe that the government sees us as a sound investment and understands that we have our priorities pretty well sorted in terms of fire, weed, pests, conservation and visitors. So the last lot of money we got, which was last year—$8 million for this year, $14 million for next year and $18 million ongoing forever into the future after that—was only very generally tied to anything. ‘Further improving park management’ and ‘forest agreement outcomes’ were the words used. That has been given to us. We will report back on what we spend it on, but it is up to us to ascertain whether that should be weed money, fire money, visitor infrastructure money or whatever.
We also at the same time get additional capital money—another $5 million this year, $10 million next year and then $5 million recurrent thereafter. That is tied to capital. Two or three years ago, we had some asset maintenance issues, which came up through the LGAQ report. As a result of that, we got some dedicated asset maintenance money.
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Ms Moody—It was $8 million.
Mr Feely—Yes, there was $8 million dedicated to asset maintenance. That money is for maintaining bits of roads or lookouts or ranger bases or other visitor infrastructure. That was very clearly targeted. The answer to your question is that there is a mix. I am happy to table our funding enhancements over the last eight years, if you like. There is a lot of detail in that. There is a mixture of dedicated money and money given to us for general management. And that is how it should be. Governments need, sometimes, to be very clear about what they want us to do so we understand what the priorities are. At other times, you need to be given flexibility so that you can deal with the issues like the one you alluded to earlier—the fuels and vehicles issue—or whatever.
Senator RONALDSON—Has that money effectively been the finger in the dyke that the minister referred to, in that it has been addressing immediate, obvious, urgent need or has it come out of a planned approach to funding in various areas over various periods of time?
Mr Feely—The LGAQ did a review of park management and then we got a consultant to do a review of park management three or four years ago. That drove a lot of these decisions: it drove the increase in ranger numbers, it drove the money for maintenance and I believe it drove the fire, weed and pest money. With the last lot of money that we got, I like to think that we have demonstrated that we are a sound area for investment. We are a tourism opportunity for the state; we are good conservation managers. I believe that that money came about because we are a worthwhile investment, as opposed to because they may have wanted particular things, such as a visitor centre, built. The money is management money to further help us do our business.
Senator RONALDSON—My recollection from yesterday’s discussion is that you are spending about $4.5 million state wide on weed control. Is that right?
Mr Feely—On dedicated projects. We spend more in our day-to-day business, but we have a dedicated set of projects that come to around $4.5 million a year.
Senator RONALDSON—What is the staff component of that?
Mr Feely—There is around $2.5 million in salaries and $1.5 million to $2 million in operating costs in that.
Senator RONALDSON—You mentioned some other money in the general operations budget. What is that?
Mr Feely—That is the discretionary money the staff have. If they need to go and spray lantana somewhere, for example, we do not particularly fund that out of the $4.5 million. That comes out of their discretionary money. The $4.5 million bucket is pointed at certain things. I described yesterday the weed lion’s tail. It has got into Lakefield National Park. It is in a small area—a few hectares. We have spent tens of thousands of dollars on those particular few hectares with the intent of eradicating the lion’s tail before it spreads anywhere else on the cape. That, to me, is a really worthwhile investment. It is where this sort of money should go. The more generic idea of keeping lantana from its continual march across all of Queensland and not just national parks is not necessary the best strategic investment. You need to try and manage it
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 18 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 where it is, but that is a long-term, biological control matter as opposed to spending $100,000 spraying one 50-hectare patch.
Senator RONALDSON—Actually, I think it was weeds and pests, wasn’t it, not just weeds?
Mr Feely—Yes, weeds and pests. Then there is additional money for fire.
Senator RONALDSON—Is that a satisfactory amount of money for this problem?
Mr Feely—I think for fire it is. There is always more you could do—and we can talk about that—but I think it is a satisfactory amount of money. I am happy with it. On weeds and pests, we could always spend a lot more. I think anybody could. If you asked a farmer whether they spend what they would like to spend, they would say no. If you asked a farmer whether they could justify spending three times as much on weeds as what they do now, probably most of them would say yes—if they had the money.
Senator RONALDSON—If your money for the weed and pest area was trebled, where would you put it?
Mr Feely—That is a good question. We focus on weeds of national significance firstly, and we are dealing with those pretty proactively. Serious environmental weeds are a big issue for us. We would focus on those.
Senator RONALDSON—Into which particular areas in the system would you put that money?
Mr Feely—We would probably look at joint projects with neighbours. If you asked me which particular parks, I could not tell you off the top of my head. I do not know each of them well enough. We have 11 million hectares. We would focus it into a program similar to the one we have now. We would get people to bid in and tell us what they were actually going to achieve for the investment put into that, what the environmental outcome would be, what the neighbour outcome would be and whether they would be dealing with weeds of national significance. Also, if we got to the stage of having a limitless bucket, we might start to come back and look at things more actively, like the bitou or the lantana, and try and pick dedicated areas and do them. The other thing we would do, as we talked about yesterday, is focus even more on areas where we can eradicate things. I can spend millions of dollars on pigs in the Wet Tropics or I can spend millions of dollars actually eradicating a pig population off an island on the reef, where they might be eating turtle eggs. It is a bit of a balance. The eradication one to me would be a very worthwhile investment, because it would stop us having to go over and over again.
The other thing we would do—and we have just started to trial it now in the Wet Tropics, after Cyclone Larry—is provide pig traps to neighbours and assist them to manage the pig traps right on the boundary of their land with ours. I think that would be a good initiative. Cane farmers love that and so do we. That is the other thing we would probably do. There are a few new things. It is always good to have good ideas. We would trawl through and see what new things we had thought about and would be worth having a go at.
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Senator RONALDSON—I have one final question. What is the sense of urgency in relation to full management planned for these areas? Where do you rate it—high, medium or low?
Mr Feely—Medium, if I can get a cost-effective model to deliver them. They are very expensive. The current model can take some years to produce. The Carnarvon management plan took three or four years to produce. The Moreton Island one took two or three years to produce. They are very resource intensive. I think we could achieve the same outcome of certainty into the future and guidance for the staff with a much more streamlined format.
Senator RONALDSON—Do you believe your operational models provide you with sufficient information to manage these areas?
Mr Feely—I believe they do, but it would be an improvement still to get management planning done over time.
CHAIR—On the weeds thing again: it might be outside parks and wildlife—and perhaps you could take this on notice—but is the state government doing more on the preventative side of things? You keep spending endless buckets of money trying to eradicate weeds whilst they are continually being sold through nurseries and elsewhere. It is similar with domestic animals and the desexing of cats and dogs, just to give an example. Are there specific things being done on that prescriptive, preventative side of things?
Mr Feely—Can I take that on notice and get back to you? I am sorry; I know little bits and pieces. For example, in some subdivisions in high biodiversity areas, we are talking about controls on cats and dogs and so forth or koala areas, but I do not have the detail on hand and I would rather come back to you with what we do or do not do in that regard.
CHAIR—Thank you for that.
Senator MOORE—I have a question on staffing, Mr Feely. We have the numbers, but in the document you gave us you said under training and career paths you wanted to develop a set of competencies to match your position, needs and responsibilities. I want to know whether that has been achieved and whether there is a document that we can have that shows the levels of staff that you have in the organisation and what is expected of each of those levels so that we have that kind of competency base. The supplementary to that is this. Is there a national program around that? If I am a ranger in Queensland, can I apply for a job in Western Australia and have people know exactly what my expectations were by my level in Queensland?
Mr Feely—That is a number of questions rolled into one. There are position descriptions that clearly outline what people do or do not do at different levels. There is a range of benchmarking that we have done, which is fairly historical now, that talks about that. Separate to that, we can provide what we believe people’s duties are and what structures are at different levels, which will help. In terms of training, there is a conservation and land management package, which I think is nationally certified. We are putting a number of people through that as part of the enterprise bargaining agreement. I am not sure of the numbers offhand but, again, we can give you those. We invest pretty well in training. At the last EB we agreed on a range of training. It was a bizarre range, actually—things like courses called ‘Verbal Judo’. We agreed we would give that to staff so they could deal with difficult clients, so to speak, and not get themselves into
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 20 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 problem areas. We had two rangers assaulted at Inskip, unfortunately, over Christmas, so we put the staff through that course to give them some techniques to make sure that does not happen. We will train them in anything that is—
Senator MOORE—And the other judo as well as verbal judo?
Mr Feely—No, just verbal. Verbal judo and running training I would advise!
Senator MOORE—My question is about this whole idea that we have national parks and an expectation that people are working in them. I want to find out whether the skills and knowledge of someone working in the system in Queensland—and Queensland is the first place that we are—are transferable and whether it is acknowledged that they are transferable?
Mr Feely—Yes, I believe it is. In Cape York, for example, we have had a substantial recruiting campaign to our benefit and to the cost of the Northern Territory. We have picked up a number of Northern Territory rangers because it is very similar and they have the skills to do it.
Senator SIEWERT—It is called poaching.
Mr Feely—There are formal qualifications degrees in natural resource management, the conservation and land management diploma—I think it is the cert IV—and so on. We are putting our staff through that. They are all recognised. And it is not just national parks, by the way. We also manage state forests; we have a lot of foresters work for us. The two jobs are very similar. There is obviously sometimes a slight tension between national park management and forest management, and we have to resolve that over time. I think you have had some submissions to that effect, but that is more a matter of someone’s personal opinion than a matter of fact. I think the land management principles are pretty similar in both, with the exception that we do not harvest trees from a national park, and nor should we.
Senator MOORE—Where do we fit with money in Queensland in terms of salaries? If I am a ranger grade 3—or whatever the right term is—and we had been sharing resources with the Northern Territory, is it advantageous financially for someone to come to Queensland?
Ms Moody—If you compare Queensland to other states we are middle of the range. Most of our jobs are advertised without the superannuation component included, so they look a little low on paper. Some of the other states advertise their jobs with super included. We are middle of the range.
Mr Feely—To be honest, I would rather hire staff that have a passion to come and work for us rather than to come and work for us for the money. You have to have both—I accept that—as I do. But I do not want people who are solely here for the money. I want people who have a passion for conservation and land management.
Senator MOORE—It would be helpful if we could get the documentation about the competencies and those kinds of things so we can compare them to other states.
CHAIR—From a Queensland Parks and Wildlife perspective resourcing is a constant issue, as it is everywhere. One of the things we will be looking at is other sources of revenue, apart from
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 21 the question of whether the feds or the state should put in more. Is there an official state government position on user pays approaches in national parks or on other ways of revenue raising? I know there is permit stuff and all those sorts of things—is that being explored? I am also particularly interested, in a general sense, in whether these and other issues that are pretty much nationwide are discussed in any sort of ideas sharing way between states.
Mr Feely—There are a number of answers for that as well. We do get a reasonable amount of user-pays revenue already—around $3 million a year from commercial tour operators and around $7 million or $8 million a year from the permit fees you talked about and so forth. We do not have national park entry fees, and I am unaware of any government policy that says we will have them—in fact I am pretty sure that there is not. In terms of sharing of ideas, we have a statewide tourism forum, which I chair. Daniel Gschwind from QTIC, who is appearing today, is on that. Daniel and I will jointly report back to that forum at the end of May on the different user-pays models from across the country and what they raise compared to taxpayer funded revenue. We will look at that. We also have regular heads of agencies meetings for all of the park services across Australia. We compare notes at those on a range of matters. We have a change of policy in mind with regard to commercial permits. We are trying to implement a policy called tourism and protect areas, which will move away from the collection of a per-person fee to a charge based on the capacity a tour operator has. It will simplify things for both us and them. So there are some changes afoot, but there is no policy to look at parks passes or charges for parks at the moment.
CHAIR—What about the issue of commercial activity within national park as opposed to adjoining areas? And what about issues like extractive industries—perhaps not so much in national parks but in other types of protected areas or conservation zones? Is it a case-by-case thing or is there a blanket policy?
Mr Feely—There is no mining in national parks, very clearly, except from an extractive industry point of view. Commercial opportunities are really defined by infrastructure at the moment. We have a policy of no private infrastructure on parkland. So, for example, Eurong resort is adjacent to national park but it is not on national park. Obviously we have commercial tour operators. Fraser is probably one of the iconic examples of a commercial tour operator operating on the estate all the time. That is part of having a good, well-used, well-managed, still- protected park estate; they are not just solely there for biodiversity. They are the tourism backbone of Queensland and the country, and so they should be.
CHAIR—What about other uses: horse riding, four-wheel driving, mountain biking and caravanning and those other sorts of things? Is that done on a case-by-case scenario depending on the area as to what is allowed and what is not?
Mr Feely—Yes, like all things. Our tracks are open, public tracks rather than management tracks. They are generally open to four-wheel drives. We do not have horse riding in national parks, but the minister has been discussing that and we do have other options for that. There is a range of other tenures and other tracks. We are looking at that at the moment. There is mountain biking in Cairns and at various parks and state forests. We are very keen to ensure that people understand that parks are part of the lifestyle of Queensland and that they are there to be used providing we can protect the underlying biodiversity values—and we would advocate that for most things.
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CHAIR—Are those the sorts of things you would put in the big M management plans—or small M?
Mr Feely—Yes, or big P policy documents. We have a range of documents stating where you can do this and where you can do that
Senator SIEWERT—I want to go back to the percentage of ecosystems that are in the protected area system. I think the minister said that at the moment there is 4.7 per cent and it is about to go up to 5 per cent. Is that right?
Mr Feely—The percentage of national park in Queensland is 4.7.
Mr Ellis—Protected areas.
Mr Feely—Yes, sorry.
Senator SIEWERT—The submission that we got from the National Parks Association said that only about 6.5 per cent of the land area of all the endangered regional ecosystems are mapped so far in the protected area system. Is that accurate in your opinion?
Mr Ellis—I do not have a break-up of the figures to that degree of detail I am afraid. Approximately 10 per cent of the regional ecosystems in Queensland are considered to be endangered—that is, less than 10 per cent of their original extent remains. I am just not quite sure whether the national parks submission means 6.5 per cent of that 10 per cent or 65 per cent, so to speak. I would have thought it would be the latter. The parks estate has traditionally focused on the rare endangered, REs, first. I would suspect that we would have something like two-thirds of the REs represented in the protected area estate.
Mr Feely—I have the numbers for that. We have done RE mapping for 60 per cent of the state, and another 20 per cent is in draft form, which is advanced enough for us to use. What we are saying about the remaining 20 per cent is that we are going to have all RE mapping finalised in the next two years.
Senator SIEWERT—That is mapped. Do you have percentages on how much of those that are mapped are actually in the protected areas system?
Mr Feely—Not in front of me, but we can give them to you, I believe. It would be no problem to supply that.
Senator SIEWERT—That would be good. My next question, from there, is: have you got planned dates for rollover of protected areas, where you are going to get all those areas represented in the protected areas system?
Mr Feely—We have an acquisition priority list that is driven by that, which Tim has prepared. We keep that confidential for commercial reasons, clearly. As soon as someone knows we might be interested in purchasing it, it can become more valuable. It does not always happen, but it can, so we would like to have our list and deal with that. We do not compulsorily acquire; we simply acquire on the free market, like anyone else.
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Senator SIEWERT—That actually leads me to another question that I will come back to. Are you going to be able to meet the international target date of 2010 for protected areas systems and protection of ecosystems?
Mr Ellis—I would be confident that we could. At the moment the government policy is that five per cent of Queensland will be national park. We are at 4¼ per cent. With the acquisitions and the forest transfers that are already under way, we will meet that five per cent target by 2010. The other arm of that target is that we aim to have 80 per cent representation of biodiversity—in other words, 80 per cent of the regional ecosystem will be captured at that time. As Alan mentioned, we have already worked out the properties we need to target to reach that 80 per cent goal. My personal opinion is, yes, we should be able to achieve that.
Mr Feely—Having said that, that is the basis of the international target, as opposed to our statewide ones or the national target as part of the NRS. Achieving those is probably not doable in those time frames, and that was the basis of our submission saying the NRS funding should substantially increase to meet that. There are two different targets. We need to be clear what we are talking about.
Senator SIEWERT—So you will meet your targets, but—and I must say that we heard similar evidence when we were in Canberra—unless more money is injected into NRS you will not meet these targets.
Mr Feely—I do not believe we will meet the national targets without that. We have a substantial acquisition program, but there is a large amount of acquisition required to meet those national targets. They are in excess of our state targets. That was why our argument was that if there were to be a national target in excess of the state target then that is what we would have thought NRS targeting should be funded towards.
Senator SIEWERT—I cannot let them go without asking about marine stuff. Turning to marine protected areas, I am aware that the GBR coast is protected. From there, how much of the coast is protected?
Mr Feely—Sorry?
Senator SIEWERT—How much of the coast that is not in the GBR is in marine protected areas?
Mr Feely—I can tell you where it is, but I cannot give you the percentage. But I can give you the percentage out of here, I guess. We have from the tip of Cape York down to the bottom end of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. We then have the Great Sandy Marine Park, which pretty much links up with that. There might be a thin strip—I am not sure.
Senator SIEWERT—That is the brand new one—is that right?
Mr Feely—Yes. That takes us down towards the top end of the Sunshine Coast. We then have a gap in the Sunshine Coast—as you probably would reasonably expect—and we get down to just south of Caloundra. Then we come into Moreton Bay Marine Park. That runs down to the top of the Gold Coast. Then we have a gap from the built-up bit of the Gold Coast down to the
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New South Wales border. Around the other area, from the tip of the cape around to the Northern Territory, there is no marine park, but there is a government commitment over time to look at border-to-border marine parks.
Senator SIEWERT—What is the no-take area? We call them sanctuary zones but I think you call them green zones.
Mr Feely—I think it is well under five per cent in both the Moreton Bay and Great Sandy Marine Parks, and 30 per cent on the Great Barrier Reef.
CHAIR—On the question we asked before about pests and weeds and related things that you are going to get us more information on, one of the aspects that we are interested in is the ability to enforce legislation in relation to the sale of weeds and other types of things, particularly given that fortunate interface with the minister being both environment and local government. That might give some nice synergies there, although I do not have enough knowledge of how that would work in a legislative sense in Queensland.
Mr Feely—We would also be interested to look at that from a national point of view. For example, the weed I talked about in the Lakefield National Park came in on the vehicle of a camper. We have campers come in from all over Australia. We will give you what we are doing but, if we are going to look at it, it needs to be looked at from a national perspective.
CHAIR—I notice that there has been some movement on national approaches to these things, and this committee has done an inquiry and reported on this issue in particular. Given that a fair degree of the actual enforcement of what can and cannot be sold, and what can and cannot be done, is a state responsibility—
Senator RONALDSON—Totally a state responsibility.
Mr Feely—I guess I was trying to make the point that you need some consistency. The border is simply a line on a road.
Senator RONALDSON—I think Senator Bartlett’s point was that you have a situation— certainly in Victoria—where nurseries are selling plants that are clearly pests. Everyone is spending a lot of money trying to get rid of them, yet people are still bowling up on Sunday morning and putting them in the garden. Do you believe there is a need for greater enforcement in these matters?
Mr Feely—Yes. I think that would make our job substantially easier over time. We would have fewer incursions of new weeds and fewer incursions of existing weeds. They all come from somewhere like that originally.
Senator RONALDSON—I think ‘escape’ is the word that has been used.
Mr Feely—Yes, and it is appropriate.
CHAIR—I am sure we could keep you here all today without much trouble at all, but we do have a lot of witnesses yet to appear. Thank you for your time this morning, and also for your
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 25 assistance to date. As you know, this inquiry will go on for some time. Whilst I appreciate that you need to maintain your focus on your core business, if there is scope for you to follow up any of the issues raised in submissions or any evidence given today or later and you think you could provide us with relevant responses to or information about it, we would appreciate that. I am sure that if we do have more questions in terms of data we may seek your indulgence in assisting us further in that regard.
Mr Feely—Absolutely. It would be no problem at all to supply you with any of that information.
CHAIR—If there is anything further that you want to put before us, regardless of waiting for requests, please feel free to do so.
Mr Feely—As a matter of clarification, there was a list of things on the way through that we were to try to provide the committee, possibly Dr Dewar could give us what the Hansard says and we will make sure we get the right things to you as soon as we can.
CHAIR—We will send you a transcript so that you can check that.
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[10.10 am]
BRISTOW, Mr John, President, National Parks Association of Queensland
CHAIR—Welcome. Evidence given to the committee is protected by parliamentary privilege. That has obligations in regard to not giving false or misleading evidence. If you, for some reason, wish to give evidence in camera then you can make that request and we will consider it. Similarly, if there is a question you do not wish to answer, give a reason for that and we will consider how to deal with it from there. I invite you to make an opening statement of key aspects you want to re-emphasise from your submission and then we will go to questions. We have numbered your submission 134. Before you make your opening statement, I want to formally note a variation from our agenda. There was an expectation at one stage that a representative from the Gold Coast and Hinterland Environment Council would be appearing with you. I understand that is not happening now, so you have the floor all to yourself.
Mr Bristow—I want to repeat that I do not have a new submission to make. Dr Martin Taylor, our executive coordinator at the time of the submission, put the information together. He has resigned and I am the President of the National Parks Association of Queensland, so I am representing the organisation here today. I wish to summarise our submission, to emphasise the need for more funding for national parks and also to bring out some salient points. The National Parks Association has been a leading community voice for national parks and protected areas in Queensland since the 1930s. We have 1,200 members, which include affiliate organisations. The principal issue is that presently between four and five per cent of Queensland’s area is in national parks. We see the need for a much higher percentage, probably around 10 per cent. With respect to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, there was an increase in the no-take zone for the marine park from five to 33 per cent which we applauded. I understand from releases by that organisation that there has already been a noticeable recovery in numbers of fish available to fishermen outside the marine park. The Great Sandy region in Harvey Bay has not been treated in the same way and in Moreton Bay, we only have one per cent set aside as a marine park. So we have a dual situation and we see that as being an enigma.
As was mentioned earlier, only 6.5 per cent of the land area representing regional ecosystems is in protected areas. Of 19 bioregions, 11 are below five per cent protected. The National Reserve System recommends that 10 per cent be conserved. Only 23 per cent or 96 of the 417 EPA managed areas have management plans. The principal threats to national parks and protected areas are underfunding, climatic change, lack of connectivity or wildlife corridors, pests, fishing and visitor pressures. Our principal recommendations are: shift the Natural Heritage Trust spending priorities back to the core business of building a natural reserve system as it was originally intended; meet convention on biodiversity targets; promote a national conference to develop park management standards; recognise that human visitors are not the principal users of parks and that parks deliver enormous ecosystem services to the whole community by helping to retain biodiversity; develop a park trust fund to collect levies from greenhouse gas emitters and/or greenhouse gas absorption destroyers to fund park acquisition and management and/or establish green lotteries to raise funds. Examples of industries to be considered would be coal-fired power stations, motor vehicles, new suburban developments and industrial developments.
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Our recommendations continue: develop a program for the completion of management plans for national parks in Queensland; develop a systematic bioregional process similar to that of the Great Barrier Reef marine park; plan natural resource management; tighten pest control to minimise side impacts; ratify and/or support the Kyoto protocol; and phase out fishing in terrestrial national parks in Queensland.
On the need for Commonwealth funding, I do not believe that we have yet learnt how to value national parks and protected areas or the National Estate for its true value. It is difficult to reduce their value to simple dollar equivalents. Visitors to national parks in Queensland spend approximately $1,260 million per annum. Ecosystem services in Queensland return about $7,000 million per annum. Under the NRS, the Commonwealth and state governments are obliged to meet some important targets: at least 10 per cent of each of the world’s ecological regions to be effectively conserved by 2010—we are currently well behind on this target; protection of 50 per cent of the most important areas for plant diversity to be assured by 2010; 60 per cent of the world’s threatened species to be conserved in situ by 2010; by 2015, all protected areas and systems to be integrated into the wider land- and seascape, taking into account ecological connectivity; and all protected areas to have effective management by 2012. These targets are a big ask and the Commonwealth should substantially fund this initiative, as it benefits all Australians. Queensland should have a greater share because there are more bioregions in this state than in any other state.
The Queensland government’s Master Plan for Queensland’s Park Systems in 2001 committed the government to 80 per cent of the regional ecosystems being represented in the parks system by 2021. The Queensland government made an election commitment to establish a border-to- border marine park under Queensland’s Marine Parks Act 2004. The purpose of a marine park is to conserve the marine environment. We believe the Commonwealth government is not providing sufficient resources to national parks to meet the above objectives and their management requirements. The current level of funding is inadequate for achieving the goals of the program. We must shift the funding priorities of the Natural Heritage Trust to achieve the NRS proposal.
The provision of more national parks and protected areas will help to reduce health costs. It has already been recognised that obesity is a major problem for human beings, resulting from insufficient exercise. The provision of more parks and protected areas is a step in the right direction. Thank you.
CHAIR—Thank you very much.
Mr Bristow—I have left a copy of my opening statement.
CHAIR—We will take that as additional information for the inquiry. On that general issue of funding, you mentioned a few times a desire for the Commonwealth to provide more funding.
Mr Bristow—I guessed that was the purpose of this inquiry!
Senator RONALDSON—Unfortunately, I think that view is shared by others, but if you look at the inquiry’s terms of reference you will see that it is not.
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CHAIR—We are looking at all the issues around how national parks operate and, obviously, ways that it can be done better, and resourcing in general is something I expect will be a common issue. Even government departments themselves at all levels would like more resources, as government departments do. I have a two-part question. Firstly, given that national parks—and they are obviously the focus of your association’s energies—are in effect a state government responsibility in terms of management, why do you see the Commonwealth as having an extra role in this sort of funding? And, if the Commonwealth is to kick in extra money beyond funding one-off programs, do you see the Commonwealth as needing to take on some management responsibilities? They do tend to go hand-in-hand: if governments are to give a consistent pile of money, they want to have a say in how it is spent.
The second and perhaps more wide aspect, to take the focus off just the Commonwealth, is: do you have a view about other sources of funding? Do you think there are other areas of funding— whether it is from industry or general community user-pays fees, whether it is from philanthropic contributions or pretty much anything really—where more attention should be paid or where ideas should be explored in order to derive funding from sources other than government, whether it is Commonwealth, state or local?
Mr Bristow—To answer the last question first, in the presentation I mentioned that I thought that perhaps it would be a good thing to think about forming a park trust fund which would be funded by levies from greenhouse gas emitters and also from other people who are developing the state within Australia and destroying trees and things that absorb the greenhouse gases. In other words, we believe the Queensland government does not put sufficient funds aside for the acquisition of national parks. The budgets are very small. We are finding that local authorities have more funds than the government in that respect, because they have environmental levies, significant funds to spend and are casting around looking for areas to purchase in a conservation situation. There is some friction in that area, because I am aware that some of the local authorities do not believe the government is doing the right thing and that they can do it better. But that is human nature and it is very difficult to be objective in that area without getting people together and thrashing it out.
I see a difficulty in getting funds and I believe that we should be using the coal resources, particularly those that we have in Queensland, for power generation. I am dead against us using gas to generate power from a fixed power station, because that is a valuable transportable fuel and it should not be used at a fixed site. This is getting away from actual national parks. I think coal is the cheapest source of power in Australia and probably in the world, so we should be using it. I am aware that the CSIRO are investigating ways and means of trying to absorb these gases within rock strata close to power station sites. That is a move in the right direction because it appears that climate change is upon us and that the major reason for it being a problem is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It may be other gases, such as methane and so forth.
CHAIR—Just on the point about Commonwealth funding, there is possibly a strong argument to be made about World Heritage areas which are listed at the request of the Commonwealth, but state governments declare national parks, other state forests and other sorts of things. State governments expand the national park areas. Why should the Commonwealth have to put in extra funds in a structural sense? Do you see that there should be more of a direct, hands-on role with the Commonwealth in the way that national parks and protected areas are run?
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Mr Bristow—That is a difficult question to answer. That was the thrust of your first question, if I remember rightly.
CHAIR—Yes.
Mr Bristow—I am firmly of the opinion that, with the structure we have, any funds that the Commonwealth might have available should be made available to the state. I am probably not all that in favour of you earmarking it, but that is the only way it could go—that you give the state the funds to do a certain job and they have to spend them in that area. But we have to recognise that the state is controlling the activities of that area and I think they have to continue to do that.
The Commonwealth can only support that with additional funds from the whole of Australia to achieve things like the NRS. I was not aware of this until Dr Martin Taylor wrote the submission on the National Reserve System and the fact that we have fallen so far behind. The Natural Heritage Trust was supposed to be funding those attributes that I read out: 10 per cent of the world’s ecological regions, effectively preserving those by a certain date. Those funds have gone into land use management areas rather than into creating the National Reserve System so that the funds did not get to where they were supposed to go.
Senator RONALDSON—Where is your authority for saying that the Natural Heritage Trust funds were meant to go into the National Reserve System?
Mr Bristow—You ask a good question. I am only quoting—
Senator RONALDSON—You may be right, but that was not my understanding. I am just interested in what—
Mr Bristow—I am quoting Dr Martin Taylor in that respect and he informed me that that was the case.
CHAIR—You might not be able to go back to him if he is not there anymore, but if there is more you can give us on the origins of that statement, that would be fine.
Senator SIEWERT—I want to pick up on the issue of targets and the comments that the association made in their submission about Queensland not meeting international targets for protected areas by 2010. I think you were here when I asked the question and the department said they will meet their requirements and plan by 2010 but they will not meet the Commonwealth’s plan under the NRS. Is that how you understand it? Do you think that statement is accurate?
Mr Bristow—I believe there is more chance of them meeting their own targets than there is of them meeting the NRS requirements. The information that I have been given is that it will be extremely difficult at this stage to meet the NRS requirements by 2010.
Senator SIEWERT—Are you happy with the states’ targets that they have set: they will protect 80 per cent of regional ecosystems?
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Mr Bristow—I do not think so. They were talking earlier about five per cent and it being a government—
Senator SIEWERT—They are saying that five per cent of the landmass and 80 per cent of the regional ecosystems will be captured—what we call threatened.
Mr Bristow—There are some doubts in my mind about that. Technically, they may meet this 80 per cent target but, if you look into it in some detail, you will find that many areas that they are claiming within that are very small; therefore, it is difficult to preserve what is being preserved in that area because it is so small. The trend these days is towards larger national parks, and there is also a strong move towards this connectivity or wildlife corridors. This is one of the biggest problems that we have in Queensland.
I am chairman of another association—the Rural Environment Planning Association—and we have great difficulty with the Brisbane City Council in this area. They are continually wanting to break up parcels of rural area into smaller blocks to accommodate more people. They are just destroying the whole system. There is a need to maintain an area that is sustainable. Dr Martin Taylor particularly drew my attention to Toohey Forest Park, where there is no connectivity there. A lot of the wildlife in that area has disappeared because of the current climate. It is a very dry site. There is very little water, so you cannot sustain the plants and the animals in that area. The area of concern that I have are that many of the areas that have been reserved by the state government are on the small side.
Senator SIEWERT—They are too small for viability?
Mr Bristow—Yes.
Senator SIEWERT—You also made a comment about leasehold land: ‘60 per cent of Queensland is state land under leasehold tenure and some of those lands have a high conservation value, but they were not brought into the protected estate. They would have been if current laws governing pastoral leases had been enforced.’ Can you articulate on that a little further?
Mr Bristow—This is in our submission?
Senator SIEWERT—Yes.
Mr Bristow—Can you refer me to a page?
Senator SIEWERT—Page 2, under ‘Principal Issues’, the third dot point from the bottom:
60% of Queensland is state land under leasehold tenure mostly for livestock production in western Queensland. Many leasehold areas of high conservation value could have been brought into the protected estate if current laws governing pastoral leases had been enforced.
Mr Bristow—I do not know that I can answer the question confidently, but I will give you my answer. I believe that the government’s attitude to leasehold and its lack of funds for acquisition has meant that, when leasehold land is available at the end of a lease, the government does not
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 31 take its option to create that as a national park because it does not have the funds in its budget to purchase it. There have been a number of purchases by the government in western Queensland where they have come to arrangements whereby the person who owned the land is allowed to stay on it for another five or six years and raise cattle and do all sorts of activities, although it is becoming a national park. To some extent, that is a bit ridiculous.
Senator SIEWERT—With respect to marine protection areas and your recommendation for a systematic bioregional approach for marine planning in Queensland, can you explain briefly how you see that operating?
Mr Bristow—Again, you have got me in a bit of an awkward situation in that I did not write that and maybe I do not fully understand what was meant by that. But my understanding is that what we were looking for is what I mentioned: in the Great Sandy area we were looking to get 30 or 33 per cent reserved in line with GBRMPA’s move from five per cent to 33 per cent.
Senator SIEWERT—Do you mean reserved as a green zone?
Mr Bristow—Yes; no-take fish zones. We are keen to see Moreton Bay go the same way. That would then produce some consistency. My understanding is that there was a scientific investigation by GBRMPA of this issue and that they had a fairly open mind and were hoping to get perhaps 10, 15, 20 or 25 per cent but in fact the information came out that it should be 33 per cent and that is what it is. If we have spent all the money on that research for the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef then the southern part of it, which is sort of getting to its limit, should be under the same terms.
Senator SIEWERT—I gather from what you are saying that a bioregional approach was not taken to the rest of the marine environment when the Queensland government were looking at planning protected areas?
Mr Bristow—I do not think so. I am not quite sure what you mean by that.
Senator SIEWERT—You say here that it should be a systematic bioregional process.
Mr Bristow—To me, the systematic approach is that we adopt the same criteria that we have in the Great Barrier Reef and apply it in other areas.
Senator SIEWERT—And it wasn’t for the Great Sandy and Moreton?
Mr Bristow—The Great Sandy has just recently been promulgated and it isn’t. I think it is about five per cent—which is what they had in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park before—and they increased it to 33 per cent. It just does not jell. GBRMPA is a joint thing between the Commonwealth and the state governments and they both agreed to it.
CHAIR—Maybe we need the Commonwealth into the Great Sandy Marine Park. It might create that impetus to push it up to 33 per cent.
Mr Bristow—It is not going to be an easy thing, because development in that area is quite intense. It would be a marvellous addition to Fraser Island, which is a World Heritage area.
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Senator MOORE—I have one question about the community voice in national parks. Your association was originally set up to develop community awareness about national parks. How is your voice heard by government now? How does the role of your organisation feed through the various levels of government at the moment?
Mr Bristow—You are asking awkward questions again, but I will answer it to the best of my ability. Dr Martin Taylor was with us for about 12 or 18 months, and in that period he established a much closer contact with government department members like EPA and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. Advocacy was his strong point and it was something that he pursued with absolute zeal. He issued lots of press releases and talked to people. That was the way it went. I think we were pretty happy with that approach. We were probably less up front before he came on the scene; we tended to do things quietly in the background. I cannot answer what we are going to do in the future, because we have not yet got an appointment to replace him.
Senator MOORE—Does your organisation have any particular role on the advisory committees?
Mr Bristow—Yes, we have members who are on the Fraser Island community advisory council.
Senator MOORE—As members of your organisation or as members in their own right?
Mr Bristow—That is a good question. I think it might be in their own right. For instance, George Haddock, our treasurer, is a member of the CAC for Fraser Island. I know that he gets very frustrated because they go round and round in circles and get nowhere. John Sinclair, ‘Mr Fraser Island’, and he are great friends and are both in the same boat as far as frustrations are concerned, because of the things that do not happen.
CHAIR—We will hear from Mr Sinclair later on today, so he may elaborate on those things.
Mr Bristow—There is one other area that I should mention—
Senator RONALDSON—We are running out of time, and I do have some questions. Is it in relation to the community or something else?
Mr Bristow—No, in answering the last question, I just simply wanted to say that other members of the association have been on various—I do not know whether you would call them this—boards to do with converting state forest into national park. Although our numbers are only 1,200 we do attempt to be involved in as many things as we can, because we rely heavily on volunteers.
Senator RONALDSON—At the Canberra hearings we had some quite constructive commentary about future management and other issues. I have to be honest with you, since we have arrived in Queensland the commentary has tended to be a bit funding based. I am a bit confused, because we get told: ‘Everything is okay, but we could always use some more money; we are keeping on top of things such as pests and weeds et cetera and the fire management is okay, but we could always do with a bit more.’ My impression is that, from a management point
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 33 of view—and this does not just concern Queensland—this whole thing has become an absolute dog’s breakfast.
There is almost a dash for cash with the states—in a figurative, not a literal sense—in calling as many new areas as they possibly can ‘national parks’. That probably debases the true iconic national parks in this country. There is a mad dash to get as much in, but there has been an absolutely total lack of input into appropriate management plans and a long-term vision for how we actually manage these things. If the inquiry of this committee debases into one of who is not doing what rather than one that makes some constructive, long-term plans then, quite frankly, we might as well pack up and go home. Are the Queensland national parks being properly managed at the moment?
Mr Bristow—You are getting into a very political area.
Senator RONALDSON—You have said in your submission that only 23 per cent have management plans. Are they, in your view, being properly managed or not? If they are being properly managed, that resolves about two-thirds of the inquiry.
Mr Bristow—The answer to that is not quite a definite no, but it is more no than yes. I am aware that some rangers are frustrated because they do not have management plans, but, by the same token, they are frustrated because they do not get any capital funds to do things within their parks. So it does not worry them all that much because they have nothing to work with to improve their parks anyway. This is where, in my view, it gets political because it is a question of funding. You will know, from the press, that Queensland has had problems in the power industry. Why? Because the government took funds out of their reserve funds and did not have them to spend on maintenance. I live in a rural area of Brisbane and I know that transformers and things that should have been replaced were not replaced. We were getting blackouts all the time. When they were replaced we stopped getting blackouts. The health department in Queensland has been in the press for a hell of a long time. What is happening is that Beattie is spending $5.6 billion extra in the next five years to improve the health system.
Queensland’s expenditure on national parks is seventh out of the eight states and territories. In Queensland we spend the bare minimum on everything. I would expect that, across the board, not enough funds are being spent in Queensland. We keep getting told the money is not there to spend. I am not close enough to know the real answers, but those are my views.
Senator RONALDSON—That was not a political question, but, if you perceived it as being so, that is okay. Leaving aside the day-to-day management, are you satisfied that there is an appropriate level of long-term management plans for Queensland national parks?
Mr Bristow—No. I have said here that that is one of the things we need to fix. We need to get more management plans available for Queensland national parks.
Senator RONALDSON—How would you rate that planning? Is it very high on the agenda? Compared to the on-ground, day-to-day management, where would you rate the planning aspect in the scheme of things?
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Mr Bristow—That is difficult to answer because it all balances in. You have to have a balanced budget, and if the budget is deficient—
Senator RONALDSON—Forget the budget. For the long-term management of Australia’s national parks, is long-term planning very important, medium or low? Where would you rate it?
Mr Bristow—Medium to high.
Senator RONALDSON—From your organisation’s experience elsewhere, is there a lack of planning in other states in relation to future management plans?
Mr Bristow—The association’s members’ views are that national parks in other states are in much better condition than national parks in Queensland. I believe it is because of a lack of funding in Queensland that we are seventh out of the eight states and territories. We have taken members to Lake Eyre, Arkaroola and the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, and the facilities down there are extremely good. We go to New South Wales, and some of the parks there are good also.
Senator RONALDSON—Where does that ranking come from? I do not know whether we have that information. Is that a ranking you did yourselves or is it from elsewhere?
Mr Bristow—I think it is in Martin Taylor’s submission. It is my understanding that it is accurate.
Senator RONALDSON—If the Commonwealth were to put extra funding in, what would be your priority? Would it be management plans or long-term planning for national parks? Would it be roads, weeds or pests? Rather than asking you to separate them out perhaps I will ask: would it be in the day-to-day management or the long-term planning that you would see the role of the Commonwealth if it were to put more money in?
Mr Bristow—I think my No. 1 would be trying to achieve the National Reserve System targets. That also supports national parks because a lot of those National Reserve System areas, with the things that are being proposed, need—
Senator RONALDSON—I take it that they would need the day-to-day management as a state responsibility and the bigger picture of the national reserve—
Mr Bristow—I think the bigger picture is the National Reserve System.
Senator RONALDSON—Out of interest, and getting back to my point before, with this huge expansion in areas of so-called national park, do we need to have a tiered structure so that national parks are the absolute top end, whether it be from a biodiversity viewpoint or something else? Should we have a scaled approach and have national parks and state parks? I am just making a suggestion; they might be called something else.
Mr Bristow—We already have a sort of tiered system in that we have a national park in which there are very few things that you can do. You cannot ride horses and you cannot have bees and so forth in national parks.
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Senator RONALDSON—That is a usage issue as opposed to whether it is an appropriate level of tiering that you could fund—whether you have certain areas that are clearly a Commonwealth-state responsibility, other areas that might be purely a state responsibility and other areas that might be local government. Are we debasing the term ‘national park’ by having it as almost a catchall, which, quite frankly, I think it is?
Mr Bristow—Probably you are correct in saying that national parks are a catchall situation. Our association has added a few words into that. We talk about ‘national parks and the protected area estate’ and that encompasses other areas that do not quite meet the standards of national parks. It helps to preserve some areas, perhaps not to the same standard, which maintains biodiversity and provides areas for supporting flora and fauna.
Senator RONALDSON—You get this rapid expansion and you get views that the Commonwealth funding has been reduced. The question I am asking myself is: is the role for the federal government to co-fund boardwalks or is it to do some of that top-tier planning, whether it be purchase et cetera? I am trying to work out where you see the roles as being.
Mr Bristow—The other area that the association has some strong views on, which has not been discussed here before but which I mentioned, is Fraser Island as being a World Heritage area. The Commonwealth government used to put a significant amount of funds into Fraser Island. As far as I am aware they reduced that funding some time back and that put things on a course for a user pays system where they started charging people to go to Fraser Island. I think it is currently five dollars a head or something like that.
Senator RONALDSON—That is for the commercial operations, isn’t it.
Mr Bristow—So to make up the shortfall in Commonwealth funding the state introduced those levies for people going to Fraser Island. But World Heritage areas are a national responsibility and therefore it is probably an area where you could consider that the Commonwealth government should contribute on that basis.
Senator RONALDSON—But we are just going around in circles, aren’t we? We have talked about the need for national planning and national involvement, and we are back to putting in boardwalks. If that is the answer then so be it. But it just seems to me that it is always going to end in tears. If you have that involvement at the Commonwealth level then there are never, ever going to be sufficient funds.
Mr Bristow—That is probably true because, as you increase your goals and put more money in, they increase the goals again. In that respect, it is not done on a scientific basis; it is done on a needs basis and on the basis of funds that are available.
Senator RONALDSON—Do you think there should be extra land added to national parks without appropriate levels of management plan?
Mr Bristow—No, not larger areas. But the way we are moving these days is towards larger parks so that they can sustain the biodiversity.
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Senator RONALDSON—Do you think there should be a line drawn in the sand that, if there are further additions now, they have appropriate management plans?
Mr Bristow—It is a start. If new parks have management plans then at least any new parks that are created have the proper things in place. That is one way of approaching this sort of thing—to ensure that any new parks do have management plans. It is just part of the thing. In Queensland in the past, our association downgraded its desires for national parks to the point where we said to the government: ‘Look, get us more national parks. Don’t worry about the management; just get us the parks. We will worry about the management later.’ So we did get more parks. We got it up from about 2.5 per cent to five per cent. Management was pretty atrocious. But management is improving slowly with time now. They seem to be improving their efficiency. Some of the statements that were made by the previous witness I would have to agree with. But there is always this argument about whether it is sufficient.
Senator RONALDSON—The chair is giving me his evil eye, so I will call it quits there. Thank you.
CHAIR—We have a lot of witnesses today so we will need to try to keep to time. Thank you for your evidence this morning. If there is further information you want to provide following your evidence today or having reviewed the transcript, which we will send you, please do so. I appreciate that it is a little bit hard when you are presenting on a submission that somebody else wrote, so thank you for stepping into that position in this circumstance as well. The inquiry is continuing for some months yet, so, if there is further information that the association does want to provide by way of follow-up submission, we will happily receive that as well.
Mr Bristow—I will see if I can get an answer on the origin of the statement about funding.
CHAIR—Thank you.
Proceedings suspended from 10.53 am to 11.05 am
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 37
LECK, Mr Richard Alexander, National Marine and Coastal Policy Officer, WWF Australia
CHAIR—Welcome. The committee has received your submission as submission No. 161. To repeat the official reminders: all proceedings are covered by parliamentary privilege, which has its obligations with regard to not misleading the committee. If for some reason you do wish to make any statement in private or in camera then you can make that request and we will consider it. Similarly, if there is a question asked of you that you specifically do not want to answer and can indicate that and reasons why, we will consider how to respond. We have already heard from WWF in Canberra. I do not think there were any alterations to the submission at the time, so I presume you do not wish to make any alterations to the formal submission. Obviously, we are particularly keen to hear from you today with respect to the marine area, which is an area the committee are keen to make sure is not left off to the side in considering the protected areas issue. Do you wish to make an opening statement in five or six minutes before we proceed to questions?
Mr Leck—Yes, I do. Thank you very much for inviting me to address the committee. I do apologise on behalf of Dr Gilly Llewellyn, who I think was originally slated to appear. She unfortunately—or fortunately on her behalf—is in the United States at the moment so cannot attend today. I would like to open with three broad areas: firstly, talking about Australia’s global performance in establishing marine protected areas; secondly, talking about our National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas; and, thirdly, talking specifically about the management of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. On the first one, WWF recently collaborated on a study at the University of British Columbia to establish a global marine protected area database, which for the first time establishes a measure of the advancement of MPA networks on a global scale. This study shows that Australia has performed relatively very well in MPA establishment and implementation, both in the percentage of our exclusive economic zone protected and in the size of MPAs that Australia has created. In fact, we have the first- and third-biggest MPAs in the world. I am happy to table this brochure, which outlines that study and provides links to further information as well.
Global leaders, including Australia, committed to establishing representative networks of marine protected areas worldwide by 2012 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development and at the Convention on Biological Diversity. The target of 2012 was set in recognition of the under-representation of marine habitats in protected areas, particularly in comparison to terrestrial protected areas, and due to the acknowledgment of the urgent need for greater protection of the world’s oceans in the face of increasing threats. Australia is rightly regarded as a world leader in marine conservation. Decisions such as the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park rezoning and the declaration of the Heard Island and McDonald Islands marine protected area are rightly acknowledged as being globally significant conservation achievements. However, Australia’s marine protected area performance is currently strongly skewed towards the iconic and the remote. In order to achieve a truly comprehensive, adequate and representative system based on nationally consistent targets and processes, greater investment needs to be made in the National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas, the NRSMPA.
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That leads me into my second point. The NRSMPA provides the platform upon which to build a system that will contribute to the long-term ecological viability of all of Australia’s marine biodiversity. Federal, state and territory governments have all taken responsibility to manage and conserve our marine environment by signing on to the NRSMPA. It is designed to put the meat on the bones of Australia’s MPA system. WWF does acknowledge that there are significant challenges in delivering on the goals of the NRSMPA, as many candidate areas do not have iconic status and may have a range of competing uses, often ones with significant financial interests.
In our submission, WWF outlined a number of ways in which we believe the roll-out of the NRSMPA can be improved, but in essence WWF believe that in order to fulfil its commitments the Australian government will need to provide greater resourcing and leadership. Going forward, WWF recommend greater resourcing of scientific input into the NRSMPA as well as increased support for a comprehensive, well-structured consultation process, with both as high priorities. WWF see the additional resourcing as necessary to increase the momentum with which the NRSMPA roll-out can occur, not only to meet Australia’s international commitments but also in recognition of the under-representation of large areas of Australia’s waters in protected areas.
My third point, which is very quick, is about the management of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. WWF strongly recommends to this committee that when formulating the outcomes of this inquiry they closely examine the processes involved, the outcome achieved and the lessons learnt as a result of the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. WWF regards the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park as one of the world’s best managed large ecosystems and has awarded the Australian government our highest accolade, the Gift to the Earth, in recognition of this. This regard for the management of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is a widely held view amongst an array of international and domestic scientific, planning and conservation institutions. As a measure of this success, WWF is working to replicate the achievements in the Great Barrier Reef in areas as diverse as Belize, the Bering Sea and the Fiji islands.
There are three key points I would like to stress about why WWF regards the management of the GBR Marine Park so highly. The first one is its governance arrangements. Having a single agency based locally and responsible for the protection of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has enabled an ecosystem wide approach to management to be implemented that can examine the full suite of threats to the Great Barrier Reef and take appropriate management actions. The second is its collaboration. The marine park authority has been very effective in working with a range of stakeholders to implement its management decisions. Without these relationships, particularly the strong relationship it has with the Queensland government but also those with regional NRM groups, reef based industry, scientists and community environment groups, it could not have achieved the management successes it has in recent times.
The last point is that the consultation that the marine park authority has undertaken in recent times involved one of the largest public consultation exercises in Australia’s history during the rezoning of the marine park. They also continue to be highly active in local communities along the length of the GBR coastline, and the success of those communication programs is reflected in the overwhelming interest that local communities have in the management of the reef and also the overwhelming support of those measures to protect it.
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CHAIR—The brochure you have tabled and your initial statement noted Australia is performing exceptionally well by world standards in marine areas that we are protecting. That is just a basic, straightforward percentage of areas rather than any assessment of ecosystem representation within that. From my knowledge of the Great Barrier Reef rezoning process, it did take quite a long period of time. The key aspect of why it is so significant is that it looked at eco regions within rather than just saying, ‘25 per cent would be nice, so here’s 25 per cent.’ It actually looked at ensuring a good representation of biodiversity. Is that fairly unique in our marine aspect? Have we not really done that in a lot of our other marine protected areas? Has it been a case of saying, ‘This is something a long way away that most people aren’t using, so we’ll do this bit,’ or has it been based on ecological values?
Mr Leck—When you look at the figures within that brochure, you can see that they definitely give a very favourable representation of Australia’s performance. It is worth remembering, though, that it is relative to the rest of the world, which is largely coming off a fairly low base. As I said in my opening statement, the figures are very skewed towards what has been achieved in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, a tropical area, and also in a remote area like the subantarctic, on Heard and McDonald Islands. You are right with regard to the process used in the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in that it was a very thorough process of bioregionalisation, if I could say that, through which the rezoning was made.
Without going into too much detail, basically the way the scientists provided that foundation was to divide the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in its entirety into 70 different biological regions. They then set a series of operating protocols for how each of those regions would be protected. If you look at that on a local scale and then apply it to a national scale, that is what WWF is advocating should occur through the NRSMPA: you decide on where the bioregions are and you have a strong set of operating protocols as to how much of each bioregion will be protected—for example, in no-take zones. Once those protocols are in place, you have a strong consultation process to build the local involvement in delivering those outcomes.
CHAIR—The other aspect of the GBR is the single management authority, which you mentioned. Despite all the controversies that inevitably will occur in such a multiple-use area, that seems to be a key point. From the point of view of this inquiry, which is looking at how things are managed now and whether different structural arrangements might work better, is that a lesson we should consider for other marine environments, not necessarily duplicating them? For example, I know that the ACF recently proposed a single, national oceans act to try to cut across some of the jurisdictional inconsistencies in the marine environment. Is that the sort of cooperative approach, ideally with the states, that we should look at for marine areas?
Mr Leck—I think the model of a single agency used in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park— it is wrong to create the impression that the marine park authority has sole responsibility for the entire marine park, obviously it does not. But by having that structure it is able to look at the full range of issues that impact on the GBR, whether that is to do with water quality, tourism, fishing or climate change. Having that overview and then coordinating its activities with whatever agency has direct responsibility for that area, which might be a state agency such as transport or whatever, is what WWF regards as the gold standard in management structure.
In terms of the institutional arrangements at a federal level for the roll-out of the NRSMPA, I would be hesitant to advocate that a similar structure be set up for each regional marine planning
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 40 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 process. I think there can be a central structure, whether that would be through the department or through a body like the National Oceans Office is still to be determined. The likelihood of introducing a single oceans act at this point needs to be examined as well. We need to weigh up the time it would take to introduce something like that versus increasing the momentum for the roll-out of the NRSMPA.
CHAIR—Finally, the issue which obviously comes up in a marine context are other uses, and keys ones that spring to mind are fisheries and oil and gas exploration. Do you have a view about any sort of blanket attitude on, for example, extractive activities? I think the CSIRO suggested in our initial hearing that as long as it could be demonstrated that there was not a significant risk to biodiversity issues there should not be a blanket ban on extraction in some forms of marine protected areas. Do you have a view about that?
Mr Leck—WWF has a view that having oil and gas exploration or extraction and having MPAs are not necessarily mutually exclusive but they may well be. It depends on the conservation values of the site. I think what we are seeing play out in the South-East Regional Marine Plan process at the moment is that, in areas where you have oil and gas leases or even areas of prospectivity that are impeding MPA establishment in areas of high conservation value, the government really needs to weigh up whether it is appropriate to accommodate these industry interests and forgo the opportunity to apply conservation and management. WWF would strongly advocate, especially in unique areas of high conservation value, that MPA establishment take precedence.
Senator RONALDSON—Following on a bit from the chair in relation to an ocean or whatever it might be, is the quality of management in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park replicated in other marine parks around the country?
Mr Leck—The management arrangements in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park are unique. It is a fairly unusual situation, in that—
Senator RONALDSON—I meant that in the context that it is well managed. Are other marine parks around Australia similarly well managed?
Mr Leck—I would say that Heard and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve in the southern Antarctic is well managed. I would say that Ningaloo Marine Park in Western Australia is also well managed. Ningaloo is not by any means the size and scale of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Some of the local marine parks along the Victorian coastline would also be well managed, but they are also not of the scale of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. It is early days in terms of the roll-out of a national representative system of marine protected areas, so the government is still finalising the zoning plan, for example, and the management arrangements in the South-East Regional Marine Plan, so it would be too early to say if the management arrangements are comparable to those of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
Senator RONALDSON—Are there any glaring examples of mismanagement in any of the marine parks?
Mr Leck—I think there are disappointing outcomes. A very topical and recent outcome that you could point to would be the Great Sandy Marine Park here in Queensland. I think that the
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 41 positives that I stressed about the management of the Great Barrier Reef and the way that the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park occurred, by having strong scientific input, clear operating protocols for how the zoning plan was to be implemented and consultation that involved all stakeholders, was not applied in the case of the Great Sandy. Therefore, you got an outcome that was driven much more by stakeholders rather than by science.
You could also look at the initial stages of negotiation of the South-East Regional Marine Plan, where I suppose you had confusion in governance arrangements between the National Oceans Office, which was trying to deliver on regional marine planning, and DEH, which was trying to deliver on MPAs. Confusion was created there. WWF would also argue that the resourcing of scientific input into the South-East Regional Marine Plan at those initial stages was certainly lacking, and therefore you ended up having a fairly long and protracted stakeholder driven process at the beginning of that.
Senator RONALDSON—Are you aware of any marine parks where there is not a management plan?
Mr Leck—Off the top of my head, no, but that does not necessarily mean there are not any.
CHAIR—Perhaps you could take that on notice.
Mr Leck—I am happy to take that on notice.
Senator RONALDSON—I am interested in the context of our discussions before about the land based national park management plan. I would be interested to get the feedback on that.
Mr Leck—I would be very surprised if there were any.
Senator RONALDSON—In your submission you raised issues about declining water quality and threats with overfishing, which are concerns. Out of interest, I understand that the Great Barrier Reef Cooperative Research Centre, which GBRMPA was owning or disowning as the questioning went on during the inquiry, have partially funded that. I gather they did a comprehensive review of run-off on the Great Barrier Reef. Are you aware of that?
Mr Leck—Yes.
Senator RONALDSON—Am I misquoting that, or are these quotes that I have correct? One of the conclusions was:
It is tempting to conclude that the water quality status of the central Great Barrier Reef is not at immediate risk and that at current nutrient input rates, external sources will have little future impact on water quality ...
Mr Leck—It is an interesting question.
Senator RONALDSON—First of all, from your understanding of the conclusions, is that quote correct?
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Mr Leck—I took the precaution—if that is the right word—of reading the Hansard before appearing here today, and I noticed that that quote was raised at the hearing in Canberra. I had a look around to see where that had come from, and my understanding is that it came from a scientist called Dr Walter Starke, who quoted—I think incorrectly—that CRC report. Dr Walter Starke is very much on the record as disputing any threats to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, including those from climate change, water quality and overfishing. On the flip side of that, I suppose you have scientists like Dr Katharina Fabricius from the Australian Institute of Marine Science—
Senator RONALDSON—Leaving that to one side, you are saying that that is not a quote coming from the conclusions of this inquiry?
Mr Leck—To my knowledge, I do not think it is—and I would dispute the statement.
Senator RONALDSON—I have no doubt that you dispute it. I just wanted to know whether that was a correct quote from their conclusions.
Mr Leck—I do not think it is.
Senator SIEWERT—You were about to quote somebody else who has an alternative view. That would be useful to have on the record as well.
Mr Leck—There will always be dissenting scientists on all environment issues. We see that with climate change all the time. But on the issue of water quality you have Dr Katharina Fabricius and Dr Miles Furnas, who are both world-renowned experts on water quality from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, you have Dr John Brody at James Cook University and you have expert scientists in GBRMPA, all of whom recognise the impact that water quality has on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. We also have a plan signed off by the Premier of Queensland and the Prime Minister that, in its opening statement, clearly states that at least 450 inshore reefs are at risk from declining water quality.
And so I think the debate over whether water quality is an issue has well and truly been established. It is heartening to see that even some of the industries along the Great Barrier Reef coastline that contribute to land based sources of pollution have started to recognise that. WWF would strongly argue that the actions to implement a lot of the actions under the Reef Water Quality Protection Plan need greater urgency and leadership. A lot of those actions are behind where they were scheduled to occur, but we do recognise that progress has been made in terms of recognising that there is a problem with water quality and accepting that more broadly amongst industry, government and local community.
Senator SIEWERT—I would like to go back to comments you were making about the marine NRS and the scientific inputs into the NRS. My understanding is that, similar to IBRA on land, there is IMCRA—I think that is what it is called—which is for bioregions for the marine environment. To your knowledge, are any of the states or the Commonwealth taking a priority or systematic approach to looking at IMCRA to say, ‘Okay, these are the areas that should be turned into marine protected areas’?
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Mr Leck—Well, I think that is how the roll-out of the NRSMPA is occurring. At the Commonwealth level they have decided that the roll-out will begin in the south-east, move to the north, and then go to the south-west. I am not sure where it heads after that. But, again, WWF would be recommending, in each of those regional marine planning processes, a similar process as was undertaken in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park rezoning of looking at individual bioregions within those planning areas and identifying areas. In the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park they call them ‘special and unique areas,’ which do not fit into a representative framework. Those areas need to be protected regardless of their interaction with other extractive industries. But then a representative approach needs to be taken to the bioregions identified within those regional marine planning areas according to a set of, I suppose, biophysical operating principles. It would be useful if I had them with me to table to the inquiry as a kind of guide, I suppose, of what has been done previously.
CHAIR—Feel free to provide them as a follow-up.
Mr Leck—I would be very happy to.
Senator SIEWERT—You say in your submission and you mentioned in your opening statement that most of our marine protected areas are in the tropical and subantarctic or tropical and remote areas.
Mr Leck—Largely skewed.
Senator SIEWERT—Iconic and remote, yes. Leaving out the temperate waters, is the priority being placed on the south-west bioregional plan adequate to deal with that or should we be should be looking at other areas to prioritise?
Mr Leck—The south-east plan picks up a fair degree of temperate waters as well. As I was saying to Senator Ronaldson, it is early days in terms of the comprehensive adequateness and representation of how that planning process will turn out. Certainly, WWF has concerns about the level of representation from the south-east plan, particularly with regards to the shelf areas and head-of-canyon areas, which are often areas of higher biodiversity and high conservation value. In the south-west I think that is very promising in picking up a large degree of temperate waters. WWF anticipates working proactively on that. But, again—this is probably sounding quite repetitive—I would stress that taking a strong scientific approach to the roll-out in the south-west and leading with science, bioregionalisation and an application of precautionary principle is a wise move forward to avoid some of the, I suppose, protracted negotiations that have occurred in the south-east and possibly in the north.
Senator SIEWERT—Going to purely state marine national protected areas, I have two questions around that. The first is that we have a number of different examples about how they are being rolled out around Australia. For example, the Victorian approach is to go for smaller protected areas but a larger number of them that are purely no-take areas—that is my understanding. Whereas, in Queensland and Western Australia, for example, we have got larger marine protected areas that seem to be harder to put in place but are then zoned. Does WWF have a view on what the better approach is, or should we be trialling a series of approaches?
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Mr Leck—Going back to the Great Barrier Reef for a second, there is one thing that often gets lost in the discussion about the Great Barrier Reef. Everyone tends to talk about the 33.4 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park that is zoned in no-take areas. However, I think it is also a significant achievement to have the range of zoning and protective measures throughout the rest of the marine park in terms of where you can recreationally fish, where you can trawl and where you can do various other types of activities as well. My point there is that WWF does not see that setting up no-take areas gets the job done—you also need to manage effectively the areas in their entirety. Marine parks or marine reserve no-take zones are certainly one tool in the toolbox for managing the marine environment. What has been done in Victoria is admirable, but if there is ineffective fisheries management adjacent to those marine parks or if you then have large oil and gas leases or areas of prospectivity sitting over other areas of high biodiversity, it negates the benefits that you would have from establishing those marine reserves. So I do not think there is a one-size-fits-all approach by any means. A multiple use marine park has its value, as do marine reserves, but it is very much what you do in the areas outside the marine reserves and how you manage those that is important.
Senator SIEWERT—Under the new approach to NHT2, the natural resource management regional groups were given the responsibility of planning for the marine environment. Does WWF have an opinion about how effective that has been?
Mr Leck—It is a difficult question to ask in Queensland because of the unique situation with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. More broadly, looking at a national level, I think it is an admirable goal to have to use NRM groups to provide that role in bridging the gap between science and policy and the local community, but WWF does have some considerable concerns about the level of support and capacity that some of the coastal NRM groups have to actually deliver on that. There are some good examples. I think over your way the marine futures program that is based around Perth has done some good cross-regional work, but I think in some of the more remote areas, where you might have NRM groups that are dominated by a terrestrial or a freshwater focus, quite often there is a minimal amount of attention and support given to marine and coastal planning.
I would certainly recommend to the committee that the funding arrangements and the level of capacity for coastal NRM groups should be looked at and that more support should be given to provide that role, because, as we have seen with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, coastal marine planning is certainly not easy. There are a huge range of stakeholders, there is negotiation with industry and all that kind of stuff. To have one or two people sitting in an NRM group is often simply not sufficient to be able to provide that convening room.
Senator MOORE—I have a quick question to do with community consultation. In all areas of this debate people tend to take differing views, and in the area of marine parks one of the things I have noticed has been the activity around fishing. Both recreational fishers and the professional fishing industry are concerned about the introduction of marine parks and their role in that. Does WWF have a relationship with these groups? What is the community consultation that goes on when one of these parks is being discussed, in particular marine parks? How does your organisation, with your particular view about where this should go, interact with groups that are different?
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Mr Leck—It really depends on context. Sorry—that is a real cop-out of an answer, I am afraid, but it does depend on the situation to a degree. WWF works very collaboratively with the commercial fishing industry in a number of areas. One example that springs to mind is our work on establishing environmentally certified fisheries. With regard to marine protected areas, establishing marine protected areas, as you said, is a political process. Politics always gets involved. I suppose having my recommendations for greater input of science and those principles of how to go about declaring or rezoning a marine park up front takes some of that politics out of the situation and it can potentially create a less acrimonious negotiation.
In the case of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park rezoning, certainly there was some degree of anger from commercial fishers regarding the outcome there. Whether or not that is representative of the whole industry is probably questionable. But, looking at what had been done in the consultation on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, it was very clear how much consultation was to take place, what opportunities people had and what the boundaries were for the way the zoning was going to occur. While it is unfortunate that there was some disappointment amongst industry, there was an overall benefit from protecting the Great Barrier Reef. Thinking about the major industries on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park—I notice that you have the CEO of the Queensland Tourism Industry Council coming in later—and thinking about the real value of the industries there, I think the right decision was made.
Senator MOORE—That is the same question I will ask of each of those groups to see what that interaction is. My concern is that there is antagonism between the various competing interests and that there is not a lot of common ground there.
Mr Leck—I strayed in that last answer, but I think that it really does depend. There was a level of antagonism over the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park rezoning, but I do not think that is necessarily true in all marine park decisions. There will always be vocal sections of the community that resent change, and I do not think that is necessarily a reason not to introduce that change if it benefits the overall environment.
CHAIR—I have a final question about resourcing—a commonly raised issue in all contexts— in the marine context. Leaving aside the suggestion that the government should put in more money, which is a position that we can always look at, there are issues about other areas of potential resourcing. We have the example of the reef tax—I cannot remember what its proper name is.
Mr Leck—The environmental management charge.
CHAIR—That has been in place for quite some time now. I think it was brought in by this government. That is a contribution by commercial tourism operators. Does your organisation have a view about the need to tap areas like that for extra resources? There has been a suggestion that money from licences for recreational fishers could perhaps go to buy out commercial fishing licences or other things, and there are other ways of raising revenue to help with the management and enforcement provisions of marine areas.
Mr Leck—Yes, it is a good question.
CHAIR—More contributions from NGOs, for example!
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Mr Leck—In terms of a recreational fishing licence—
CHAIR—I just used that as an example, perhaps because we have Recfish up next. So they can listen to your answer closely!
Mr Leck—The user-pays system would seem to be a reasonably equitable initiative to bring in. For example, tourists and tourism operators are charged for using the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and you could make a pretty clear argument that so should other users. Commercial fishers, obviously, have to pay for their licence for the right to fish in the marine park or in Queensland waters.
In terms of providing other revenue—and this does not directly answer your question—one of the things that WWF has worked on in the past and would be keen to see, particularly with regard to the issue of water quality in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and in other areas, is the use of incentives encouraging the uptake of best management practices. This is a goal of the Reef Water Quality Protection Plan. Sorry, that is straying from the facts. That is not actually going to provide any resourcing to marine park management. I should take that question on notice and get back to you.
Senator RONALDSON—From what I have read and heard, this is an example of what really gets up people’s noses: fishermen are required to pay a charge—effectively, it is a tax, but we will call it a charge for the sake of the argument—which ostensibly is to go back into management and into assisting the industry, but it just goes off into general revenue. I think that is what drives people into a state of total frustration. I presume your organisation would view those taxes collected as taxes that should be spent on the industry.
Mr Leck—Absolutely, and I am almost confident—I am happy to be corrected if not—that, for example, the money collected through fishing licences in New South Wales does go into enhancing the recreational fishing experience, such as providing better boat ramp facilities and that sort of stuff and buying out commercial licences. WWF would absolutely support that—if you do introduce a recreational fishing licence, that that money is not then siphoned off to fund health programs or the like, that it be used for the benefit of recreational fishers in a sustainable manner.
Senator RONALDSON—Indeed. To take up Senator Moore’s comments earlier about community consultation, would you agree that it is appropriate for organisations such as Recfish or whomever it might be to have some involvement in how those moneys are spent? If they have been collected from a wide group of people by the organisation that ostensibly represents them, it seems to me those organisations have some legitimate input into how those moneys are spent.
Mr Leck—They already do. There was a recent announcement of, I think, around $15 million to be used to enhance the recreational fishing experience as a nationwide program. Obviously, the people who will be applying for that money and the people who have applied for that money are overwhelmingly recreational fishers. WWF also think that conservation groups should be able to influence where that money goes as well. And you would think it appropriate, if you were looking at enhancing an experience, to work on creating a sustainable resource. So it may be that you would look at preserving wetlands, for example, preserving coastal environments and preserving nursery areas so you have a good stock of fish for the future. We would hope that
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 47 recreational fishing licences or grants similar to the one I just mentioned would be used not only for practical facilities for fishermen but also to ensure that fish stocks are sustainable into the future.
CHAIR—Okay. We might need to wrap it up there. I did only pick on recreational fishing licences as an example rather than anything else, so if you have any other ideas for resourcing from all sections of the community and for all activities, any other views or information, please get back to us.
Mr Leck—I would be very happy to feed that in.
CHAIR—Thank you very much. As always, if there is further material on anything to do with the committee’s ongoing inquiries that you or other people within your organisation want to provide, or any follow-up on issues arising today, we would be happy to receive it. Thank you again for your time.
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[11.53 am]
HARRISON, Mr John Charles, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Recreational and Sport Fishing Industry Confederation T/A Recfish Australia
CHAIR—I welcome the representative from Recfish Australia. The committee has received your submission, No. 104. Firstly, are there any amendments or alterations you would like to make to your submission?
Mr Harrison—No.
CHAIR—I formally remind you that these proceedings are covered by parliamentary privilege, which carries obligations regarding giving evidence that is not misleading. Also, if you wish to give any evidence in camera then you can indicate that and we will consider that request. I invite you to make any short opening statement you would like to provide before we ask you some questions.
Mr Harrison—Thank you for the opportunity to attend today’s hearings. I will not repeat what is in our submission, because it is there for you to read, but there are a couple of points I would like to make to reinforce some issues. It is about transparent and early engagement of the recreational fishing interests in the processes of parks, reserves and MPAs. Clearly it is in the interests of everyone that we get away from the secrecy veil and try to get community and industry ownership of proposals. The only way that can happen is through open and accountable consultation. The processes must be supported by good environmental and fishery science. Fishery managers and scientists, along with industry bodies, should be involved closely with the development, management and review of any declarations.
Protection of resources through lockout is not and should not be the first option. There are many other ways to manage our natural resources. The recreational fishing sector is being squeezed into fewer and fewer areas by unsubstantiated claims for no-take and conservation areas, and this is not just through Commonwealth processes. In the case of MPAs, there appears to be a view that they should be an objective. We believe this is incorrect. They need to be treated as a strategy, and there should not be some knee jerk reaction with a must-have philosophy. We understand that there will be a need to protect some areas and that in some cases a no-take approach could be part of the total solution. In establishing these reserves and parks et cetera we strongly believe there should be a strategic risk assessment undertaken so we can actually identify what is at risk, why it needs to be protected and what is the best method of actually doing something without jeopardising the social and economic framework that underpins much of our society.
Controlling overexploitation is important, and that is why bag and size limits are an integral part of the management regime for recreational fishing. However, increasingly the trend in angling is catch and release, which somewhat negates the role of bag and size limits. Moreover, today we need to educate anglers on the best techniques and this is being done through a range of methods. Research is establishing that fish do survive when released and that survivability is influenced by adopting best practices. So, when the Commonwealth is looking at changes or,
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 49 indeed, at new reserves, parks or MPAs, we recommend that options like catch and release only or wilderness fishing areas be seriously considered as an option to maintain the accessibility for the angling public to the waters that they have traditionally fished. Thank you.
CHAIR—Thanks for that.
Senator MOORE—Mr Harrison, I have been asking people about community consultation, and that seemed to be the theme of most of your submission and your evidence. I was lobbied strongly by the Capricornia group, and I see you put that case study there. On your statement about early and transparent involvement, I am still struggling with the whole role of consultation and whether the debate changes the outcome or is merely an exchange of information. I would like to get something more on record from your group. I think you have said where you stand in your recommendation. But the issue is where we go with the process of engaging the community in the whole ownership of national park areas and protection of the environment and where you change from people being told stuff and then going away to them actually having a role in developing the future plan.
Mr Harrison—I will answer your question in this way. If you do not engage stakeholders— whether they are recreational, commercial or whoever—and you simply come up and plonk something on the table, there is the answer. That is when you are going to get people’s backs up. Bring people into the debate and into the discussion when it starts and say: ‘This is what we are trying to achieve. This is the big picture and the long-term objective. How can you help us in that process? Where is it going to impact on you? What are the areas that are critical to the long- term requirements for your particular sector—again, whether it be rec or commercial?’ I think the best way to get an enemy is to force-feed someone—you know, the carrot and the stick. But, if you encourage people to contribute and participate, to be involved and to be part of the solution, you will get a good outcome. Most even-minded people in the recreational fishing industry are well aware that MPAs, for example, are here to stay and that they are not going to go away. It is like trying to stop the tide. You are not going to do it. If you can get that involvement early, upfront and without any surprises then you will have a much better chance of people accepting it and providing constructive input to the process.
Senator MOORE—Your statement here was that a degree of cynicism has developed in your groups over what they consider poor examples in the past. What, in your opinion, is the possibility of killing that cynicism and rebuilding some form of trust in future?
Mr Harrison—That is possible. With the Department of the Environment and Heritage we are about to enter into a contract to provide an opportunity for us to liaise with the grassroots— for want of a better word—the stakeholders involved in the recreational fishing sector for the northern planning area and for the south-west planning area.
Senator MOORE—They are Queensland planning areas?
Mr Harrison—No, they are Commonwealth.
Senator MOORE—These are the new national ones?
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Mr Harrison—Yes. The northern one goes from Cape York across to about Goulburn Island and out to the AFZ—outside, of course, territorial and state waters. We will be adopting that process as part of what we have put in our submission. We envisage that we will go to the various communities around that coastline—so you are talking Weipa, Burketown, Borroloola, Groote Eylandt and Nhulunbuy—and speak to the people who are actually in that location. That process will then feed back into DEH and become part of the establishment of the candidate areas under the northern planning process. To me, that will be an opportunity for the angling community to have a say in the northern planning process and eventually the south-west and, I presume, the east one, which is the gap between the south-east and the Great Barrier Reef— whatever it might be called.
Senator RONALDSON—You would view that as a significant step forward from your organisation’s point of view?
Mr Harrison—It has taken 18 months to get it to this stage. The short answer is yes. Under the south-east planning process, resources were provided to the commercial sector—the commercial fishing industries—to have a liaison project officer who would go round and talk to all the licence holders who fished in the south-east area. We will finally get a contract signed off, hopefully in the next two weeks, to do likewise, but the south-east has gone.
Senator RONALDSON—I may be misinterpreting your submission, but I rather got the impression that you were effectively saying that there was a lockout—whatever it might be— that a decision was made, the rationale for doing so was worked out afterwards and there was no clarity of objectives at the start of the process. Is that a reasonable take on what you were saying? It was almost like putting the cart before the horse, if you like.
Mr Harrison—Yes. It appears to most angling bodies that the lines are drawn on the map without the consultation happening up-front. The solution is delivered before you have an opportunity to have input. That appears to be what has happened; that is what the perception of the people is. I will give you an example. With the south-east plan, the initial candidate MPAs were made public. We did not put in a submission because we were quite comfortable with the way it was under the first draft. There has been some extensive work done—
Senator SIEWERT—You were given the opportunity; is that what you are saying? You had the opportunity to comment on that but you did not put a submission in?
Mr Harrison—We had the opportunity, but we did not put a submission in because we were comfortable with what was in the—
Senator SIEWERT—But the point is you had the opportunity.
Mr Harrison—Yes, we did. What has happened now is that the lines have changed. The lines on the new maps that are about to be endorsed by the minister, which we will again have an opportunity to comment on, have been agreed after consultations with other stakeholders. We were not included in those or given the opportunity in those discussions prior to the new lines being drawn. That is of concern. We should have been invited. If there were going to be changes we should have been invited, and we were not. We will have an opportunity in the public
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 51 consultation process, but that is not where you are likely to get influence, having not engaged early on.
Senator RONALDSON—Are you satisfied that there are appropriate management objectives for marine parks in this country? Is there sufficient clarity of objectives?
Mr Harrison—I do not think the clarity is there. The concept of a national representative system has merit. We need to protect the biodiversity because, without that, we do not have the very thing that we chase—that is, the fish. But I really think that there is a lack of understanding of those objectives. Whether that is through clarity or not having the opportunities or resources to be able to get the message out to the broader angling community is a debate that is yet to be had. I personally think that there are some ambit claims that are thrown on the table or targets such as that we have to have X per cent. Why? What is the rationale for X per cent? I do not think there is any clarity there.
Senator RONALDSON—Should those objectives be determined on the basis of scientific evidence alone? Should it be on the evidence of recreational anglers? Should it be a collective, objective, formal task force?
Mr Harrison—As I said earlier, there should be good environmental and fisheries science. But there are social aspects as well. The mix to make your objectives work should bring in a whole blend of things. It should include the knowledge of the recreational anglers, the knowledge of the commercial anglers and the knowledge of the conservation people about what areas we want to protect. As I said, we need to identify what is at risk and how we are going to go about protecting that. There is not one, single thing that should be used as an objective; it should be a suite of things in order to try to come up with a solution that, as nearly as possible, is recognised and accepted by the majority. It is not easy.
Senator RONALDSON—I am always very jealous of people who tag and release because I actually cannot catch them in the first place in order to release them. But, leaving that aside, is that catch, tag and release thing, or whatever it is called, growing as part of recreational fishing?
Mr Harrison—Yes is the short answer. There is no doubt about it. Recreational fishing has come a long way in probably the last 30 to 40 years. It used to be about catching your bag limit. If you went into a tournament, those who caught the most fish won the tournament. They would catch their bag limit on all of the different species. Today what is happening is that you have a lot of catch, tag and release or catch and release. There is a mix. Sometimes they take photographs of the fish—it is done on length—and the fish is then released. All that goes up is the digital image of the fish and that is what is weighed, if you like. Sometimes it is done by targeting different species so that people have to move around and not concentrate on one particular species. The short answer is that it is definitely increasing. Austag, which is a program run around Australia, recently reached 500,000 tagged fish on its database. There is any amount of evidence that some iconic species are as high as 80 per cent to 85 per cent released. In the game fishing circles, marlin is somewhere in the vicinity of 95 per cent released. So it is increasing. There are fewer and fewer people needing to go home with an esky full of fish to have enjoyed the day.
Senator RONALDSON—So that is a cultural change that you think is happening?
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Mr Harrison—I think it has gradually happened over the course of time with assistance from TV shows, articles in magazines, research on the best methods of releasing and changes to gear technology. Things such as circle hooks and knotless landing nets do less damage to the fish and provide the fish with more chance of survival once it is released. There is education. If a fish is gut hooked—that is, it has a hook right down in its gullet—do not try to pull the hook out if you are going to let it go. Cut the line off close to the mouth and let the fish go. There is evidence to indicate that they will get rid of that hook within two or three days.
Senator SIEWERT—I have a couple of questions. Firstly, I want to go back to the consultation issue. I am a little concerned that an impression has been generated that rec fishers are not consulted at all when marine parks are established. I come from Western Australia and I have had a great deal of experience in consultation on marine parks. In every consultation I have been involved in, from day one there was involvement of all community stakeholders, including recreational fishers. I must say that we have had some vigorous debates, but they have been involved from day one in consultations on where the zoning should be, what the management issues are and which areas rec fishers can go to so that those areas can be accommodated. Do you have a lot of experience from around Australia about the level of consultation with rec fishers in each state when marine protected areas are implemented?
Mr Harrison—No, I do not have evidence.
Senator SIEWERT—Or experience. You made some general statements about consultations which are not consistent with my direct personal experience in this process in Western Australia.
Mr Harrison—Are we talking about state based MPAs in WA?
Senator SIEWERT—Yes, state based MPAs.
Mr Harrison—That is your experience, I mean.
Senator SIEWERT—Yes. In the consultation process for the south-west, in which I have had some experience, all community stakeholders have been engaged from day one.
Mr Harrison—You have had experience with the south-west process?
Senator SIEWERT—Yes.
Mr Harrison—There is a classic example: we have not.
Senator SIEWERT—My understanding is that they are putting somebody on board. Jessica Marwick—
Mr Harrison—Are we talking Commonwealth or state?
Senator SIEWERT—The state process that has been engaged.
Mr Harrison—For the south-west Commonwealth planning area?
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Senator SIEWERT—Yes, and that is being mirrored at the Commonwealth level. Jessica Marwick is being employed by NOO to work out of UWA to start that consultation process. When I say I have been involved, I know that they are getting a consultation process up and running and that they are lobbying to ensure that they do have a consultation process, and I know that all the stakeholders are being involved in that region. Do you have evidence from other states? What is the experience in other states about the level of involvement at a state level in MPAs?
Mr Harrison—At state level with state MPAs, or MPAs in general? This is where the complexity comes in.
Senator SIEWERT—State MPAs also. We are talking about two levels of MPAs, aren’t we? We are talking about Commonwealth and state.
Mr Harrison—Commonwealth and state—yes.
Senator SIEWERT—A lot of Recfish’s involvement is going to be in the state MPAs rather than the Commonwealth MPAs.
Mr Harrison—I would have to take that on notice and ask my constituents for precise examples—and I am happy to do that. From the discussions I have had with the member organisations of Recfish Australia, in general they are not comfortable with the consultation processes. If you take the Batemans Marine Park on the south coast of New South Wales, you only have to read the media and get a feel for what is going around on chat boards and other processes to get the feeling that the recreational angling community is not convinced that the consultation now taking place with the New South Wales government is anywhere near adequate.
Senator SIEWERT—I would not dare to comment on what is going on in New South Wales because I do not know it in enough detail. But I would like to get your feeling on the issue of consultation versus the issue of people are being happy with the outcomes. Aren’t they two different things?
Mr Harrison—Yes, they are very different.
Senator SIEWERT—So people’s feelings about the outcome do not necessarily reflect whether they were consulted, just that they do not like the outcome?
Mr Harrison—Yes. In a lot of cases where they do not like the outcome they will say they have not been consultant properly. That needs to be recognised—and I think any level-headed person will recognise it. But what we are saying is, ‘Get the processes in place so that the consultation can take place from the start.’ If the outcome is not to the liking of the person, tough. If they have had a fair shot, a fair hearing and opportunities to have an input and do not get exactly what they want and want to pick up their bat and ball and go home, let them. The reality is, as I said, that you are not going to stop the tide; MPAs are here to stay. But we want to be able to have an opportunity to influence the outcome. Whether your influence works is a completely different set of questions.
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Senator SIEWERT—Recfish is represented on the National Oceans Advisory Group, NOAG. Is that correct? Is Frank Prokop on that?
Mr Harrison—Yes. Frank is on that as our representative and I am the proxy representative.
Senator SIEWERT—So you do have representation at the national level as well?
Mr Harrison—Yes, we do.
Senator SIEWERT—There is a lot of literature around about the values of protected areas, both marine and terrestrial. I am intrigued by your comment about a clarification of the purpose of protected areas. I thought that debate had been had and that there was plenty of literature around to indicate their effectiveness.
Mr Harrison—Or ineffectiveness.
Senator SIEWERT—There are some protected areas that are not being managed effectively—I absolutely agree with you. But I would have thought that there is a lot of literature around, if people want to go and read it, about the values of those areas. I am just wondering how many more times people have to keep articulating that before it is accepted what their role is.
Mr Harrison—I do not think anybody is doubting what their role is. What they are questioning are the claims of how they improve fish stocks. The jury is still out on that. There are certain species that are resident species within an area that you cannot catch because you cannot physically go in there and catch them. But there is no indication that there is this beautiful spillover effect. That is our view. There is not enough evidence to suggest that locking up an area is going to give you benefit outside it. That can be argued till the cows come home.
The other point that needs to be made is that sometimes putting a line on a map and saying, ‘We’re going to protect this,’ will do no good at all because the impact that is happening is happening way outside that box, whether it is to do with water quality, as was mentioned by the previous witness, or onshore pollution, residential, industrial or agricultural issues—all of those things. The drainage of wetlands in one area, where you do not have your nursery and you do not have your wetlands for breeding purposes, could be the very thing that is causing a shortage of fish five miles away. So it is not just a question of putting a line around an area and saying, ‘This is really important, we’ll lock it up.’ There are lots of reasons to doubt the effectiveness of whacking in a box and making that a protected area.
Senator SIEWERT—I am getting the sign from the chair!
Senator RONALDSON—It is a fairly devastating look, isn’t it?
CHAIR—I had better apply it to myself now! I want to ask you the question raised before about fishing licences: whether your organisation has a view or a policy on rec fishing licences, and whether they are acceptable in certain circumstances if you can be confident that the money raised goes to conservation outcomes or to the rec fishing experience. Also, do you have a view about ways of raising revenue? There is a continual request for more money to go into protected
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 55 areas. We have to look at all the ways that money can come in, and not just pick on rec fishers— though I would be interested in your view about that particular example, which comes up from time to time, and also other bodies, groups, users and the community in general.
Mr Harrison—First of all, licences for recreational fishing is a state issue. New South Wales and Victoria both have an all-waters licence. In New South Wales for moneys go directly into a trust account which is managed and administered by a board of trustees of recreational fishing people. In Victoria it goes into consolidated revenue and comes back out again—the same amount, but it goes in and comes back out again. That is also administered by a trust fund. There are species-specific licences in WA, a freshwater licence in Tasmania and some licences in South Australia. There is a freshwater or a stocked impoundment permit system here in Queensland for the dams that are stocked. There are no licences in the NT.
Our view is that it is a state issue and that if the states wish to pursue a licence then they have every right to do so. That is the view of our state peak member bodies. Generally speaking I think you will find support for a licence from Recfish Australia. Having said that, I think if you spoke to all of our delegates individually you would probably get a different view. Personally I think it is the way to go—I underline that that is a personal comment. New South Wales is a classic example: they have got $10 million a year being raised through licence revenue. There is a lot you can do with $10 million, particularly when you lever it up to make it $20 million or $25 million.
I think there is and will be more call on resources because, as I have said in our submission, if you are going to do something, you have to have the resources to back it up. There is a method that has been put forward previously, but Treasury does not like it. It is called hypothecation. I think there is $400 million worth of wholesale sales of tackle in Australia, and hypothecating some of the tax on that into a trust account to do some work on management would, to me, seem logical—but, again, you might have to help me convince the powers in Treasury of such a move.
Senator RONALDSON—Good luck.
Mr Harrison—That is why I said you might have to help me. There has to be recognition that it is not just the extractive users who need to put their hands in their pockets. There are other users. If you want to preserve something and if you are from a conservation movement, then you have to find some way of helping in the debate and in the cost. I do not know how you could do that.
Licences are one issue. If it is a state based marine park, we need to speak to the states and put forward a case, and I think that is just par for the course. If you want to get some money out of their pocket, then you have to put in the application and justify it. Having said that, if there are declarations of protected areas, whether they are in national parks, marine parks or wherever, there is the issue of the monitoring and establishing whether they are actually doing any good and whether their benefits are really important, because when you come to review it in five or seven years time, post declaration, what are you going to look at? How are you going to tell whether this has worked or not worked without appropriate monitoring? The Capricornia one is a good example. They have a monitoring program running up there through the NRM. The Fitzroy catchment management authority has put some money into a monitoring program for
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 56 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 recreational fishing in the area. That is brilliant. It is cheap. I think it costs $200,000 a year. It is not much money. They are the sorts of things that need to be looked at.
CHAIR—Thank you for your time today. If you want to provide further information to the committee on any of the evidence or issues that were raised today or that are raised during the course of the rest of the inquiry, we would be happy to receive it. We are happy to receive any further material.
Proceedings suspended from 12.23 pm to 1.06 pm
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PAHL, Mr Stephen Gerard, Chief Executive Officer, Ecotourism Australia
GSCHWIND, Mr Daniel, Chief Executive, Queensland Tourism Industry Council
CHAIR—Welcome. We have submissions from Queensland Tourism Industry Council and Ecotourism Australia, numbered 106 and 81 respectively. Do you want to make any alterations to those submissions?
Mr Pahl—No.
Mr Gschwind—No.
CHAIR—I remind you that these proceedings are covered by parliamentary privilege which covers obligations regarding avoiding giving false and misleading evidence. If you do wish to give evidence in camera for some reason let us know and we will consider that, or if there is a question asked of you that you wish to refuse to answer for any particular reason you can outline your reasons why and we will probably be comfortable with that but we will decide should that unlikely eventuality arise. I now invite you to make a short opening statement and then we will ask you some questions.
Mr Gschwind—Thank you for giving us the opportunity to appear before you to supplement our submission. I will make a couple of opening remarks and then pass over to my colleague, Stephen Pahl. To summarise—not so much the whole submission but our approach to this inquiry and the issues raised within it—I want to say that, clearly, the World Heritage areas in Queensland and the rest of the country, both from my perspective and from Queensland’s, play an incredibly important part in providing a tourism asset to the industry. They are fundamental to what we promote about this state and what we promote about this country and by sheer coincidence only half an hour ago I received through email from Tourism Australia a brochure which is just being launched today coincidentally and I have not had time to print it but I am happy to submit it to you. It is a publication entitled, ‘Australia’s World Heritage areas’, and it extols on 23 pages the virtues of each individual World Heritage area in the country and makes some summary comments about the value thereof and what role they play and I suppose in us attracting visitors to this country and to each state.
So I guess it is an illustration of the point that we are making that this is indeed an important asset for us and we believe that it should be managed as such—an asset not just to us in our industry but also to the community of course. And, as an asset, like any other asset, it requires appropriate investment to maintain it, enhance it and sustain it into the future. So that is what we think our basic approach is. Visitation, we believe, has a great influence on increasing the value of those assets. In our minds, there is no doubt that the fact that so many people have been given the opportunity to see and visit those assets has made an enormous contribution to increasing the value of the assets themselves, not just in terms of biodiversity but also in terms of the community value attributed to them. So I think the investment by industry and by government, both state and federal, in those assets have enhanced their value and, in our case, have enhanced our competitive position globally, and that is a point not be underestimated.
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For us to do our job, and for you to do your job as the federal government, I think we have to make sure the appropriate resources are in place and are provided. We believe that is not the case currently. We believe there should be more resources allocated to that task. We think it is important to cooperate effectively both between levels of government and between government and industry, and we think much more can be done in that arena. And, of course, we have to pursue research and knowledge generation to give us the right information. I do acknowledge the considerable effort that the Commonwealth is making in that regard through various institutions and research initiatives. That is not to be undervalued and we certainly appreciate it. That is all I wanted to say up-front in addition to our submission.
CHAIR—Mr Pahl, do you have any introductory comments you would like to make?
Mr Pahl—Yes. Thank you. Again, I articulate my thanks for the opportunity to present to the inquiry and to be here today. Ecotourism Australia has been operating now for some 15 years. We are a non-profit organisation based here in Brisbane, with national responsibility for representing the ecotourism and nature tourism sector in Australia. One of the primary vehicles that we use in enhancing a sustainable tourism community is our Eco Certification Program, which this year has been operating for 10 years. It is a unique program and I dare say it is one of the few programs in the world run by a non-profit organisation that actually covers its own costs and has not had a continual need for supplementary external funding. We operate the program in very much an industry driven way, and it is funded through the fees and charges of the program itself, which is unique.
We have articulated several views within our submission that relate particularly to the need for a greater level of coordination in parks management and World Heritage areas in Australia. There is also the issue of resourcing: we share the view that the parks and World Heritage areas in Australia are severely under-resourced. But the main element of our submission is related to our belief that the overall sustainability and management of parks and World Heritage areas throughout Australia can be very positively complemented by ecocertification. For instance, we have over the last couple of years had a very successful partnership with GBRMPA and also with CALM in Western Australia, where they have actually been affording extended tenure licences and permits to operate in, respectively, the Great Barrier Reef area and WA national parks to those operators that hold ecocertification.
We are not suggesting that ecocertification be made mandatory, but we do believe that, certainly, national park operations can be substantially enhanced by looking at some way of perhaps providing incentives or rewards to those tourism operators that are operating in parks that hold either ecotourism or advanced ecotourism level certification. So that is really the key element of our submission. This close partnership with GBRMPA and CALM, as I said, has been very successful over the two years that we have had it, and it has proven to be a very good incentive for industry to strive towards a best practice, sustainable tourism environment and of course to bring benefits to the way they operate within national parks and complement the objectives of the different national parks and World Heritage areas throughout Australia. That is essentially my summary.
CHAIR—Thank you for that. Clearly, the environmental assets, if you like, of protected areas are a major generator of wealth for the tourism industry, the community, employment and all those related things. But one question that came up on Fraser Island—you may not know, but the
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 59 committee went to Fraser Island yesterday and had a look around a little part of it; one day is not much for looking around the island—is with regard to World Heritage listing and what it actually means. As this document which you have not had a chance to look at yet suggests, it is actually a big marketing opportunity for tourism and the relevant states, communities and regions. There is a question about what it means in a management and resourcing sense. If it does not actually bring any special extra management requirements or extra resourcing on top of what exists for a normal national park then you could almost make the perverse argument that by giving it World Heritage listing you are increasing the potential for damage to it by drawing more people to it. Obviously, Fraser Island has big challenges to meet with managing visitors.
Given that in all protected areas the primary goal has to be preserving biodiversity, if for no other reason than to generate the wealth and other things that come out of it, how do we overcome that dilemma? If we stick with World Heritage for starters, should there be some extra level of obligation on state governments, local governments and the Commonwealth, industry and others as part of labelling something ‘World Her itage’ to make sure that the extra—if you like—love it attracts does not cause extra problems?
Mr Gschwind—The short answer to your question is yes. The first issue to address is: what is the overall resource requirement to achieve the outcomes in terms of biodiversity, sustainability and management? Then the question has to be asked: how is this cost to be shared? That is an assessment that has to be done on a case by case basis, I believe. The circumstances of Fraser Island, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park area and the Wet Tropics of Queensland are significantly different. There are different revenue streams that flow to the various stakeholders.
Just by way of illustration, some 18 months ago we did a supplementary study—and I am happy to submit it, as I have copies—to a previous study on the economic contribution of tourism to the management of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. It was an academic study conducted at Griffith University. We asked the consultant to give us an idea of who benefits from this and who pays for the management of, in this case, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. I am sure the findings would surprise quite a lot of people.
The study suggests that the Commonwealth, in this case, spent some $70 million on looking after the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, all costs included. It says that the industry contributes some $90 million in terms of public service, if you like, through education, free trips to the reef for researchers, officials and management authorities and through management of the various pests and diseases on the reef that the operators bear the cost of. It then follows through who benefits from all of this. Clearly, the tourism industry does indeed benefit from it.
It followed through and asked: how much tax is generated by the activities directly associated with visiting the Great Barrier Reef? It concludes that the revenue stream through GST, company taxes and so on ultimately leaves the Commonwealth government some $130 million better off and the state government some $119 million better off after accounting for all the expenses of looking after the resource. We are not making a political case on the basis of this; we are just trying to illustrate that the story is a bit more complex than just counting how much the management charge levied on commercial visitors is contributing. There is a commercial interest, which we all share—including the community, of course. I think those kinds of issues have to be assessed when we address and answer the questions that you have raised. How do we
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 60 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 then resource, manage and share the cost? Clearly our industry is fully supportive of making sure that the impacts are either eliminated or minimised.
I have to make sure it is clear to you that we view visitation quite differently between commercial controlled visitors and those who visit an area without any control. Fraser Island would be a very good illustration, I would think, of unmanaged visitation, own-vehicle drivers or other visitors. It is clearly a bigger problem than those who visit in a tour group who are tightly monitored, tightly managed, and are watched by the commercial operators who have certain liabilities in terms of monitoring what these visitors do. We think that those management responsibilities should be viewed with some sophistication, as opposed to just counting the number of people who leave a footprint on an island like Fraser. A complex assessment is required and it is in all of our interests to do that.
Senator RONALDSON—Are you able to provide us with those copies now?
Mr Gschwind—Certainly.
Senator MOORE—Mr Pahl, you talked about your Eco Certification Program, which we have heard about. I am a Queensland senator so I have heard a lot about it because of the GBRMPA aspect. In your evidence, you were clear that you were not suggesting such certification become mandatory. Why not?
Mr Pahl—From previous experience. We have touched on the issue of whether certification should be mandatory in Western Australia, for instance, because CALM in Western Australia now grant extended permits to operators. There is a localised program over in Western Australia now, called the advanced environmental management module, so an operator can present having done either our national certification or the WA advanced environmental management module. But there was a time when ours was the sole certification program, and it just was not well received by the industry.
We believe that we have a very good product and we communicate it very well to the industry. For us the challenge is to have a product that the industry really wants, and that has been one of the main drivers of our success: we have presented a product and service to the industry in such a way that it is something they want and are committed to. We have found that that has worked tremendously well, rather than making this type of certification a mandatory requirement.
I am not sure if you are aware of this, but one of the outcomes of the white paper was the issue of national business accreditation, the ‘green tick’ program. We made a decision to complement that intention back in 2003 by including it in our certification program. Again, it was a very hard decision for us as to whether to make that a mandatory inclusion in our program or have it as an option. We ran with it being mandatory, so it has expanded our program to a 10-module program. From our point of view, we saw it as a benefit because it now gives us a true triple- bottom-line program, presenting economic, environmental and social sustainability criteria. It has been very successful.
Senator MOORE—We talk about a whole range of different places—national parks, protected areas and those that have World Heritage listing. But within the range of providers in
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Queensland, and I am concentrating on Queensland, what percentage of operators would have voluntarily taken up your certification?
Mr Pahl—As opposed to the overall take-up?
Senator MOORE—Yes.
Mr Pahl—I do not have that figure, but—
Senator MOORE—We are looking at mandatory certification, particularly for iconic places like the Great Barrier Reef—and Fraser Island, as we heard yesterday, because there is a lot of discussion about the impact of tourists on the environment, and of different types of tourists; I am sure you have heard it many times. If a place is considered so special that it has World Heritage listing and then you are going to encourage people to visit it, I am agonising over whether the people who actually operate those services should or should not have to have the kind of certification that I have read about and that your organisation does.
Mr Pahl—I tend to agree with you in relation to World Heritage areas; there potentially is a good, sound case there for looking at a mandatory requirement. But in national parks I do not believe that is the case and, generally, I do not believe it is the case. I think in relation to our World Heritage areas nationally we certainly have not yet paid a lot of attention to carrying capacity, which is a key issue. We are spending a lot of time in the marketplace actively marketing our brand now. We are not simply administering an ecocertification program anymore; we are out there in the international markets, informing both the industry and the consumer about what it all means. We are finding that that education process in itself is working wonderfully well in that people are arriving in Australia having some knowledge of what the expectation is of their conduct in the way they use national parks and World Heritage areas, and looking at a product that has that eco-certified brand as being a genuine and authentic product.
Mr Gschwind—Can I add to this?
Senator MOORE—Yes, please.
Mr Gschwind—We are currently working with the Queensland government on a site capacity process under the heading of ‘tourism in protected areas’—national parks in Queensland at least. As part of that process, it is envisaged that we will grade high-visitation sites in terms of vulnerability or preciousness. For the most highly valued sites and most highly visited sites, we would certainly envisage that it would be plausible to have a mandatory requirement for those operators who are allowed to bring visitors into those sites that they comply with a higher level of operational practice, for lack of a better word. We would have no issue with that being made mandatory in such circumstances.
Senator MOORE—Yesterday we were talking about Fraser Island and the numbers going up and down. The numbers have gone down slightly over the last couple of years and no-one is quite sure why. One of the aspects we discussed concerned safety. We talked about risk management in terms of the whole management of the location. We looked at a number of places where amendments had to be made because of concerns about the safety of tourists. It would be
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 62 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 useful to have something on record from your perspective—how you feel about that feature of the tourism industry.
Mr Gschwind—We feel very strongly that there is a need to ensure that this is in place because, at the end of the day, World Heritage areas or not, our visitors’ safety is paramount to our reputation. We have to do the right thing and be seen to do the right thing in the eyes of our visitors and our distributors. If we can have more evidence to support that it would be an advantage to us.
We are facing an interesting problem at the moment in the Wet Tropics where we have had extensive damage from Cyclone Larry. I spent a few days up there recently visiting the World Heritage area. As a result of visitor safety concerns many sites are closed for visitation. That is unavoidable. We now have to work very hard—in fact, we have put in a submission to the Queensland government seeking some funding to help us put together a strategic approach to this, in consultation with the Wet Tropics Management Authority—to prioritise what needs to be done, how we should do it and how we can ensure not only that biological integrity of sites is preserved but also that the amenity values are maintained and the safety is guaranteed. It is a very complex problem and one that is going to cost a lot of money in North Queensland.
Senator SIEWERT—I want to follow up on the issue of heavily visited sites and sites that are particularly sensitive. I am aware that in the US they have put caps on some areas to deal with carrying capacity. What is your feeling about that? How do you think we should approach this, particularly in terms of equity, to make sure that we do not use the convenience of cost to exclude people?
Mr Gschwind—Caps may well be an appropriate measure. In fact, as we speak they are in place already in some sites. Some state parks, such as Hinchinbrook Island, have caps in place now. Only 34 people are allowed on the island at any one time. Caps are not something that we could not work with. That is desirable. When they are put in place there are a number of considerations. First of all, we do not want a cap set on a scale that is not necessarily relevant. It is not always about visitor numbers—it is not about how many people go there. In some cases it matters how they go there. Do they go there in one car each, for example? If you have 100 people each in their own car that is a different proposition to having 100 people in two coaches. Those dimensions have to be considered. More to the point: what are those 100 people doing? Are they staying there for a night? Are they lighting a campfire? Are they simply looking at it from the outside? Are they suspended in some way off the ground? We have to look at all of these aspects. The impacts have to be managed—not always the visitor numbers. So when you put a cap in place all of that has to be considered.
Secondly, there is the perennial issue that occasionally puts us at odds with some other stakeholders. It is not possible to manage a site in terms of numbers if you only manage commercial visitors and not recreational visitors who have no restrictions placed upon them. It is like closing the proverbial farm gate at one end of the paddock and leaving the other gate unattended and open. It simply makes a mockery of the management issue, quite aside from the financial issues that may arise when you have commercial operators and their visitors appropriately making financial contributions but not the recreational users. That is an equity issue that has to be addressed in some form. We think it can be addressed, but we have to be open and honest in the way we approach it.
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As I said, we cannot just manage one part of the equation—as is the case, for example, on the Barrier Reef. The visitors they take out there are making a contribution via the environmental management charge. We have many more visitations from people who take their tinnies and occasionally luxury yachts out to the Barrier Reef and make a zero contribution to the management of the Barrier Reef. They are entirely unsupervised. I am certain that in many cases they cause a lot more damage to the Barrier Reef. It is an equity and management issue.
Mr Pahl—It has certainly been a significant issue and a challenge in many near-city national parks—the issue of how people are travelling in there. Much attention and controls are placed on tour operators and on group entry into parks and World Heritage areas but, as Daniel said, quite often you can have, particularly in the near-city locations, large groups coming in privately in individual vehicles. That is a big issue. Again, it has to come back to the individual management plans of each of the World Heritage areas or national parks. Carrying capacity is significant. It has been recognised by industry and to the industry selling into Australia as being a significant source of interest. Many European wholesalers that we engage now, for instance, are employing their own environmental managers that spend their time purely focusing on where they are sending people and the carrying capacity of those areas because they want to be seen as good custodians of those areas.
There is a lot of merit in looking at providing incentives and perhaps having a two-tiered approach to the use of World Heritage areas, particularly when the more sensitive areas may be areas for which certified operators may be granted special access or permit access. There may be other areas which are less sensitive and have open public access.
Senator SIEWERT—In some areas which are very popular and where there is a strong sense of local ownership, locals start resenting visitors going through. I understand—I do not know if it is still the case—that the Wet Tropics set aside an area that they did not previously include on maps; it was for locals to visit. It was a place where locals could go that tourists did not know about. Would you favour such an approach, or have you seen that done elsewhere? You manage it so that locals have a place where they go to and there are not many other tourists there, because locals do not see themselves as tourists in these areas.
Mr Gschwind—I do not think anybody in the industry would have an issue with that— bearing in mind that tourism operators also live in those areas. Generally they have families that they take to these areas. I do not think any tourism operator would have an issue, including in North Queensland, with that approach. In fact, it is something that we would support by saying, ‘This is a high visitation site which is very suitable for a commercial product; this one is not.’ Therefore, we may not promote it extensively, or we may not provide commercial permits for such areas. I do not think there is a problem with that, as long as it is done on the basis of some proper assessment.
Senator RONALDSON—In your submission you talked about threats to the objectives and management of national parks and other conservation reserves and protected areas. What are the key threats—and this is directed to both of you—to the objectives and management of our national parks? What are three or four initiatives that you think governments could take to address them?
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Mr Gschwind—The key threat that we mentioned is one of funding. Collectively as a community we may not allocate sufficient funds to the management of this asset. We know from any other asset resource that we may own collectively that it has to be maintained. I think the greatest threat is really the lack of funding. To the great credit of most Australian governments, we have seen a massive increase in the National Estate of national parks. Although I have not done a study on this, I think the funding would not have increased proportionately with the area. In any case, the requirement to look after that estate is much greater than the current funding allocation, I would say, and that is probably the greatest threat.
The other threats arise from both use and greater ongoing ecological processes, including climate change potentially and, in the case of the reef, water quality, land use and urbanisation. All of those threats we face regardless and they have to be addressed, in many cases, with appropriate funding, as the Commonwealth recognises, through research and also changed practices in management.
Senator RONALDSON—I take it from that that you have a view that the management levels at the moment are not commensurate with the requirements?
Mr Gschwind—Yes, I think that would be correct.
Senator RONALDSON—Can you provide some examples?
Mr Gschwind—The examples include the lack of appropriately resourced infrastructure. I assume you would have witnessed on Fraser Island the state of some of the tracks and roads and other visitor infrastructure that cannot keep up with demand and, in fact, undermines the integrity of the product as a result. It really goes to funding. It has nothing to do with a lack of knowledge; it is a lack of funding. These infrastructure deficits are evident in other areas as well, including the Wet Tropics and other World Heritage areas and national parks more generally. We have several trails in parks in the Wet Tropics—and it is not just because of the cyclone—that have been closed because safety cannot be assured anymore because crews cannot be sent in to either cut trees that have fallen over or remove branches that threaten to fall on visitors. They have simply been closed because it is much cheaper to close a track than to maintain it. That is a great threat to the park itself in terms of allowing the overgrowing of existing trails and tracks, costing much more if they are opened in future. It is also a threat to the community’s use. I do not just mean the commercial operators’ use but the community’s use.
Senator RONALDSON—There has been some discussion about the move away from permanent ranger presence. Someone alleged that there are now roving rangers as opposed to permanent rangers. From the perspective of the safety of those that your members are moving in and out, is there an issue with a perceived lack of ranger presence?
Mr Gschwind—Only a few days ago when I was in North Queensland we had a meeting not so much about national park funding but about other matters that had arisen as a result of the cyclone. One operator who happens to live and have his premises adjacent to a national park made the observation—he has been there for many years—that there was always a ranger stationed nearby and they had ongoing discussions and maintained the boundary of the national park appropriately. He said that he had not seen one for the last five years. He said, ‘As a result of the ranger no longer being there, I have no opportunity to engage.’ Consequently, there are
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 65 now feral pigs running rampant on his property and in the national park. He brought up all of this as a case in point about the problems he is facing, but it illustrates the answer to the questions that you pose, which is: yes, it does have an impact if ranger presence is reduced in some of those localised areas.
Mr Pahl—From the national perspective, the answer to that question is going to be influenced by the size and nature of the park, but in our view we would certainly not support the concept of removing rangers from national parks. I think it is absolutely essential to have a presence, for a wide range of reasons which are not only management issues but safety issues. It is vitally important that that presence is maintained in the larger, more complex parks.
Senator RONALDSON—That raises another question. Do you have some concerns—and I think we all support it—about the rapid increase in areas that have been given national park status? It seems to me that that is perhaps being done with an appropriate level of management planning and probably an appropriate level of resourcing. Is that your experience?
Mr Gschwind—The short answer would have to be yes.
Mr Pahl—Most definitely.
Senator RONALDSON—Is it so serious that you could get to the stage where you would insist on those processes being in place before there was a declaration?
Mr Gschwind—It is a bit of a dilemma for us and also for the community. On the one hand, we clearly want to see greater protection of the environment generally because, as we said at the beginning, this is one of the things about this country that we sell. So we are supportive, generally speaking, of increasing the protected area, but we certainly advocate—and have done so explicitly in some cases—a considered approach to this. The conversion of current tenures under state or federal—generally state—holdings into national parks is not without problems, for the reasons you say. In North Queensland we are in the process of converting many forest tenures to national parks—which, again, we generally support. But we can see massive problems in terms of reducing the opportunities to manage those places and to use them—and I mean ‘use’ in a sustainable way for visitation and for recreation. We think that should be considered generally, as you say, at least in the process of converting leases or tenures and whenever a national park is declared.
Senator RONALDSON—In the first instance in relation to visitation numbers and the pressures that they bring, what do you do after you have developed the infrastructure to a certain level? We had some discussion yesterday at Lake Mackenzie about whether you continue to build the infrastructure to maintain the visitor numbers and at what point are you simply compromising the integrity of the national park so much by putting in more infrastructure that you stop doing it.
Mr Gschwind—That is a question that we are trying to address through the process that we are going through at the moment with the state park management agency. As a matter of fact, next week we have another long meeting with them where we will assess the amenities settings or the settings generally—for example, is it a place that derives its beauty and attraction from its isolation and solitude or is it a place where you could quite readily have thousands of people
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 66 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 staring at a vista? We are trying to go through some kind of orderly process to make those assessments and then, on the basis of that, to assess how many people are appropriate. It may well be that in some sites like Hinchinbrook Island you can literally have only a handful of people without compromising the value of the site. In other cases it is substantially more. I think we have to be a lot more scientific, a lot more open and a lot more cooperative in how we do this. It is a very important process.
Senator RONALDSON—I assume that you would be supportive of a wider user pays principle for national parks, other than just for the commercial operators, who seem to be wearing the bulk of the cost?
Mr Gschwind—Yes, we would be, in an appropriate setting. We are not advocating that every time you step onto non-private land you have to whip out your wallet, but we are certainly very supportive of appropriate contributions from users particularly in those high use sites, those high maintenance sites, if you like. I think we should consider that principle, as is considered and implemented in many other places around the world and, for that matter, in Australia where such a regime is in place. I might add that very rarely, if ever, does it meet any resistance from visitors or users who quite happily, and increasingly so, make contributions if the money is going to appropriate uses, of course.
Mr Pahl—We agree with that view. I think there should be a more national, consistent approach to a user-pays entry system into national parks. I think it also opens the question, which I am sure you are examining closely, of commercial operations and commercial developments in national parks. We have seen some very successful examples of that to date, particularly in some parks in Western Australia. Our organisation certainly holds the view that that can be a very positive thing. We have the resources and the technologies now to be able to build complementary commercial operations within national parks that are going to be complementary to the overall management of those particular areas.
CHAIR—We are almost out of time but I would like to ask you about Indigenous involvement in management, including from an industry point of view. Certainly from my knowledge in Queensland and especially Northern Queensland it seems that, whilst there are some examples you could point to, there is a lot of potential that is not being met for economic opportunities for Indigenous people in the regions—and there are Indigenous people living in and alongside the Wet Tropics—or in the management itself. I appreciate that you cannot just say: ‘Here’s a tourism opportunity. Go for it, and make lots of money.’ What things, either from a community and industry point of view or from a government point of view, should we be doing or are we doing wrong that are preventing those things from happening?
Mr Gschwind—I agree with you, I think we have been spectacularly unsuccessful in achieving those types of outcomes and realising opportunities. We promote the natural assets and also in a sense very much promote the cultural Indigenous assets of this country to overseas visitors but, sadly, we very often fail to deliver. I think there are massive opportunities, particularly in natural settings and national park areas. The only way to go forward, I believe, is through small-scale projects and through education on both sides, holding each other’s hands, if you like, in going forward. We have seen the failure of many programs that were applied on a large scale or in a wholesale manner; they do not work. We have to work on the ground at the grassroots level. We have to work with individuals, literally in some cases, to build capacities on
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 67 both sides, in order for us to engage with the Indigenous communities in those areas and for the Indigenous communities to gain a realistic understanding of how the tourism industry works, which has not been the case in most situations. So: small steps, and many of them, and consistency in our approach.
CHAIR—Is the highlighting of an involvement of the traditional culture an aspect of the ecotourism model or accreditation?
Mr Pahl—Yes, it is. There is a specific module in our Eco Certification Program which deals with social sustainability and, more particularly, cultural respect and sensitivity, as we refer to it. It strongly encourages operators to embrace Indigenous histories and community involvement in their operations, whether they be directly operating in a sensitive area or outside a sensitive area. It is certainly a key component of our program.
CHAIR—Given that that is the case and that, as was just said, we have been spectacularly unsuccessful in a broader sense, what things do we need to do differently? Do we just need to give it a higher priority? In one sense I almost feel as though we are just using Indigenous culture as another marketing angle. Whilst the Indigenous people themselves are sitting alongside all these signs that talk about the Indigenous heritage, they are literally next door with nothing coming to them. It is good that the recognition is there, but what is the missing ingredient?
Mr Pahl—From our point of view there has been a tremendous amount of work done within our organisation in that area. We do have cooperation with Aboriginal Tourism Australia, ATA. We work very closely with their Respect Our Culture program, the ROC program, which we endorse and recommend, so that program is actually another element to our program. One of the greatest challenges on the ground that we have had is really maintaining that continuity of interest and support to the programs on the ground. Operationally, that is the biggest challenge— maintaining longevity of Indigenous involvement in either direct or indirect activities on the ground. As Daniel was saying, that points to a greater need for a closer continual partnership and for more ongoing education and effort to be put into that area.
Mr Gschwind—In terms of building capacity on the Indigenous side of things, I think it is very important to emphasise that what we have to strive for is not some separate Indigenous tourism industry, because it simply does not exist. We do not have visitors who come here from overseas to exclusively experience an Indigenous product. That is just not going to happen. What we have are visitors who come here for a raft of experiences, including Indigenous experiences, and to deliver that we need Indigenous people who are engaged in the tourism industry full stop, not in some little cottage industry next door, not in an appendage to the tourism industry, but in the tourism industry. We need to make sure that we have Indigenous people who are employed with our tour operators, with our accommodation providers, with the distribution chain and with our restaurant industry. We have to have Indigenous people who are in there as part of the bigger industry. That is building capacity and I think that will ultimately lead to better outcomes for the Indigenous community.
CHAIR—We are out of time. Thank you for your contribution. As you are probably aware, this inquiry is still in its early stages. We are not reporting until the end of the year, so we are quite happy to receive further submissions, information, updates or pretty much anything that
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 68 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 you would think we would benefit from having drawn to our attention. Thank you again for your time today.
Mr Pahl—Chair, would you like me to leave you with copies of our program?
CHAIR—Absolutely. Thank you.
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 69
[1.54 pm]
BUCKLEY, Professor Ralf Christopher, Professor of Ecotourism, Griffith University
CHAIR—I welcome Professor Buckley. The committee has received your submission, which we have numbered 11, and we have just received your supplementary submission. Would you like to make any amendments to either of those submissions?
Prof. Buckley—No. I have just tabled one additional reference document, which you have in your hands.
CHAIR—That is the document from Tourism and Transport Forum Australia, which has a section in it based on a report by you. Thank you for your submissions and for your attendance here today. Please note that these proceedings are covered by parliamentary privilege, which carries obligations regarding giving evidence that is not false or misleading. If you do wish to give evidence in private for some reason, you can indicate that and we will consider your request. You now have the opportunity to make a short opening statement, after which we will ask you some questions about that and your submissions.
Prof. Buckley—Thank you for inviting me. I should start by saying for the record that I am here as part of my professional community service obligations as a member of the academic staff of Griffith University and specifically as Director of the International Centre for Ecotourism Research. I am sure that during this inquiry you will hear many people telling you why parks should be used for many different things. Although my day-to-day work is about fine details of the kind of topics that were covered by the two most recent witnesses—who are of course long- term colleagues of mine—I would like to step back slightly and take a broader view of the issues as I did in my first submission, but I am very happy to answer more detailed questions subsequently.
Senator RONALDSON—So the tourism people are long-term colleagues?
Prof. Buckley—Yes, most certainly. Dan Gschwind has gone, so I can say this! I would say that, of all the members of the tourism industry, Dan has done more for conservation than anyone else in the country. He is one of the very few people who has a long-term tourism position but has consistently recognised the importance of conservation for its own sake as well as for the industry.
CHAIR—I guess, by extension, a vast number of other people possibly would not have that same—
Prof. Buckley—You could reasonably reach that conclusion, yes. Dan’s and my own views tend to be quite similar; we work on the same issues, but I represent, if you like, the most industry focused end of the conservation interests and Dan represents the most conservation focused end of commercial interests. Just because Dan and I happen to agree does not mean that the tourism industry and conservation groups would necessarily agree.
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Let me step back to the major points that I wanted to make. I am sure that most of them are familiar to you, but I would like to restate them. The first one is that the most valuable use of conservation reserves of national parks is for conservation. Irrespective of what they were gazetted for, their greatest contribution to the human economy is through providing clean air, clean water, biodiversity and all the usual things. Therefore, we cannot afford to lose them for the same reason that you cannot sell one of your most vital organs, because once it is gone you are not going to be there to enjoy anything else.
The second thing is that many parks were gazetted a long time ago. At that point, they were seen as the best bits—the bits that were there because we had to save things for people to look at. Now they are the only bits. It used to be that biodiversity was conserved in many different land tenures. There were huge areas of relatively undisturbed land that were outside protected areas, but most of those areas are gone and the remaining ones are going, and so parks are more and more critical for conserving biodiversity because there is less and less biodiversity outside parks. That means two things: firstly, that we should look at mechanisms to conserve biodiversity outside parks and, secondly, that we have to be particularly careful about threats to parks themselves.
The third thing is that parks are under increasing threat. Some of those threats are external and some are internal. The external ones are the same threats that threaten biodiversity in general— loss of habitat, which in the case of parks means encroachment around the boundaries, fires crossing into parks from other areas, pollution of water upstream of park boundaries, pollution of marine parks outside the marine park boundaries and so on. The second external threat is invasive species, which is weeds, diseases and feral animals, of course. The third one is climate change. That has not had a significant effect yet on protected areas in Australia or anywhere else. When it does, it will be through subtle mechanisms that will be hard to recognise at first. Research on those things is really only beginning. It is not at all well understood.
The internal threats are from visitors. One of the standard lines in park management is the four Fs. They are like the three Rs of local government which are roads, rates and rubbish. The four Fs of parks are fences, fires, ferals and tourists. Since this is going into Hansard, I will not be more explicit!
The fifth point is that conservation costs money. Managing land for conservation is not cheap. Because of all those threats which have to be managed, it is not enough just to declare land as a park and walk away. Visitor management also costs money. Those two amounts of money come out of a single bucket. So the more visitors you have, the more demanding the visitors are, the more legal obligations you have towards those visitors, and the more expensive it is to build things for those visitors, the less money you have for conservation management. That is precisely the situation that all of our parks agencies have been in for a couple of decades. As Dan said, they are endlessly feeling the pinch of insufficient funding.
As organisations, they are in a situation of having very valuable assets—10 per cent of the country—but very low cash flow. Essentially, that makes them vulnerable to asset strippers. If you look at it in a business situation, you see that they are in a distressed state. So anybody that can give them cash in the short term can buy a large amount of equity dirt-cheap. Essentially, and I say this advisedly, this is what some components of the tourism industry are now trying to do, and have been trying to do for a while. This, to me, seems to be a critical issue because
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Australia does not have a distressed economy. We have a $15 billion surplus or whatever it is. The entire national parks budget for all the park services across the country is only a little over a billion dollars. We could so easily afford to look after our parks better. They are a hugely valuable asset, yet we do not do it. And many people have said that—not only the tourism industry. I am sure you will hear everybody saying that. But it is still true, no matter how many people say it.
The parks agencies are being told: ‘You have this valuable asset. Use it to raise money.’ So they have to look for people who will give them cash, because they need the cash flow for management; they cannot just abandon their management requirements. So anybody who is prepared to give them money in the short term can buy equity in the sense of rights to use the asset very cheaply. That is why there is such endless pressure from tourism developers—and we are not talking about members of the ecotourism association who want to take small numbers of people on tours around Hinchinbrook. We are talking about the hotel industry and the major tourism development industry, which want to have exclusive rights to build large-scale tourism infrastructure in parks or want to have rights to franchise the entry of individual people into parks and charge what they like—and many other schemes have been proposed.
Of course, this never comes across in such blunt terms. The rhetoric that is used is always ‘partnership’. ‘Partnership’ sounds good. In that document I have just tabled I listed six or seven different kinds of partnership. But you can summarise it by saying that, when large-scale property developers are talking about partnership with parks, what they mean is, ‘Give us some free land of high value with publicly funded infrastructure, a guaranteed publicly funded marketing scheme, a guaranteed stream of clients, and let us build a hotel there where we can charge what we like and keep the money.’ When the conservation sector is talking about a partnership, what they mean is: ‘There is lots of land outside parks that is of high conservation value and could easily be used for tourism, so why don’t we have schemes to encourage conservation on private land and why don’t we encourage tourism in other areas outside national parks, such as forests, private land et cetera?’
I guess that is my end point: I agree very strongly with Dan that the way to conserve the assets that we have in our protected areas is by increasing public funding. It is not by accepting private investment under terms which are disadvantageous for the parks agencies.
CHAIR—I want to go back to one of your very early statements. You said words to the effect that, ‘Irrespective of what parks are initially gazetted for, their primary value now is conservation.’ One question that has come up is whether the label ‘national park’, and all the other different labels for different types of protected areas, gives a correct picture. The core purpose of a protected area is meant to be biodiversity conservation and all the other things that circle around that. It seems to me that some of the areas that are national parks are not of high biodiversity; they are created for recreation or for other things. Do we need to re-examine some protected areas that are not necessarily of high biodiversity value and recategorise them as recreational parks? I am talking about places with nice lookouts and things like that but which do not necessarily have a great conservation benefit. Do we need to separate those areas from national parks through some sort of tier mechanism in relation to value in conservation terms?
Prof. Buckley—We do have that. I think the answer is that we do not need to devote a lot of effort to that kind of approach. Firstly, we already have a hierarchy: World Heritage, national
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 72 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 parks and conservation reserves of various categories. Secondly, usually recreation value and conservation value are combined in the same place, so you cannot easily separate them. I guess the point I was trying to make is that, yes, it is true that some of our places that are named national parks were established clearly and legally to provide recreational benefits and amenity benefits as well as conservation benefits, and obviously that affects how they are managed. But, irrespective of that, those places still do have high conservation values. The point I was trying to make is that those conservation values are worth more economically, they are worth more to the human economy, than the recreation values. I always like to say that if you list the economic values of protected areas in sequence—the environmental values, the ecosystem services, the bioresources and all the rest of it that people talk about these days—it is biodiversity first. It is individual recreation second—that is, the value to our society of individuals having a place to go outside of urban areas, where they can experience the outdoors. The tourism industry is third in line because its use is very small compared with the use of national parks by individuals.
CHAIR—Obviously it is not unrealistic or unreasonable for us to continue to manage visitors to these areas, and I presume you are not suggesting that we should stop having visitors to most of these places. Therefore, should we have a different funding structure so that there are clearly delineated funding streams for visitor management and conservation? Can they be that easily separated?
Prof. Buckley—That would be a good idea, but the funding systems are far more complex than that. As we know, most of the protected areas are managed by state government agencies. Funding for state government agencies comes only partially through the tax system via the Commonwealth and partially through other areas. Every state has its own political priorities and pressures. Even where parks agencies, as either individual parks or the agency as a whole, are encouraged to raise additional revenue streams—for example, through visitor charges, but also in many other ways—they may or may not be allowed to keep that money. They may be required to give it to the central revenue of the state concerned, they may be allowed to keep it centrally within that agency or they may be allowed to keep it in an individual park. Each state is different. I wrote a report a few years ago on the fine detail of that, which I could provide you a copy of if it would be useful. There is a summary of it in one of the papers I gave you in my first submission.
CHAIR—You are currently the chair of the International Centre for Ecotourism Research. Can you outline your professional history in research and expertise in this area?
Prof. Buckley—Me as an individual, or the centre?
CHAIR—Perhaps both if that would not take too long.
Prof. Buckley—I am originally a biologist. I worked for many years in the mining industry and then in international trade, and since 1987 I have worked in the tourism industry. My research interests, which are broadly those of the centre as a whole, are in three main areas. Firstly, we try to follow the trends of what is happening and what is new in the outdoor tourism industry as a whole. Secondly, we do science. We measure impacts and we try to assess threats. Thirdly, we do economics and policy and try to determine ways in which tourism can be used as a tool for conservation.
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If I were to use one example of the current trends, one of the things not mentioned during the last discussion is that many national parks now suffer major problems from groups of people on pyramided SMS messages. For example, at five minutes notice 500 people might arrive with trail bikes and decide to ride down a walking track in the middle of the night. That is not easy to manage, but it is starting to happen.
Senator MOORE—They would be the ones that are easily accessible though, wouldn’t they? They could hardly arrive like that on Fraser Island.
Prof. Buckley—Yes, it would be more difficult on Fraser Island. I think people there would notice.
Senator MOORE—You are talking about Mt Coot-tha, Noosa and places like that, aren’t you?
Prof. Buckley—Yes. Anywhere that you can drive up to by road and from the road go onto a track is potentially at risk.
Senator MOORE—And what you described actually happened?
Prof. Buckley—Apparently it has, yes.
Senator RONALDSON—When you say you operate in the tourism industry, have you yourself been a tourist operator? Do you mean that academically you operated in the tourism industry?
Prof. Buckley—I used to work as a tour guide, but I have been working as an academic in the tourism industry. I would not consider myself competent in the larger scale end of the tourism industry, the Gold Coast City development type of thing, but I have certainly worked in the smaller scale end of the business, in the ecotourism and adventure tourism end of the game.
Senator RONALDSON—Turning to the commercial developments that your refer to and that you appear to be philosophically opposed to, what are the clearly identified risks of a well- managed commercial operation within a national park?
Prof. Buckley—There are three, I suppose. I should say, and I will come back to this in a moment, that in the report I did for TTF, which I have just tabled, we did identify three sets of circumstances under which such developments could be encouraged. I will come back to them in a moment. Broadly speaking the risks are: loss of land area—that is, if you have an area of forest and you cut it down to put a hotel there, there is that much less forest; impacts—that is, there are primary impacts due to noise, light, sewage, water pollution and those sorts of things, and there are secondary impacts due to more people, more opportunities for weeds, feral animals, invasives and those sorts of things. And I have forgotten the third one that I was going to say. I am sorry—I will send a letter with that information in it.
In that report we identified three major opportunities where it was to the advantage of both commercial operators and parks agencies to see privately funded infrastructure development in parks. The first is where the parks already have buildings, commonly heritage buildings, that
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 74 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 they are responsible for managing. Managing buildings is expensive and, if they do not have the money for it, they are generally very happy to lease those buildings or to form some sort of commercial partnership under which those buildings can be reused as tourism accommodation, as an attraction or whatever. Basically, from the point of view of the parks, that is a cost saved. They do not have to manage those buildings. From the tourism perspective, it is an asset available to them cheaply.
The second is where there are large and relatively inaccessible national parks, such as some of those in the Top End, where it is not realistic for all tourist accommodation to be outside the park, because the parks are too big. So there has to be some tourist accommodation inside the park. Very often there are iconic sites where people tend to gather, and very often the parks agencies themselves would like to have visitors cluster at those points so they know where they are and what they are doing.
Senator RONALDSON—Are you suggesting that they do not in other national parks? I think the rangers would certainly disagree with you. In fact when you look at what is happening on Fraser Island, you see that they are quite deliberately narrowing those areas where people, overnight visitors particularly, are able to go.
Prof. Buckley—Let us come back to that in a moment, because I am not sure that that is generally true. The second one would be the category where parks agencies were happy to have commercially managed tourist accommodation and infrastructure in particular areas, essentially as a visitor management tool. The third category is where there is a type of specialist infrastructure which a parks agency is not able to fund and without which visitors cannot visit a particular place or see a particular aspect of the park. These include, for example, pontoons for the high-speed catamarans on the Great Barrier Reef, some of the treetop walks in various places and things like that, and infrared cameras to see into bat caves—those kinds of things. I think that there are circumstances under which privately funded tourist infrastructure in parks is designed by the parks agency as well as the industry, but those are relatively restricted circumstances and, historically, many of the developments internationally—many of the major tourist infrastructure developments in parks—have not been in those categories.
Coming back to your second question a moment ago about whether parks agencies know where everyone is and whether they always concentrate them in particular areas, I would say that, in general, the answer is no—that, in most cases parks agencies do not have anywhere near the number of people to know where everyone is.
Senator RONALDSON—I was referring to overnight stays.
Prof. Buckley—More and more parks have systems where you have to have some kind of permit to camp overnight and you have to sign in and out of track heads and things like that. But not everyone does that—as we find out when people have to be rescued. Those systems are quite recent in many places. If you look historically at how many people visited Queensland national parks, you cannot find out because there are no records at all of how many people have been into the parks. In other states that is different; there are such records. On the question of whether or not parks agencies like to concentrate visitors in particular areas for overnight camping, they do when the number of campers gets beyond a threshold at which camping creates recognisable impacts. On Fraser Island, for example, there are so many people who want to camp in particular
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 75 areas, especially at Lake Mackenzie, that the parks agencies have no option but to push them into heavily managed camping grounds; otherwise they would be all round the lake and no-one could get down to the lake and there would be a much higher impact on it. But that is not necessarily true everywhere.
CHAIR—Should we be encouraging that to become more true everywhere—at least in most places where it is appropriate to get more narrowing in?
Prof. Buckley—I think the key phrase is ‘places where it is appropriate’. I think it is a horses for courses issue. It depends on the size of the park, access, seasonality, what kinds of people are going there, how they get there, whether or not they have any camping skills and how many of them there are. Parks agencies are generally pretty good at managing those things. As Dan was saying, technical knowledge of how to manage natural resources—weeds and so on—and how to manage visitors is very good. There is over 100 years of experience all round the world; people have tried many different things. The problem is that almost any kind of management tool involves money, and money is what they are short of.
Senator RONALDSON—Is it your view that the commercial operators are paying their way at the moment?
Prof. Buckley—That is a very broad question. The only answer is: sometimes yes; sometimes no. There are examples. In North America, because of lease arrangements made 100 years ago, there are hotels in national parks where the net return to the parks agency is less than one per cent of the profit made by the commercial operator. That is not a model that we would want to emulate. There are certainly cases in Australia where commercial operators pay a range of fees— usually the same as the charges paid by individual entrants. Again, I have all the details of that state by state.
Senator RONALDSON—That is not the same on Fraser Island, of course, where they pay substantially.
Prof. Buckley—Queensland is different from the other states—and the Northern Territory, I think, is still the same—because of an election promise by a current state government that private individuals would not have to pay to enter national parks, only to camp there. In most states, commercial operators pay the same per capita fee as private visitors. In fact, in most states, they receive a discount. If it is $2 per head for the average Joe, it might be $1.50 if you go in a coach. Commercial operators have to pay licence fees but those are essentially administrative fees and are quite small.
One of the claims that have been made extensively by the tourism industry is that commercial operators should be treated identically to private visitors to parks and, in particular, if commercial operators should have to pay, so should private visitors. But there is no real justification for this, because commercial operators are there as a business. They are there to use a publicly owned asset to make private money, whereas private individuals going into a park are there as taxpayers. They are there as people who have contributed through the tax system to a public asset and they are using it, just like a road. Although there are many different models for charging both private individuals and commercial operators—and I think it is quite reasonable
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 76 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 that both of them should pay, as they do in most places—to argue that there is no legal difference between the two is simply factually incorrect.
Senator SIEWERT—My question refers to the series of letters that you have been writing to the federal government about World Heritage funding. It has been brought up a number of times that World Heritage funding has decreased, and it is being delivered now as part of the overall NRM-NHT process to regional groups. In your opinion, what has regional groups’ approach been to looking after World Heritage areas in terms of making allocations of their funds? Getting away from the issue of the fact that we know World Heritage funds have been reduced, what I am looking at is that in a number of states—and I do not know whether it is the same in Queensland—regional NRM groups are being expected to allocate money to take care of World Heritage issues. What has been your experience of how regional groups deal with that?
Prof. Buckley—I only deal directly with a small number of regional groups, so I cannot comment nationally. I have some additional experience through my role as a member of the Biological Diversity Advisory Committee. Am I permitted to report on experience from that committee in the current circumstances, when I am appearing as—
CHAIR—As long as it is within the terms of reference, it is valid from our end.
Prof. Buckley—Broadly, our impression from that committee—and we had a number of NRM bodies present to us—is that they do not see World Heritage as their job. That is a Commonwealth job, and they were very surprised to find that they, at a regional level—two steps down, as they perceive it, from the Commonwealth—were expected to contribute funding to World Heritage. I became aware of this because of my membership on two World Heritage advisory committees, where the chairs of those committees wrote to the Commonwealth government asking how World Heritage Commonwealth responsibilities for funding towards World Heritage should properly be met.
There has, I understand, been some change in the allocation of Commonwealth funding to World Heritage within NHT. I am not familiar with the details—although we have in fact tried to find those details, but we have found it somewhat difficult. There is also, as you would be aware, some ongoing political discussion between the Commonwealth and state governments as to exactly how responsibilities for managing World Heritage should be divided between the two. I understand the argument has been made by the Commonwealth that the Commonwealth should only be responsible for marginal management costs above and beyond those that would be incurred in managing a national park. The trouble is that that is not very well defined.
We did some work a few years ago where we found that, if you compare World Heritage areas and similar national parks which are not listed as World Heritage, the World Heritage areas tend to get about 10 times as many visitors. Does that mean that nine-tenths of the visitor costs are a Commonwealth responsibility because of World Heritage? Or did it cost the same to manage 10 people as it does one, so none of it is the Commonwealth’s responsibility? What I am saying is that it is not immediately clear exactly how that break-up should be made.
I am a member of a steering committee for an NRM project in the Northern Rivers Region in New South Wales. It is Commonwealth funded through NHT2. In that situation for the state agency, which is New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service, to carry out relatively
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 77 routine projects in the management of the Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves (Australia) World Heritage area, they are applying to the NRM for money project by project to do what would normally be their routine work, because they are so short of funding.
Senator SIEWERT—That leads me to my next question, which is different but relates to New South Wales. I have heard, and I am trying to ascertain whether it is true—I am sure the committee will ask when they go to New South Wales—that New South Wales is going to say to all the parks that they have to pay for themselves. Have you heard that and what would be the consequences of that if that were in fact true?
Prof. Buckley—Let me make sure I understand correctly. You think that within New South Wales the New South Wales state government will instruct its parks agency that individual parks have to—
Senator SIEWERT—Pay for themselves.
Prof. Buckley—be independently self-supported?
Senator SIEWERT—Yes.
Prof. Buckley—So not the parks agency as a whole but individual parks?
Senator SIEWERT—That is the way it has been reported today. We will check on that.
Senator SIEWERT—If that were a model, what would be your comment on such a model?
Prof. Buckley—Firstly, I would be very surprised if that were the case. But let us suppose hypothetically that it were. It is worth noting that New South Wales as a state has tended to devolve management to individual parks and regional groupings of parks much more than other states. Most states keep their park management quite centralised. Historically, New South Wales has tended to decentralise more than other states, so that might be part of what you are hearing. However in all states where funds are raised through whatever mechanism, particularly visitor entry fees and so on, even if part of the funds are retained by the individual parks all states have at least some mechanism to reallocate some part of those funds centrally. In other words, you can raise money at one park and spend it at another. The reason for that is that some parks have large numbers of visitors and relatively low conservation value and some parks have very high conservation value but low numbers of visitors. So if you are an agency as a whole, just like if you are business and have a whole bunch of subsidiaries and product lines and God knows what else, you look at your overall revenue stream and your overall cost stream and you reallocate money internally—like universities do or the Commonwealth government does, for that matter. I would think that the net outcome for biodiversity conservation would be extremely negative if such a model were adopted. That is why I think it is very unlikely that it would be the case.
Senator SIEWERT—I am not saying this is true or false; I do not know—it is just one of the rumours we have heard around the traps—but what would be the case if the agency had been told that they needed to operate on a cost-neutral basis?
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Prof. Buckley—I would refer back to a case in South Australia, in 1992 I think. Essentially the South Australian park service was told to do exactly that. The director-general was told, ‘Go and make money.’ He was in an extremely difficult position, so he gave permission for a resort and golf course to be built inside one of his national parks. He had no choice. He was in exactly the situation that I have set out. He had assets but no cash flow. He was forced into the situation of a distressed business, seeking any kind of partnership. The result was that there was such public outcry that in fact he did get some more government money. But it was not a choice that he made willingly; he did not have any choice. That is exactly the danger that the entire park system nationally is faced with at the moment.
There are innumerable international examples. We do not have to learn only from within our own country. If parks agencies are forced into the position of having to cover their own operating budgets, they can only do so essentially by selling off assets—not necessarily bits of land, although that could be a part of it, but rights to use bits of land in particular way. Because of the circumstances under which those sales are made, they are made very cheaply, so the taxpayers of the country lose out.
CHAIR—Thanks for your contribution. I think you mentioned something in amongst all that about how you had data on charges around the country of—
Mr Buckley—Yes. I have a report done a few years ago. I will forward a copy to the secretariat.
CHAIR—Thank you. The inquiry is going for some time yet, so if there is further information that you think we would benefit from seeing or follow-up material that you want to provide we would be happy to receive it.
Mr Buckley—May I say also that if in the course of your inquiries you find that there are questions that you might want to refer back to a panel of people who have presented evidence, I am very happy to do that.
CHAIR—Thank you very much.
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[2.31 pm]
PETRIE, Mr Malcolm, Natural Resource Management Project Coordinator, Local Government Association of Queensland
CHAIR—I welcome the next witness, Mr Malcolm Petrie, Natural Resource Management Project Coordinator from the Local Government Association of Queensland. Thank you very much for your time today. Firstly, we have a submission from the LGAQ, which we have numbered 163. Do you need to make any amendments or alterations to that submission?
Mr Petrie—Not at this stage.
CHAIR—For the record, the proceedings of the committee are covered by parliamentary privilege, which has requirements in regard to not giving false or misleading evidence. If for some reason you wish to give evidence in camera or do not wish to answer a specific question put to you then you can indicate those things and the committee will consider the matter. I invite you to make a short opening statement.
Mr Petrie—Thank you very much. Firstly, I would like to thank you for the opportunity for the association to make this submission. For the benefit of those who are unaware of what the association is, I would like to quickly outline our organisation. Essentially, the LGAQ is the peak body for all Queensland local governments. There are 125 in Queensland and it is voluntary membership. We also have 15 Aboriginal community governments and 17 islander community councils, of which 14 are voluntary members of the association.
I would also like to mention the fact that we enjoy a strong relationship with both the state and the Australian governments, and we have a number of MOUs and protocols that we currently operate with both levels of government. I would like to acknowledge that the association welcomes the Australian government’s interest in this issue. As you would be aware from our initial submission, the LGAQ undertook a national parks inquiry in 2000 as a result of resolutions by our members in the 1998 and 1999 annual conferences. In response to those resolutions we undertook an inquiry.
Of that inquiry, we had 32 councils make submissions in relation to issues that they found with the operation of the national park system in Queensland. As part of the process for this Senate inquiry, the association, in a fairly short time frame, attempted to contact all 32 councils to ascertain whether they felt there has been a significant change over the last six years from the findings of that initial inquiry. We contacted all 32 that made submissions in the initial inquiry; however, due to the time constraints, only 11 were able to respond to our inquiry. We found that 10 of the 11 indicated that they had noted no noticeable improvement in the management or administration of the Queensland park system. I would like to take the opportunity if I may to outline some of the feedback in relation to some of the queries that we made of those councils.
An example in relation to inadequate staffing that I would like to note is in feedback from the Mayor of Barcoo Shire Council, which is in the south-west of Queensland. He said: ‘There were a significant number of positions either vacant or being filled by a member of staff acting in the
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 80 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 role within both the Cooper and Diamantina catchments as well as senior management. It has been reported that temporary staff are not being issued with adequate personal protective equipment. For example, it is mandatory for all staff to be issued with a ration pack, an EPIRB and measured-to-fit items to suit, fire uniform, hat, boots and overalls et cetera. But temporary staff are not receiving them due to being employed on a temporary basis.’
A further comment regarding insufficient resourcing to adequately maintain park assets, again from the Mayor of Barcoo, was: ‘I am troubled when I hear the comments from travelling public regarding their disappointment in both the lack of the presence of rangers on national parks and the poor condition of facilities like homesteads, tracks and signage. I have witnessed first hand the disgraceful state of the heritage listed homestead and gardens on Welford National Park. This was once a beautiful and well recognised local icon.’
A comment from Banana Shire Council under the similar criterion of insufficient resourcing was: ‘Queensland Parks and Wildlife appear to be under financed to undertake adequate management and control work on national park land.’ In brackets it says, ‘Comments were made at a CPMG’—which I assume is the Central Highlands Pest Management Group meeting—‘in 2005 by a Queensland parks and wildlife officer that they were unable to do anything as they were rationing fuel between vehicles.’
The next question, I suppose, in the sense of the terms of reference that we requested councils to respond to was the lack of adequate consultation with affected local governments when conducting statements of significance and land use studies, excising areas of national park and conducting arbitrary resumptions and road closures. This was apparently initially quite a significant issue in our inquiry in 2000. A comment from the CEO of Cook Shire was: ‘Generally the state does not consult with local government. It meets its legal obligations. There is no consultation as to, “Do we really need this national park stage of consultation?”’
The LGAQ have been quite heavily involved in the regional forestry agreement. As you may be aware, that agreement is a rationalisation of the state forests for harvesting purposes. As a consequence, a number of particular areas will be considered for conversion to conservation areas. As part of the process the association has been working very closely to endeavour to be informed through that process, because it is limited to the state government through state development, with Timber Queensland and the rainforests association. Essentially councils have endeavoured to be kept informed on developments of those negotiations.
Interestingly, today’s Courier-Mail reported that the state government has announced initiatives to convert a further five million hectares of state forests into national and conservation parks. Whilst the association support initiatives to ensure sustainable logging practices, we are concerned that additions to the conservation estate will further strain an already under-resourced agency to adequately manage the conservation values they are chartered to protect.
In the context of adequate resourcing to contain or eradicate pest plants and animals within parks, Maroochy Shire Council commented: ‘There is an inadequate level of resourcing for pest management in protected areas. Under the Land Protection (Pest and Stock Route Management) Act 2002, national parks are recognised as environmentally significant areas that are required to keep free of class 1, 2 and 3 weeds. It is apparent that in many cases the inadequate level of funding is leading to a lack of eradication and management of pest plant and animal disturbances
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 81 in national parks. There is a significant problem for council as councils adjoining conservation land are often impacted by pest invasions. This issue generated significant discussion during the public consultation conducted in late 2005 in the Maroochy pest management plan process.’
I have a number of other comments from councils but I think, given the time constraints, I will allow the opportunity for questions. I was drafting this statement up until about an hour or so ago in response to emails received from councils. I have not had the opportunity to get senior management approval but I will seek that and, if it is given, I will provide this as an additional submission to the inquiry.
CHAIR—Thank you. That would be appreciated. I should emphasise that the inquiry is at this stage not due to report until the end of November, so we will be going for a while. Queensland is the first area we have held public hearings in. Yesterday, we visited Fraser Island. We are quite happy to receive both that and any further input you get along the way that you think may be useful for us. By way of a start, the report that you referred to from 2000 was a comprehensive document and had about 28 recommendations. What has happened with that? What sort of response has it got?
Mr Petrie—We have not done an update in the context of that report. Noting that this inquiry is a stimulus for the association to revisit that, essentially we have not found a great deal of change in the processes that the parks undertake.
CHAIR—Sorry to butt in there, but those examples that you were reading to us were contemporaneous feedback—
Mr Petrie—That is correct, so there is a fair indication little has changed.
CHAIR—What was the process after this was produced? Was it tabled or given to state government? Were they asked to respond in a formal sense?
Mr Petrie—My understanding is that that was the case. I was not working with the association at the time, so I do not have the finer details of the level of response that the department provided, but I could certainly investigate that further and provide that outcome to the inquiry.
CHAIR—Thank you. Any extra feedback there would be useful. You mentioned weeds and pests in some of that feedback. They are issues that come up quite regularly. Indeed, this Senate committee did a report on invasive species a few years back, so this may provide an opportunity for us to pursue some of those issues further. One group is saying that national parks are a breeding ground for weeds and ferals, and the parks are saying that surrounding people and visitors are bringing the weeds and ferals in. There is probably a bit of truth in both views.
From a Queensland perspective—and as a local I probably should know this, but I do not— what sort of legal powers do councils have with regard to preventing things like land owners in parts of a shire or city from having cats and dogs, for example, or requiring them to have them desexed? What about controlling what types of plants they are able to grow? Do you have those sorts of powers that let you say, ‘You’re not allowed to plant these kinds of plants in this part of the shire or throughout the shire’?
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Mr Petrie—That is an interesting question. Local governments have those powers under local laws. As you can appreciate, it is a fairly contentious issue across the whole spectrum. We have scenarios in a number of councils where they have a landscape unit which essentially advocates using visually appealing plants and a conservation section within the same council that advocates using native plants. It is an issue of the internal policy position of councils. I have been involved in the peripheral of this issue across a number of councils and it seems to be one that struggles to get a high priority. It is acknowledged that it is a significant issue in certain areas, but essentially it is mixed, and it may well be part of the problem that there is a lack of consistency across councils—different councils have different approaches.
In terms of desexing, that is a local law issue for councils. I believe that Toowoomba City Council investigated that as an option, particularly with cats. I cannot quote the details, but my understanding is that there was a fair bit of resistance from the community, which basically forced a backdown from the council.
CHAIR—I do not mean to pick on local government; I am equally critical of all levels of government in the community and industry in general. But I would suggest that, if councils want to raise concerns about weeds coming out of national parks, they should not be generators of weeds either and should not have sections advocating landscaping involving these sorts of things. It would give greater weight to their complaints.
Mr Petrie—I think that a lot of the major weed species that have been introduced were probably not as a consequence of local government involvement, initially. We in the association have recently completed a pest management economic impact statement for state, local government and regional NRM bodies. We undertook that assessment in 2002. Essentially, it was similar to the parks inquiry in that a number of councils had been raising the issue of inadequate resourcing by state government and, in particular, the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Water, who are responsible for a lot of the state land. That initial report indicated that the state government was committing around $10 million annually to managing weeds on state land, compared to local government, who were spending around $14 million. We only received the report yesterday. It is an update including regional bodies, because in 2002 they were not really operational. What it does indicate is that there has been no increase from the state government— or at least not from the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Water; they are still expending a similar level, $10 million. Given the increased costs of management, that is actually a decline in real terms. The report indicates that local governments are spending around $23 million or $24 million annually now, so there has been a demonstrated and significant increase in the imposts on local government in managing pests and weeds generally. Regional bodies are committing about $2 million.
In the context of local government legislative responsibilities, under the Land Protection (Pest and Stock Route Management) Act 2002 they are required to develop pest management plans which identify the critical pests within their shires which include—
Senator RONALDSON—Sorry to interrupt. When you say ‘regional bodies’, are you talking about regional catchment management authorities?
Mr Petrie—Yes, those funded under the NAP and the NHT.
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Senator RONALDSON—And they are putting about $2 million into weed control?
Mr Petrie—That is correct. So local government are chartered under that act to develop pest management plans and report against the actions that they are required to manage. So they are significant players in managing pests and weeds.
CHAIR—As I said, I was not trying to pick on local government; there seem to be complaints at all levels. I think we have AgForce up next, and a lot of pastoralists talk about weeds coming out of national parks while others talk about pastures being a source of exotic grasses et cetera and therefore being a problem. A lot of people at all levels are spending a lot of money and complaining a lot about managing weeds, but it does not seem like there are many people actually doing anything to stop the damn stuff getting out there. No-one is saying, ‘You can’t use this, you can’t bring it in, you can’t plant it, you can’t sell it.’
I appreciate—and this is where committees like this one might be able to help—that everyone wants to point at what others are not doing. To use the cat example, when it comes to something like requiring everyone to desex their cats you get massive community opposition and the council carries the can: everyone else is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps we could get more cooperation across all the different bodies, with them supporting each other a bit more on the need to implement some of these difficult and unpopular decisions, whether it is desexing cats, or nurseries not selling plants that have been identified as weeds or the Commonwealth not exporting them or whatever. There still does not seem to be that cooperation and support. Any time any one level wants to make a hard decision everyone is absent; and, any time there is a problem with the costs of dealing with it, it is always—
Mr Petrie—I think the costs are probably the major obstacle in dealing with those sorts of issues. As part of my role with the association, I am also a member of the State Land Pest Management Committee, which is a collective of the key agencies responsible for state land and dealing with pest management. I have been on that committee for approximately 2½ years, and there is a genuine commitment by the staff on that committee to addressing the issue, but it is apparent that that it is within the constraints of their resource capacity.
I often ask the question: ‘Are you actually doing anything in addition to your core business?’ The objective of this was to be more integrative and collaborative and to look at additional opportunities. I would have to say that I often struggle to see how they demonstrate they are doing anything above and beyond what they do as core business. Getting resources and getting the appreciation politically as to the priorities of pest management can often be challenging as well. It has often been said by certain members within the department that they encourage the association to lobby strongly, because they know that they lack the staff and resources to do the job properly.
Senator MOORE—Mr Petrie, I am interested in the consultation between your group and governments, but in particular the state government. I have not read your 2,000-page report, but I have read the preamble, which says that these issues were addressed as a result of interest raised by your members, that they determined that they wanted this research done because they thought it was such an important issue. In Queensland—and I am a Queensland senator—we have the situation where the minister is the minister for environment and local government, so there could be a natural nexus in the process there. You did the report in 2000, with numerous
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 84 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 recommendations specifically on this issue; you have now had that restimulated by this committee; and you are going to do a follow-up report which may or may not reflect what came out in 2000. What are you going to do when you actually finish this follow-up survey process if it comes out as negative, as your preliminary findings seem to indicate?
Mr Petrie—The process that we will most likely undertake is to take that to the minister directly. Our president, Councillor Paul Bell, has a good working relationship with the minister for local government, with parks and with the Environmental Protection Agency. I suggest that the process will be that he will meet with her to highlight those issues. I suppose there is a real sense within the agency, having been engaged in this area for quite some time, that this issue is endemic. I suppose it is the priority level at which it is seen politically that needs to be addressed. There is a whole plethora of issues that we are seeing to have addressed in the area of natural resource management, and this is but one of them. I think that would be the process that we would undertake.
Senator MOORE—It seems that the issue of water gets regular media interest and focus, and there is that nexus again between local government and natural resources in that area. But apparently the secondary level of general national park management, pest management—and Senator Bartlett consistently mentions cats—does not seem to have the same grab. Do you agree with that?
Mr Petrie—Yes. As I said, I think the issue is endemic; it has been around for a long time. There is the occasional injection of funding, and it is promoted quite heavily by the state government, but it is a bandaid issue in the context of the broader scale. As I mentioned, an additional five million hectares are coming online. Huge areas of Cape York are being captured under national parks, and I know from Cook Shire’s point of view—and I have been up there on two separate occasions and toured Cape York with them—that they see it as a significant issue. In particular, the capacity for pig management is horrendous up there, and they find that it is actually undermining the conservation value rather than protecting it. I suppose the other issue is that pest management for councils does not just stop with parks; it also involves state land, leasehold land et cetera. So you have park responsibilities, but you also have another lead agency in that area and we have to deal with two agencies on a common issue. It is quite challenging.
Senator MOORE—It is always interesting to me to hear the same issue spoken about by different people who attend the same meeting. In this morning’s evidence, the department listed the pig management issue in North Queensland as one of their major successes. It is always fascinating when you have people talking on exactly the same issue, and it just jumped up in your evidence. Is there a formal consultative process at any level between your organisation and parks and wildlife?
Mr Petrie—Yes, there is. I am not sure if it happens bimonthly, but there is a meeting of senior management of the association, the director-general and directors that raises issues as they come to hand.
Senator MOORE—So some of the recommendations or the supplementary recommendations of your research may actually go through that structure.
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Mr Petrie—Yes, I am sure it would.
Senator RONALDSON—Very quickly, we got some indication—I will not say where it was—that you were seen to be the poor cousins in relation to World Heritage areas, particularly in relation to service delivery and waste et cetera, and that you are not pulling your weight and parks are carrying all the weight. What is your view on that? Without—
Mr Petrie—Without what? Being brief?
Senator RONALDSON—giving away my sources, of course.
Mr Petrie—I suppose there was a level of concern about the transfer—and it relates to the previous question from the previous person here—of responsibility of funding to the regional bodies for World Heritage. I deal intimately with the regional bodies, from a local government point of view, and I would question the capacity of those regional bodies—not all, but some—to meet the needs of adequately delivering resources where they are needed for World Heritage. It is by far beyond the scope of the available resources. The Natural Heritage Trust funded regional bodies particularly have very limited resources. They have been very efficient in some cases in how they manage that, but I honestly cannot see how they could, in addition to meeting their community demands, actually meet World Heritage requirements.
It is a broad question and each area is quite different. This might not pertain particularly to World Heritage areas, but I know that one of the policies—and it was spoken about by one council—that parks have introduced is a ‘take out rubbish’ policy, which is fine. But the issue is that they take it out and dump it on the road. Council have attempted to negotiate with parks on one particular area, where they wanted to bring in wheelie bins to negate the increased responsibility of having to collect rubbish that is strewn across the roads and so forth. It was a very protracted process and there are some limitations. No disrespect to the female gender, but they indicated that they were unable to accommodate the wheelie bins, because they are too heavy for the staff, who were all female, to move when they are full. So they were unable to provide that service. Council was seeking to work in partnership to resolve a particular waste management issue. My understanding is that they have come to some negotiated outcome, but it is not quite as ideal as they had hoped.
I think that a number of councils are willing to explore partnerships, and there have been some successful examples of those. But I would be bemused to accept that we are the lesser cousin in the context of what our core responsibility is versus what the state and Commonwealth governments’ core responsibilities are. The management of World Heritage is not, as I understand it, a local government responsibility per se.
CHAIR—I have not been following this process much myself, I must admit, but I know there has been work happening—at federal level, I think. There might even have been something released quite recently about the cost shifting dilemma and local government being the sort of end—
Mr Petrie—I believe it is $500 million annually nationally—just off the top of my head.
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CHAIR—Only one-thirtieth of the overall federal surplus then. Again, I think there was something released in the last few days about this. Is that likely to address some things? Obviously it is way bigger than our terms of reference with regard to protected areas, whether it is national parks, World Heritage areas, conservation reserves or whatever, but it seems to me that this sort of area is one that is potentially at risk of cost shifting, when you have state agencies that are strapped and the different arguments that are always there about who should be funding what. What is your response to how that process of examining the cost-shifting problem is going at the moment?
Mr Petrie—I believe that the protocol that was recently signed by all states and territories and the Australian government is viewed as a positive mechanism. The protocol is essentially to look at processes for finer discussion before potential cost shifting occurs. I suppose I struggle with this concept that, when you look at a national park, the level of involvement or impact for councils is primarily what comes out of the park, whether it be waste, pests, weeds or animals. I think those are the types of issues that councils are primarily looking towards as the impacts. I cannot see how parks could cost-shift any more. It is more about how they adequately resource what they are responsible to do. That is where I would see the issue. I do not think the protocol would necessarily address some of the problems that we currently face.
CHAIR—With the continuing attempts to increase the land area covered under the National Reserve System and to expand protected areas in general—national parks and the like—is that a live issue for particular councils with regard to what it might mean for the rate base or ongoing viability?
Mr Petrie—Absolutely. The western hardwoods is the current area under review and, as I mentioned with the article, it relates to that particular area. A number of councils have raised concerns because, being in regional areas, they depend on every bit of industry that can operate. They are very concerned that it is going to impact on their economy and the social aspects and that, obviously in some instances—not so much with state forests—the rate base would be impacted as well. But it appears to me from my discussions with councils that their primary issue is sustaining their communities. They see this as a direct impact on that survival.
CHAIR—Do you mean socially sustaining or the economic viability—
Mr Petrie—It is all interlinked. If there were no family timber mills that relied on these particular state forests, that would, as you would appreciate, have a flow-on effect in terms of the economy. A lot of these regions are struggling already, so they see it as a major issue.
CHAIR—What about the flow-on effect the other way? We appreciate that every area is different, but obviously in some regions the national parks, and World Heritage areas in particular, are huge net positives for the region in terms of pulling people in—visitors and, certainly in some areas, residents. For example, Hervey Bay is one area that has moved ahead in enormous amounts in recent times because of whale watching. So have Fraser, the Great Sandy, the Far North, the Wet Tropics and so on, despite some of the land-holder disputes. That brings in a lot of wealth to the region, even if there are issues with the rate base. Has any study been done about the positive economic side of those things?
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Mr Petrie—I cannot reference any at the moment, but I am aware that there have been some. However, it certainly has not been reflected by any councils. I think there is probably a reduction in the level of visitation the further west you go, given its remoteness, harsher environment and a whole mix of things. As I understand it, a lot of people like to enjoy a range of activities. They are obviously less activities, from a coastal perspective, in the middle and western areas of Queensland. So it certainly has not been highlighted as an opportunity or potential, but it would also reflect my earlier comments about adequate staffing. There need to be staff out there to provide support and security for people to come and visit these remote areas. If they are not there that discourages people, certainly based on the comments I have had from Barcoo, from taking that venture. So it is a minor component in the consideration of their communities.
CHAIR—The issue of tourism has come up, and we have heard from the Tourism Industry Council about very strong linkages between protected areas and the tourism industry. Perhaps going on your mention of some of the western councils that are, in general, poorer, I know from some conversations with them that tourism is a growing opportunity for a lot of them. That may be impacted on by petrol prices if they keep going up. That is again a lot wider than just protected areas. There are lots of things that draw people out there. However, I am trying to get a sense of how much that is seen as a key aspect of the potential viability for a lot of those communities and councils in that area, because it does seem to me that tourism in all its aspects does provide a strong prospect for some communities—and perhaps the main prospect for the longer term viability of some of those places.
Mr Petrie—I agree. I think councils have been exploring that for quite some time and, whether they individually or collectively have a joint tourist arrangement where people can travel a particular way and see all the sites, they certainly already heavily promote the national parks as part of the tourist capacity within their regions. I think it is important, but it is not the entire answer. I suppose it might be alluding to how to sustain the parks themselves as well, because, as I pointed out, the councils are spending a significant amount of money on pest management. That is not necessarily streaming from parks alone, but there is probably a management implication. I know in Western Queensland that wild dogs or dingoes, depending on which perspective you want to come from, have had a fairly significant impact on the agricultural industry, and councils spend a lot of money on baiting programs. Some areas have supported those types of baiting programs. So I suppose it is difficult to appreciate the economic impacts, both positive and negative. But I think we need to go a fair way to address the economic decline in the regional areas.
CHAIR—Maybe we could get the roads sealed. That might be a good start. I had to put that in for the Mayor of Diamantina. He makes that point every time. Perhaps we could have a committee visit out to there as well. There is a nice national park out that way. Thank you for that. If you want to provide further information to the committee on any of the evidence or issues that were raised today or any other matters, we would be happy to receive it. Also, although we cannot provide the solutions to everything, if your council members have examples we can draw lessons from, both positive and negative, that would be of value to us.
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[3.08 pm]
ALLINGHAM, Mr Tony, Chair, Environment Portfolio, AgForce Queensland
DE HAYR, Mr Brett, Chief Executive Officer, AgForce Queensland
CHAIR—Welcome. We have a submission from you, which we have numbered 160. Do you wish to make any alterations or amendments to that submission?
Mr de Hayr—No.
CHAIR—For the record, the proceedings of the committee are covered by parliamentary privilege, which has obligations with regard to not giving false or misleading evidence. If for some reason you wish to give evidence in camera you can make that request and the committee will consider the matter. Do you have any comments to make on the capacity in which you appear?
Mr de Hayr—Mr Allingham is also a beef producer from Northern Queensland.
CHAIR—I invite you to make a short opening statement.
Mr de Hayr—As covered in our submission, AgForce is a lobby group that represents basically the broadacre industries in Queensland, which coincidentally happen to be the neighbours of most conservation or park areas in this state. The nub of many of the issues we have in relation to this area, as I gather is the case with many previous speakers, relates to funding. We are very supportive of conservation areas and of parks, but there is a great concern that the level of funding to allow those to be adequately managed—whether it is in relation to pests, weeds or, particularly, fire—is not currently provided. In recent times the EPA moved to a system of remote management here in Queensland, which was in our view done with little or no consultation with stakeholders such as us. That has exacerbated existing concerns. There not only was insufficient funding left for management of conditions as they stood but now there is not a custodian on site much of the time to gauge progress on those issues, particularly when it comes to fire. It is left for neighbouring properties to manage or alert parks to these issues in many cases.
Again, fire is a very serious issue in that respect. Because of timing and response times, the local land-holders are the ones who will ultimately have to deal with a lot of those issues. If a fire was on the periphery of the parks, it would be too late by the time parks got there to do something about it. Wild dogs, as previously mentioned, are extremely costly not only in relation to land-holders but in their impact on the environment and other wildlife. On the EPA’s consultation, there are varying views as to its thoroughness. In the survey of members conducted there were some people who felt there was little consultation. Other people acknowledged there was consultation but did not consider that much of the input was taken on board.
We in Queensland have a good record of declaring national parks, but conversely the record of increasing funding is not there. As previously indicated, we have Western Hardwoods—another
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 89 large area—coming on stream but at this stage there is no sight of funding to help manage the movement of those parks. More recently, there is what we see as a concerning trend with wild rivers. If it proceeds along the current path as a shifting to in essence declaring national park on leasehold land, requiring the land-holder to manage it, it will be shifting not only the responsibility but the funding outside of the state’s ambit. We still feel much more progress needs to be made there.
Many land-holders, particularly leaseholders, are required to have management plans, which we agree with, on state land. Conversely, many national parks do not have one to match. We feel that it would be a commonsense requirement for the state to institute management plans on its national parks and involve neighbouring land-holders. It is my understanding that Victoria has either proceeded to or is considering making payments to land-holders adjacent to conservation areas or national parks to help manage areas where the state does not have a presence. We consider that that option is worth progressing further, because it not only helps engage the local land-holders in the management of the issue but can achieve better environmental outcomes for both parties. We have a number of parks here in Queensland that do not have any significant interest from tourists and do not have an on-the-ground presence from parks. They have, in essence, been abandoned, in our view, to management. National parks are an enormous asset. As previously indicated, our problem rests with the resourcing of the parks and the failure to engage with neighbouring land-holders to try and achieve better outcomes. I would like to conclude my statement there. Thank you.
CHAIR—Mr Allingham, is there anything extra you want to say at this stage?
Mr Allingham—Thank you. I think Brett has covered it fairly well. As a land-holder, I would like to reiterate the fact that there are the reoccurring themes of weeds, feral animals and lack of resourcing. Then, as the previous speaker was saying, in some of the more remote areas conservation areas do have significant economic and social impact in small communities. I think that is something that really needs to be reiterated.
CHAIR—Thank you.
Senator MOORE—I have the same question about getting your message across, because every issue you have raised the department has raised in a slightly different context. There was the acknowledgment that they were issues. The same issues were raised, but the interpretation of what was happening was different. What is the formal relationship between AgForce and the department in terms of feedback and consultation?
Mr de Hayr—The engagement process with EPA is not as strong as with other departments. It is happening. In recent times there have been meetings but they are infrequent. I would not say it is in defence, but our level of issues currently tend to revolve around another department where there is a higher level of conflict or immediacy in relation to DNR.
Senator MOORE—Debate, perhaps.
Mr de Hayr—Yes. We are focused almost elsewhere. That is not to say that this is not an issue, but it is further down the items of priority at this stage. We would like to see a more rigorous approach on our behalf and EPA’s in approaching this.
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Senator MOORE—On the local management issues, certainly one of the things the department and the minister stressed was the need for community involvement and a good neighbour policy, which your submission mentions—the neighbouring relationship. Mr Allingham, you would be a neighbour in the sense of a park. So, at the local level, is there a regular process that you have in that community to look at what is happening with the local park in your part of the world?
Mr Allingham—I think that that is exactly the problem; it is the nub of the problem. Whilst I am not a direct neighbour of a park, we do have parks fairly close. You are completely consistent with what Brett said. Often there is little or no management of the park at all, so there is certainly no ongoing community engagement and consultation taking place. At best, it would be infrequent and, at worst, it just does not happen, because other departments have other priorities. If nobody is whingeing about a particular issue, I presume they think that there is not an issue. But, from a local point of view, it does not necessarily mean that there is not an ongoing issue; it is just not being heard at the right levels.
Mr de Hayr—The remote management policy has made that more difficult, because in a lot of cases you cannot find someone to talk to locally.
Senator MOORE—Right. There is no local chief ranger.
Mr de Hayr—No.
Mr Allingham—In a number of areas, certainly in our area, one of the parks does not actually have any public road into the park. The public does not go there and, equally, I do not image that a lot of rangers go there unless there is a particular issue.
CHAIR—Would you give us some examples.
Mr Allingham—That particular park is the major park in the Great Basalt Wall, west of Charters Towers. My understanding is that there is not a public road at this stage going into the park. It goes through private property.
CHAIR—I am not asking you to point fingers. It is just that if we want to follow up on issues that have been raised it helps to get the specifics.
Mr Allingham—Yes. I understand that there is a similar issue, and more so, up in the cape and the gulf.
Mr de Hayr—We stress that in those situations partnerships with the neighbouring farms to help manage those properties would be ideal, because there is not a lot of sense in flying in staff members to look after an area that is so remote, particularly if there are not public access issues to maintain.
Senator MOORE—And there is partnership between your organisation, your members, and other government departments for other things—that would not be an unusual model?
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Mr de Hayr—No, that certainly exists and we want to foster it more for on-farm activities, but there is no reason why that could not extend to neighbouring properties.
Senator RONALDSON—Has that offer been made and rejected or is that partnership still in its infancy?
Mr de Hayr—I would have to say that it is still in its infancy, because we are having enough trouble with the on-farm component, let alone the neighbouring side. But I could be wrong. Have you heard of a similar approach in Victoria with the partnering with parks there?
Senator RONALDSON—I meant: had there been an approach—
Senator MOORE—That is, our local Victorians.
Senator RONALDSON—Have you made approaches to partner parks particularly in relation to these issues.
Mr de Hayr—Particular proposals have been only recent in what we call a Blueprint for the bush, which is a partnership proposal with the state government.
Senator MOORE—That is very new, isn’t it—Blueprint for the bush?
Mr de Hayr—Yes. We are hoping to see some outcomes in the next few months.
CHAIR—Can you give us a copy of the Blueprint document? Is that publicly available?
Mr de Hayr—It is publicly available, yes.
Senator SIEWERT—You were saying that there are no actual plans for some of the parks. We were asking about that this morning. The department said that they have operational plans. Where they do not have management plans, sometimes they will have operational plans that cover things like weeds and ferals for the whole state—
Senator MOORE—And fire.
Senator SIEWERT—And fire. If there is no management plan for the park, they use that as the basis of their plans for the park. Are you aware of those plans and have you been involved in consultation over those plans?
Mr de Hayr—My response would be that the feedback we are having from our members is that they are unaware of them. When they are neighbouring a park, in most cases they are unaware that those plans exist.
Senator SIEWERT—But is your organisation aware of them?
Mr de Hayr—I would have to check on the details of those. I assume we are, but I could not answer that at this stage, sorry.
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Senator SIEWERT—This morning we have also heard that the government have significantly increased the number of rangers for the department, and I think there was recently announced a $70 million increase in operational funding. That is in their submission and we were talking about that yesterday Are you aware of that extra funding that has been given for management activities?
Mr de Hayr—We would view those line items slightly differently to the government when we take into account other aspects such as vegetation management officers, so there is a fair bit of double accounting going on in some of these areas. They are not actually being used to manage the park; they are conducting other items of government policy.
Senator SIEWERT—They were extremely clear this morning that there are, I think, 620 national park rangers that are specifically for national parks, and that is an increase of 100-odd. I cannot remember the figure exactly. They were very clear that they are for management of national parks. Are you saying they are not?
Mr de Hayr—That is not our understanding.
Senator SIEWERT—What is your understanding? I would like us to be able to clear this up with the state government if in fact they are saying one thing and you are saying another.
Mr de Hayr—I would have to go back and recheck the specific numbers that you are talking about. As of last budget it was our view that most of the numbers that were being claimed as park ranger increases were not conducting park ranger activities.
Senator SIEWERT—If you could go back and give us your understanding of that, that would be appreciated. What is your opinion of the additional $70 million? Again, in their submission, they are fairly clear that that $70 million is specifically for national park management activities—operational activities. I was in fact asking the department about that yesterday and they were very clear that that is to enable the rangers to actually do stuff on the ground.
Mr de Hayr—Did that include their wild rivers commitment or was that separate?
Senator SIEWERT—They did not mention that. Obviously we have been hearing from a lot of people that there are a lot of concerns around Australia about the inability of national parks to access operational management funds. You get rangers that cannot afford to put petrol in their cars, their work vehicles. We have been very—
Senator MOORE—Direct.
Senator SIEWERT—direct about trying to chase this. The state government are saying, ‘We have given an additional $70 million specifically for that.’ That is how I understand it anyway. Are you aware of that?
Mr de Hayr—No.
Senator SIEWERT—If in fact that is the case, would that go a long way to ameliorating your concerns about lack of access for operational activities?
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Mr de Hayr—It may do. All we can do is comment on what we are hearing from the current activities on the ground, and if that is correct we have not seen any impact from it yet.
Senator SIEWERT—My understanding is that it is new money that has been fairly recently allocated.
Senator MOORE—Does that come down to what you see as core business? You use the term ‘vegetation management officers’. We were talking about that yesterday as well—under what hat vegetation management, weed reduction, wild pigs and all those things come. The information we were getting back from the department was that rangers have a range of responsibilities and that a park ranger covers all kinds of tasks and duties.
Mr de Hayr—No, some of these are specifically outside of parks and activities on private land.
Senator RONALDSON—I take it you would be pleased to hear some information about this supposed $70 million?
Mr de Hayr—Yes. If there were details of an extra $70 million being spent and we could see where it was being spent, that would be very good news.
Senator SIEWERT—My other issue is fire. We hear a lot of about fire and, when we asked the department about it, they said that only seven per cent of the fires in national parks had escaped onto surrounding land in the last 12 months. Do you think that figure is accurate?
Mr de Hayr—If it is, it would generally be because the local land-holders have stopped it before it has got any further. With remote management, unless they travel around in Lear jets, I doubt it would be possible that that fire control was being conducted by government staff. It would be local fire brigades, land-holders and local government.
Senator SIEWERT—We did not think to question them as to who had stopped them. Maybe next time we see them we can ask them about who had stopped them.
CHAIR—One thing that is becoming more apparent, including from the previous witness, and which we should perhaps be more aware of is the distinction between the parks that a lot of your members are engaged with—remote ones with low tourist numbers, big areas and small ranger numbers—compared to the ones on the coast where you have high visitation rates and a lot of rangers who, according to them, spend most of their time managing visitor numbers and visitor behaviour, such as in Fraser Island, the Wet Tropics, Lamington National Park or wherever. There is a very big difference in terms of the issues or the way you engage with them; the issues might be universal—weeds and fire or whatever.
The point that was touched on earlier about more cooperation, even with very significant resource increases and more rangers, was that it may not be practical to have significant numbers of rangers stationed in the Simpson Desert National Park, which was the example used and which is in the Diamantina Shire and out that way. It has one road through it and, apart from driving up and down that one road all day, there is not a lot else you can do unless you get across it in a helicopter. They are getting contractors to do the pest management. Perhaps I should have
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 94 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 asked the LGA this question, but is that an area where there could be much more efficient use of what is always going to be fewer resources than what everybody would like, in engaging people locally—whether through the council or through land-holders—to do that sort of work on the land?
Mr Allingham—That would be a good outcome if we could achieve it. There are obviously going to be issues for people in a lot of the remote areas because of the resources boom. We are all very happy about that, to some extent, but it means a lot of people are fairly short of labour. Their capacity to manage their own places is limited. I am not using this as an excuse. I just think that we have to be realistic about that. A lot of remote properties are having difficulty getting staff and in keeping up their own pest management.
It would be a much better outcome if we could get local people managing parks. The question I think we also have to address is this: if you are going to declare as a national park an area nobody is going to visit, and put on the public payroll an area which was formerly an economically viable enterprise, should we be looking at some sort of hybrid arrangement where national parks or some other body says, ‘These are the environmental outcomes we want but we can still retain some sort of lease arrangement or something where there is some local management of that area funded by some economic activity’?
It may not be what they think is the ideal outcome, but you are dealing with altered landscapes. A lot of them do not return to what people thought they were like 200 years ago. You will have to retain some sort of management on them, particularly if you want specific environmental values. I think there is a real issue about trying to look at some hybrid system rather than just locking things up and putting it on the public responsibility to fund management issues. I think there are opportunities other than that.
Senator RONALDSON—There was some suggestion that you do not extend the estate until you have appropriate management plans in place, so you are not putting the cart before the horse, as may have happened in other areas.
Mr Allingham—Yes. It probably does not have to be quite that stringent. There may be some things that you do want to protect and that are desirable to protect and that local land-holders are not opposed—
Senator RONALDSON—More a management plan as opposed to a protection plan?
Mr Allingham—Yes, exactly, so that you still keep some sort of economic activity going as a basis for keeping people there rather than having to get rid of one lot and then importing another lot to basically do the same sort of management.
Mr de Hayr—One of the great tragedies is that we still have not developed a mechanism, whether it is state or federal. Minister McGauran alluded to it through a potential program, which we might have some time down the track—a public/private mechanism to allow land- holders to become engaged with this, because we can have both in some areas. With land- holders adjoining conservation areas, it would make more sense to extend the reach, if possible, to some of the needs of some of those conservation areas.
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Senator SIEWERT—I think we have been doing some of that in WA CALM, in rangeland areas. I am pretty certain that Kennedy Rangers in WA, the local pastoralists, have been doing management quite a bit up there. We might want to talk to them about it when we go there.
CHAIR—We will examine that when we go there.
Mr Allingham—There is actually quite an interesting example of that. There is the Town Common Environmental Park, which is run by the Townsville City Council. When I was at university in Townsville in the eighties there was a campaign to remove all the cattle there. A number of the local graziers had short-term leases to graze cattle on the Town Common because it was not being used for anything else. There was a campaign to remove them because a number of the sedges were being trampled. It is quite interesting. I was actually invited to sit on a committee, which is thankfully yet to convene. They are actually in the process of putting cattle back onto the Townsville Town Common to eat the para grass, which completely managed to choke out the sedges in the intervening 20 years. I think that is a good example of how some economic activity can actually have environmental outcomes and can pay for some environmental outcomes too.
CHAIR—I want to ask about Minister McGauran’s suggestions about some sort of financial assistance for land-holders in environmental management and whether you are aware of any more details on what that might involve. Our terms of reference are about protected areas—I suppose national parks and those sorts of conservation reserves. But the issue that is raised in a lot of submissions is the adjunct that can played by private land conservation covenants and those sorts of things—providing financial incentives through the tax system or whatever for private land-holders to put covenants on part of their land and saying, ‘We won’t clear that’ or ‘We’ll manage that in this way,’ and those sorts of things. Have you had much opportunity to be involved in exploring the development of those sorts of things? How do you think we are going and what should we do?
Mr de Hayr—It is something that we have been paying a fair bit of attention to recently, and again through the Blueprint for the bush, because we see room for both the public and the private mechanism, from federal and state perspectives. There are many state and federal programs running currently. They are quite fragmented and the uptake of those has been quite poor in many areas. In our view that is because they require long-term covenants on the one hand, with short-term assistance. It is not a very attractive proposal in a lot of cases.
In some areas we will require a consolidation and a refocusing of those programs to try and get people to engage, but there is a limit to what the public purse can bear. We have made little progress towards progressing whether it is environmental banking or carbon trading to try and facilitate a more widespread approach that can fund these things into the future. We see room for both of those because what we are currently doing is not working very well.
Senator RONALDSON—I am just looking—these figures seem to be all over the place in relation to these ranges. Page 16 of the resources has got 560. I thought there was some talk about 620 earlier.
Senator SIEWERT—Yes, there was this morning.
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Senator RONALDSON—But on page 16 they have got 560, but the words that were used before in relation to that $70 million were an additional investment for land management of $70 million over the next—
Mr de Hayr—Land management is very different to management of parks.
Senator RONALDSON—I was going to ask whether you would view that as likely to be delivered on the ground or whether it is going to be other—
Mr de Hayr—It is our view is that it is not confined to park managements; it is a lot broader environmental management issues which largely have a regulatory role.
Senator SIEWERT—Can we check that because I was specifically asking about that yesterday and was told that that is what it was for? If we could check that, that would be useful.
Senator RONALDSON—I think we should.
Mr de Hayr—That was our view from the last budget. The state government may have changed things internally since then, but if that is the case we do not know about it.
Senator RONALDSON—I have the number written down on a bit of paper somewhere—I am sure they said 620 this morning but that does not stack up with—2002, 470; 612 permanent full-time was the figure, but that does not accord with page 16 of the document. Anyway, that is for another time. I apologise, I had to make a couple of phone calls so if you have covered this, tell me and I will move onto something else. There is feedback from your members about the perceived lack of funding. Where are the bigger issues? Is it fire management? Is it feral? Is it weed? Is there anything that seems to be leading the charge in relation to the outcome of perceived lack of resourcing?
Mr Allingham—I think there are two big ones—you have listed them. Probably weeds is the major one because that is an extremely expensive issue. As a land-holder I shudder to think of the amount of money I have spent on trying to eradicate weeds. Then there are feral animals, which have a direct economic impact. It depends on which industry you are in as to what that impact might be: if you are in sheep, dingoes can have a very direct impact; if in cattle less so but they can degrade carcasses and also cause issues by chasing cattle and so on. Pigs, obviously, have a direct environmental impact. A mob of pigs can do a lot of damage in sensitive riparian zones, and we are spending a lot of money fencing riparian zones. Weeds spread where ground is disturbed. Pigs disturb ground. They carry it, and there is significant evidence to suggest that pigs carry some seeds on them when they move across lands and they do not have any respect for fences. They can just cut straight through, so I think those are across state issues. Fire can be a significant issue where the terrain makes it an issue. In some areas it probably is not, depending on the land, how easy it is to get at the fire and whether you can grade your boundary with the national park. Where you cannot and the terrain is rough then fire becomes a significant issue if it comes out of the national park, was deliberately lit or was an act of God.
Senator RONALDSON—While this is not directly related to your members’ representation it is, I suppose, associated with it. There has been considerable discussion about some user-pays charges for access into national parks. The overwhelming view was that if it is for consolidated
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 97 revenue then the answer is no but if it is going to be directly put back into the national park then maybe. What is the view of AgForce in relation to the principle of some user-pays charges to access national parks?
Mr de Hayr—It is not an issue we have directly considered but, having been at the pointy end of the implementation of many user-pays policies, we have not seen a great track record of that actually being returned to purpose. On principle, we would have difficulty seeing that working because we have not seen too many models where money collected for a purpose actually goes back to that.
Senator RONALDSON—So it is not the philosophical issue of the decision to charge, it is the realistic assessment of whether that money will flow back. If that aspect of it was rolled gold guaranteed would that make you more relaxed about it? Where have I heard that before?
Mr de Hayr—I am not sure we have a view at this time, do we?
Mr Allingham—I have had some involvement in Landcare and the NHT. The accusations of cost shifting between various levels of government and others have long been associated with this issue. I think you would have to be very suspicious, as Brett says. Sure, you might raise the money and then keep the money there, but money which would have flowed from consolidated revenue then will not come in.
Mr de Hayr—Especially many of the western and northern parks, because of the sheer isolation, do not attract—
Senator RONALDSON—I reckon you are running out of options. If there were no cost shifting and you knew the money was going back in there for direct on-the-ground work, could you convince your members and your associated farming groups that it would be an appropriate course of action?
Mr de Hayr—Because they would not be paying for it, I am not sure they would have a great problem with it!
Senator SIEWERT—They would have to pay when they go in!
Senator RONALDSON—I will look forward to your next national conference!
CHAIR—On the question of weeds, again, our terms of reference are obviously about protected areas, but this committee has done a previous inquiry into invasive species about three years back and I am always keen to try to ensure that the work that is done is followed up. It is obviously relevant to protected areas. As I was saying to the local government association representative, there is a cost for everybody, whether it is the land-holder, the parks or councils, in containing weeds and other invasive pests, but we still do not seem to have gone very far at all in stopping them from getting out there in the first place. In your wider work with parks, your engagement with natural resources or whatever—I presume you do not place the blame on parks for every weed you deal with, as having escaped from parks; there is a wider problem—is that something that you see as a priority in government, whatever level it is, to try to reduce weeds escaping in the first place whether it is through sale at nurseries or importation into the country?
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One of the witnesses in Canberra raised pasture grass type; a certain type of exotic pasture grass had got out and was zipping through wetlands or something. Are we making any progress in that area more broadly?
Mr de Hayr—Most of the progress at this stage seems to be focused through the national process. We do not have a great involvement in the state process given that, I suppose, they are all a bit fragmented. There seems more recently to be some greater cooperation, particularly with the nursery industry, on how to achieve that. I am not sure whether there has been a great reduction in the number of immediate problems but I think there is a better focus on how to fix it. With respect to the pasture issues, there have not been too many new pasture species developed in recent years. It seems to focus more on the nursery industry.
Senator MOORE—What weeds are we fighting?
Mr Allingham—Rubber vine is our number one. Parthenium is a recent but unfortunately rapidly growing problem. We have quite a lot of flooded areas and it moves rapidly across basalt soils. We have a number of local weeds, but those are the two significant ones, and they are significant right across the north.
Senator RONALDSON—I think what the chair was alluding to was that you probably suffer a greater impact from nursery escapees than anyone else. Look at the situation in Broome, in Victoria.
Mr de Hayr—Lantana.
Senator RONALDSON—All of those things. We have been talking amongst ourselves about whether there should be stronger enforcement regimes in relation to this. It is crazy that you have something listed as a noxious weed and you can still pull into a nursery on a Sunday morning, pick it up and put it in the back of the car. We have not made any decisions, but we have been talking about whether there might be a need for greater enforcement.
Mr de Hayr—I think that is something that would be broadly supported. We are dealing with enough pests as it is at the moment. I am not sure that anyone can contemplate another two or three turning up.
Senator RONALDSON—I am sure if they said that 10 years ago that would have been the comment made as well.
Mr Allingham—We are aware of the political implications. It is like not being able to have cats. People do not take kindly to not being able to buy lantana if they want it. But I tend to agree with you. Having personally paid for a lot of weed eradication and watched a lot of it then come back because neighbours have not necessarily done anything about it or whatever, prevention is a hell of a lot cheaper than curing it after it has got out.
Senator SIEWERT—I have a question following on from that. If I remember rightly, in Canberra we were talking about buffle grass and its implications in some circumstances, firstly as a weed in some environments and secondly with regard to fire management in the north. If I remember rightly, the point that was put was that it is making fires—because we have a big fire
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 99 problem in the north—more intense and that it has changed the way fire can be handled, that it has made them more intense and more frequent. Is that something that you deal with here?
Mr Allingham—I do not have a lot of buffle grass personally. It is probably more of an issue in Central Queensland where there are greater areas of it. I think the issue comes down to an overall view of how you are going to manage an environment. Buffle grass is a very strong grass and it does have the advantage of bulking up. I do not know if you go up north in September or October in a dry year you will find a lot of buffle grass standing. I do not know that it is going to be a huge fire issue on private properties. Quite often it is a lack of grass which is the issue, not an overabundance of grass. I think buffle grass is a highly desirable grass from a soil conservation point of view because it is perennial, responds quickly to rain, is productive and takes a lot of grazing. So there are biodiversity issues there. I think that ultimately we are going to have to make choices. From the point of view of holding soil together, buffle grass is a good choice in some areas.
Mr de Hayr—Buffle can be a contributing factor in badly managed private or public lands. Having been in Canberra at the time of the Canberra fires and without too much buffle grass west of there you can see a lot of severe fires where there is not any buffle grass.
Senator SIEWERT—I am not saying it is the sole thing responsible for fires. I think in Canberra it was buffle they were talking about, but there may have been other grasses involved as well. But in northern Australia it is having an impact on the way they manage fire. That is the point they were making.
Mr de Hayr—I think fire management is something that is done badly across the country, particularly in public parks where there has been a move away from it. I am not saying that buffle would not contribute to that in those circumstances but, in well-managed situations, it should not be an issue. In badly managed situations it could make a bad situation worse.
Senator MOORE—Are you saying that there has been a movement away from fire management in public parks in Queensland?
Mr de Hayr—As far as I know, I think that would probably be a national approach.
Senator MOORE—But the Queensland state’s position is that there has been a major move towards better fire management over the last two years. Of all the issues on which they gave evidence to us, their success in the development of effective fire management in parks services was one of their great achievements.
Mr de Hayr—On the short term, I could not comment. As I have said, I have taken a broader view.
Senator MOORE—That was in the last couple of years, but in terms of their overall management plan—I keep saying this because of there are differences on key issues between the various evidence being provided. We had significant evidence from the department about a range of things, but fire management was the one they felt most proud of and in which they felt they had made the most achievement recently.
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Senator SIEWERT—In fact they said they were burning half a million hectares a year through hazard reduction. They have increased their fire management so that they are back- burning and managing it.
Mr de Hayr—And that was separate to the state forests?
Senator MOORE—Yes.
Senator SIEWERT—Yes, this document says ‘of managed lands across the state’. That seems to me to be a significant increase and a significant improvement in the way that fire is used in managed lands.
Senator RONALDSON—Is there an indication of whether that was across the board or whether it was national parks specific?
Senator SIEWERT—The document says ‘managed lands’. I am presuming that, because it was Mr Feely who presented it, it is land under their control.
Senator MOORE—Absolutely. The reason I mentioned this, as I did with the previous witness when talking about pig management in North Queensland, is that specific issues, not just general statements, are being presented in diametrically different ways. Once again, in terms of this consultation and communication process, there is some concern.
Senator SIEWERT—I would like to return to the issue of encouraging farmer and pastoralist, or landowner and land management, involvement in parks and protected land management. I think you were articulating a position that some lands might be better if they were off-park but managed in sympathy with the protected areas. Is my understanding of your position correct?
Mr de Hayr—Yes.
Senator SIEWERT—I think that position has been advocated by the conservation movement as well, but in a system which does not take away from lands that should be in protected areas because of their high conservation value and in which a compromise is not made that they stay out. To achieve that you sit down and do it through a planned framework so that it is not done in an ad hoc way but in a manner where everybody is consulted and there is an agreement about what is in a conservation estate and what is off-park but managed. Is that the way in which you would see it being appropriately handled? Do you see it as a planned approach rather than an ad hoc approach?
Mr de Hayr—Yes, a planned approach—but I suppose we would use the term ‘planned partnership’, because we have seen too many ‘planned approaches’ which are very definitive and one way and which, as we have said, have led to a culture of conflict. As we see it, there really should not be conflict in many cases.
CHAIR—Other than that, you are completely at one with the conservation movement on that issue, is that right?
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Mr de Hayr—A case at hand would be the resumption of leases. We could move to a situation where some parts of a property could continue with commercial production but where it may pay to protect environmental requirements on other parts of the property, and there would be some offset that would recognise that. At this point in time the department can just sit quietly until a lease is due to expire, but the land-holder is none the wiser that it is not going to be renewed so it does build the fear that is out there. So some transparency and notice would, I suppose, provide benefits for both sides of the partnership.
Senator SIEWERT—In Queensland is there no requirement to warn a pastoralist that their lease is not going to be renewed?
Mr de Hayr—No, not currently.
Senator SIEWERT—In Western Australia it is a requirement—for example, two years ago they had to do it for 2015.
Mr de Hayr—No. In the lease renewal strategy that is underway at the moment, we are currently negotiating to have that put in there, because theoretically the department can sit quiet if it wishes to and acquire it at the end.
CHAIR—Ten years notice?
Senator SIEWERT—No, more than 10 years. It was in 2002, I think, that they had to notify them for 2015.
Mr de Hayr—We have had cases where people have heard a year out that their lease is not going to be renewed. They have not been told but they heard it on the grapevine. That leads to a fair bit of social concern.
Senator MOORE—And relationship conflict.
CHAIR—With 10 years notice, you would have forgotten by the time it comes round. I think we are out of time. Thank you very much for your input and contribution. As I said at the end of the previous witness’s contribution, we are not reporting until the end of November, so if there is any ongoing information or other issues that come up that it may be of value to bring to our attention, we are certainly quite happy to receive any further information that you might like to provide.
Mr Allingham—There is one particular thing. You raised the issue of the success of World Heritage listing up in the north. I would have to agree that overall—certainly along the coast— that is the case. It may be a useful thing to go to a place like Ravenshoe, which is close to but not part of that tourist belt there, and find out in fact what the impacts have been. You may find that some of the people who live there have quite a different view.
CHAIR—I know a federal environment minister who went there once and was lucky to get out alive! I am not sure any committee has been back since.
Mr Allingham—I think you will find that some of them are still of a very similar view.
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CHAIR—Having said that, part of the role of the committee is to look at lessons that can be learnt from how things happened and ways that we can get very similar results in the future without the same sort of angst. Thank you for that.
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[3.57 pm]
SINCLAIR, Mr John, Honorary Project Officer, Fraser Island Defenders Organisation
CHAIR—I welcome Mr John Sinclair, who is from the Fraser Island Defenders Organisation. We have received your submission, which we have numbered 67. Do you need to make any alterations or amendments to that?
Mr Sinclair—No.
CHAIR—You have been sitting here through the presentations of a few witnesses, so I probably do not need to repeat the formalities about parliamentary privilege and the like—and I am sure you have done this once or twice before. Thank you for your submission and for taking the time to talk to us today. As you are aware, we were taken around Fraser Island yesterday by some parks and wildlife people and also by the chair of the community advisory committee. It was a brief introduction to Fraser Island. It was the first visit there of all members of the committee. We are all now acquainted with the place physically, but you with your experience will be able to give us more examples of some of the issues that arise there.
The purpose of this committee and our inquiry is to look for lessons that can be learnt from key areas. You have heard some of the questions that we have been asking through the afternoon about the sorts of things that can be drawn—good and bad—from the way things are being done. I invite you to make any opening comments that you would like to make.
Mr Sinclair—The focus of the Fraser Island Defenders Organisation’s submission—and I will refer to us as FIDO—is on what we believe the Commonwealth responsibility should be towards parks and reserves. Rather than doing a critique on national parks specific to Queensland and the role of Fraser Island as a national park, I would like to look at where the Commonwealth’s role in all of this might fit it.
I might say in passing that I have a lot of familiarity with parks right across Australia because of my private work, which is taking people to national parks and World Heritage areas right across the continent. But there is some confusion with the term ‘national parks’ because, even though the term ‘national park’ was actually invented in Australia and was first applied in Australia to the Royal National Park—at that stage it was quite legitimate for the New South Wales government to declare it a national park because New South Wales was a sovereign government—what we now have is a system of national parks which are state parks.
After applying myself to look at this, I believe that in Australia we need a form of ranking system for establishing priorities and, particularly as far as the Commonwealth government is concerned, establishing a set of priorities for what the Commonwealth’s responsibility should be. The best model I can come up with is based on the criteria for evaluating and determining whether or not some site gets World Heritage significance. There are four natural criteria. All of them refer to ‘outstanding universal significance’. If you could just substitute that for ‘local significance’, ‘regional significance’ or ‘state significance’, then all of the parks and reserves in that category would not necessarily need the Commonwealth to become involved. But in the
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 104 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 questions of national significance and international significance I think there is a clear obligation on the Commonwealth to accept a much greater role than it has done hitherto for the management of those parks and reserves.
In the case of World Heritage areas, we see a place here for the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is a party to the World Heritage convention and it undertook certain obligations. In my view, in most of the World Heritage sites which the Commonwealth government has agreed to nominate, it has abdicated its responsibility. But nowhere is that more evident than it is on Fraser Island. Fraser Island has become the Cinderella of the World Heritage areas when you look at the Commonwealth’s contribution towards its management. The Commonwealth contributes only about one per cent of the actual total expenditure on managing Fraser Island, which is a pretty poor effort for a national government to an area which contributes something like $277 million to the national economy, according to the economic study we commissioned to be done there three years ago.
That is really the summation of it. I could give you a table—and I would be happy to provide that in a supplementary submission—which sets out, for example, just how much the Commonwealth gives to the various World Heritage sites. I would say that in 2004-05 there was $427,000 allocated to Fraser Island, of which only $50,000 had anything to do with the management of World Heritage values, and that was for weed management. The rest of it was some sort of political contribution to salve consciences, but it had nothing to do with protecting and presenting World Heritage values on Fraser Island.
Senator RONALDSON—When you say it was to salve consciences, where did the money go?
Mr Sinclair—The money went into providing boardwalks in the villages at Eurong and Happy Valley. I cannot remember the others, but the community advisory committee was not consulted about it. There was one person consulted about it, but it was not a collective view. Not only that, it seemed as though a contrived means was made to ensure that, in allocating that money for Fraser Island, none of it was to be given to the Queensland government.
CHAIR—That was the pre-election announcement by a former minister.
Mr Sinclair—Yes, a pre-election announcement.
CHAIR—We did get some mention of that by a few people yesterday.
Mr Sinclair—The other matter I draw the committee’s attention to—and no doubt this has been drawn to your attention before—is that there is an incredible discrepancy here with the way that the Commonwealth has picked on certain World Heritage sites and been incredibly good with them. So the management of the Kakadu and Uluru World Heritage sites and of the Great Barrier Reef is as good as you will probably get because they are not really starved of resources—although the Queensland government makes a major contribution to the management of the Great Barrier Reef, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority is funded entirely from Commonwealth resources—whereas if a state nominates or identifies a site which should be nominated it seems to run very poorly. That will be shown in the table I can give you, except that
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 105 it does not show in the World Heritage expenditure the Commonwealth contributions to Kakadu, Uluru or the Great Barrier Reef.
Senator RONALDSON—Was expenditure on boardwalks inappropriate?
Mr Sinclair—I am not saying it is not a useful thing to have a boardwalk, but I would not have thought it was in the national interest as a matter of priority. It was not even a matter of priority for anyone who is on the community advisory committee. These were just some suggestions of ways in which money could be expended without giving it to the Queensland government.
CHAIR—So it is not so much that you are complaining about money being provided but that it was provided completely outside of the processes that were in place, not just by the state government but the community advisory committee, to consider priorities for where resources could best go for the World Heritage area.
Mr Sinclair—That is right. There are many things that need to be done. I do not know if you got to see the Eli Creek, but there is a boardwalk there which has just fallen down, and the circuit which was constructed originally by our organisation with voluntary labour over 18 weekends has now just been abandoned because there are no resources for that boardwalk to be rebuilt by the government to their standard in their time.
We really need to allocate some priorities. If you went to Indian Head you would have seen that it is being eroded away. It is urgently in need of some sort of visitor control and boardwalks to stop the erosion and to preserve a site that is very important both culturally and for the natural environment. I go there and almost cry every time I see it. When I first went there, there was lawn right to the edge at the top of the cliff. Now there is almost no grass at all, with acres being bare rock, just from being worn away by the volume of visitation. So there are lots of other priorities which outrank the boardwalk in Happy Valley and in Eurong. Very few people actually walk down to the beach.
Senator MOORE—There are so many things we could ask, Mr Sinclair, but one thing which jumped out of your submission for me was the comment about volunteer work and the concern you had about the use of volunteers for different work on Fraser Island. Can you elaborate on what your concerns are?
Mr Sinclair—Naturally, our organisation has been involved in protecting Fraser Island for 30 years. We have identified weeds and we have worked on that voluntarily, but logistically it is very expensive to get to Fraser Island. We sought money from the Natural Heritage Trust, through the Burnett Mary regional group, to help us meet some of the expenses of getting volunteers to work. We can get volunteers to work within the townships at Happy Valley and Eurong because they are not on state managed land. There is an absolute bar—as it has been described to us—and no money can be given to you to work on weeds within the national park, if they spread outside those townships into the national park.
Senator MOORE—This is federal—
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Mr Sinclair—This is Natural Heritage Trust money. It is regarded as state government core business, even though volunteers are going to be involved in it. They will give money to people to work on private land but they are not going to give any money at all to assist even in weed control and eradication on state land, even though it is a World Heritage area that is contributing so much to the national economy.
Senator MOORE—From your perspective, because of the federal-state divide.
Mr Sinclair—That is right.
Senator MOORE—It seems to me—and I have been watching it for a while—that there are a number of bodies that have been set up around Fraser Island at the federal and the state levels. What is the linkage in terms of people talking to each other?
Mr Sinclair—The linkage is excellent, I would say. For example, as you would have heard, it was only just over a week ago that all of the members of the scientific advisory committee and the community advisory committee met and travelled round the island together and consulted and discussed various matters. It is a matter of ongoing collaboration. That is very useful and constructive. I am now concerned because we have been informed that the Commonwealth, which supported this whole mechanism for the establishment of consultative advisory committees, now wants to abandon those. That is a matter of active review, apparently, going on at departmental level at the moment.
Senator MOORE—When were you told that?
Mr Sinclair—Within the last three weeks.
Senator SIEWERT—Is that for all World Heritage areas?
Mr Sinclair—It is for all World Heritage areas. The terms of the current consultative CERRA committees have expired and no appointments have been made. It has gone into the melting pot as to whether or not they are going to continue to fund or have such consultative committees in future.
Senator MOORE—I certainly have not heard that.
Mr Sinclair—When I did an assessment some time ago to develop a management strategy for Lord Howe Island I suggested that there should be a community advisory committee for Lord Howe Island, but nothing has happened. At one stage that was going to be the model for consultative and advisory committees for all World Heritage sites, but now it seems there may even be none, unless the states want to set them up.
Senator SIEWERT—For Fraser Island I understand there is a scientific committee and a community committee.
Mr Sinclair—Yes.
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Senator SIEWERT—I think I heard someone mention yesterday—it was not about a review; I think there had been whisperings—that there were too many committees for World Heritage areas. Do you think they are considering joining the two—the community and the scientific committees—or just getting rid of everything?
Mr Sinclair—I think they want to get rid of everything. We have great difficulty because Fraser Island, as far as the Commonwealth is concerned, in monitoring the activities for almost a year, was regarded as a desktop exercise to be handled only from Canberra. Prior to that, there had been a representative of the Commonwealth environment agency at almost every meeting of all of the advisory committees.
Last year, in response to many overtures asking when they were going to send somebody, they said they could not afford to send anyone up here unless both meetings were on virtually consecutive days. So everything had to be changed just so that a representative of the Commonwealth could come to a meeting. The meeting dates were changed and I could not go. The people who attended said the Commonwealth might as well have stayed at home because they contributed nothing to the discussions at the meeting. So I believe there needs to be a much more active role in monitoring. For example, driving around Fraser Island just two weeks ago I was absolutely stunned to be confronted by a firebreak. I do not know if you saw the firebreak. It was 80 hectares of bare earth and it was created without any consultation with anyone at all. I would have hoped that the Commonwealth, if it was looking at its responsibilities towards preserving World Heritage values, would have had somebody in the loop who had their eye on the ball and might have been able to avert such a disastrous operation in a World Heritage site, which is going to have untold biological consequences for wildlife. For example, the gap is now so wide that many species of birds and animals will not cross it. So there are those sorts of things. The World Heritage values are being degraded, and the Commonwealth is not even lifting a finger and is not even aware of what is going on.
Senator MOORE—In your earlier comments, you indicated that you thought Fraser Island was the poor relation. But, apart from the three sites that you mentioned, is your concern about national heritage a more general concern or is it specific to Fraser Island?
Mr Sinclair—Generally, I think the Commonwealth wants to devolve all responsibility for the World Heritage areas that the states wanted to have. It contributed to World Heritage areas where states initially did not want to have them—such as the Tasmanian World Heritage area and the Wet Tropics—so they get a better share of the cake as a sort of peace offering, if you like. But we do not get the same sort of money for places like Willandra Lakes. I must say that Fraser Island gets a bit more—not much more—than Macquarie Island, but of course Macquarie Island does not get many tourists.
Senator SIEWERT—You touched before on what you thought was the Commonwealth’s role. In a perfect world, what would you see as the Commonwealth’s role in protected areas in Australia? You may decide you want to confine that to World Heritage areas, but I am also talking about the NRS because they are responsible for managing seven terrestrial and marine parks.
Mr Sinclair—The Commonwealth ought to work out what the parks are worth—their economic value, in the case of Fraser Island, their biodiversity value and their iconic value for
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 108 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 the nation. For those areas which are deemed to be of national significance but which may not necessarily be World Heritage areas—for example, Carnarvon Gorge in Central Queensland and Kings Canyon in the Northern Territory—the Commonwealth government should identify their values and make sure there are enough resources to augment the state contribution, not to cut the states out of the process but to augment and complement their contribution. The Commonwealth also needs to accept responsibility for seeing that it is well applied. In other words, I believe that we should have good fire management but I do not think we need to apply so much of the Fraser Island budget to creating a 40-kilometre long scar, which is going to be just disastrous for wildlife.
I think the Commonwealth has to have some sort of monitoring role. In other words, it needs to be a little bit more actively involved in discussing this and meeting with the state agencies. How much that might be probably depends on the need for each of the particular areas. That is a very difficult balancing act. I would have said, for example, that the need for Fraser Island has to be at least equivalent to the need for Kakadu. While it is smaller than Kakadu, it has a greater fragility and a greater volume of visitation—even though numbers for both are now in decline. There are still close to 300,000 visitors a year on Fraser Island, and that is still a lot more than Kakadu is getting.
CHAIR—I think you mentioned at the start you had figures you could provide about the federal contribution to each of the different World Heritage areas.
Mr Sinclair—Yes. I can leave a copy here with you now.
CHAIR—That would be great. Thank you.
Senator MOORE—Mr Sinclair, the other thing you said you had was a report that you had done on the economic impact of Fraser Island. Where did that one go?
Mr Sinclair—I will send you a copy of that. That was done by Kleinhardt FGI, who are corporate consultants from Cairns. They are quite independent and did a study on the value of Fraser Island and the Daintree.
Senator MOORE—The two of them? That would be very useful.
Mr Sinclair—We decided to apply it to two areas, to look at different ends of the spectrum, both of which have very heavy rates of visitation and neither of which gets a sufficient share of the Commonwealth’s purse.
Senator MOORE—I would like to read that.
Mr Sinclair—I will make more available. It is on our website too.
Senator MOORE—We will get it from there. Do not bother sending it.
CHAIR—We will use Fraser Island as an example for at least that group of protected areas that has high visitation and major tourism value. As we were reminded by Parks Australia, the core purpose of all protected areas is biodiversity conservation and everything else is meant to
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 109 come underneath that. What was quite clear yesterday and was quite openly indicated today from the Queensland parks service is that probably 90 per cent of their activity and budget is directed towards visitor management and dealing with all the various issues related to that, and very little of what might be called pure conservation—that is, counting lizards, turtles, plant types or whatever—is done. Do you think we need to rebalance that, using Fraser Island as an example, and simply put money purely into the biological-biodiversity side of things and try and separate it in some way from tourism and visitor management?
Mr Sinclair—I certainly do. I think I can find the way that the budget is allocated on Fraser Island if I go back through my past and trawl through old papers. They divided the proportion of the budget that goes to Fraser Island into recreational management, which is visitors, natural resource management and cultural resource management.
Almost nothing goes into cultural resource management. Such a small percentage went into natural resource management that it was ludicrous. When I questioned why the amount that goes into visitor management was so disproportionate, I was told it was because Fraser Island really comes under the Recreation Areas Management Act. Because the money is being collected from visitors for recreation management, that is where the money is being spent. Very little money comes from any other source for anything other than recreation management. We are talking about a park of national significance, and the Commonwealth should be supporting money going to natural resource management and preserving the natural resource values of the park. That is what our organisation is concerned with—preserving those natural values for which the area was recognised.
CHAIR—We could explore your suggestion about having a criterion of parks of national significance, or we could even use the current situation with World Heritage areas, which are places of world significance, as a benchmark and say, ‘For those areas, the Commonwealth, as a matter of practice, should have continual, steady, extra resources going into those.’ The inevitable flow-on consequence of the Commonwealth putting in money regularly would be the Commonwealth wanting more say, certainly in the use of that money and potentially in the management as well. Having regard to your experience with World Heritage areas around Australia and the different state authorities that have management roles in those, I immediately see a problem—the Commonwealth-state arm-wrestle, blame-shifting problem you get when the two different bodies have parts to play. If we were to have national funding going in, would we also need to re-examine national management? How easily do you think that cooperation would work in the various states if you did have Commonwealth involvement in some more direct managerial way?
Mr Sinclair—I would have to think more carefully about the practicalities of implementing joint management and how joint management would work. It has not been so incredibly difficult in the past. Under NHT1 all of the money was made available to Fraser Island for specific projects, those projects were identified and the state would spell out what it was going to do with the money when it came in and the Commonwealth just monitored what was happening with respect to those projects. So I would think that if the state were to submit a project and say, ‘We need more money from the Commonwealth for these parks of national significance,’ maybe the Commonwealth would need to put in a caveat that it was for natural resource management rather than for visitor management. This would ensure that there was an adequate allocation for that. The states could then say, ‘This is a natural resource management project. Instead of spending
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 110 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 our own resources, we can put our money into recreation management but we’d need this money for a fire regime, weed management, feral pest management or cultural heritage management.’ Those are the sorts of things that could happen. It could happen if the states were to identify the project that they wanted to use it for and the Commonwealth could monitor it.
CHAIR—You have also mentioned a couple of times the issue of cultural heritage management. I realise that every area is different, but it seems that one aspect that we have failed pretty consistently at, at whatever level of government you are talking about and in whichever part of the country you are talking about, is the adequacy of our engagement with traditional owners and Indigenous people. That is more relevant for some parks and World Heritage areas than others. Have you got any views or suggestions from your own experience about things we should be doing better in that area of traditional owner engagement and, where appropriate, joint management?
Have you got any views or suggestions from your own experience about things we should be doing better in that area of traditional owner engagement and, where appropriate, joint management?
Mr Sinclair—In the case of Fraser Island, a move has started—and it has been a bit clumsily started, but it has happened—so that, in tandem with the scientific advisory committee and the community advisory committee, there is also a cultural advisory committee. My experience is that Indigenous people, Aboriginals, are very shy people and very hesitant to speak on their own. They like to speak collectively rather than just having one voice or two voices on the community advisory committee. I really welcome the idea of a cultural advisory committee for Fraser Island. That will at least get a lot more participation. We have a lot more participation and it is happening generally. The local people are becoming much more interested and feeling much more engaged than they were previously.
CHAIR—Are there any other aspects you want to make sure you put in our ears while you have the opportunity?
Mr Sinclair—No. If there is anything else that I think of that I think has been grossly overlooked, I am happy to make a further submission, because I understand I can supplement it later if it is necessary. The only thing that I did not raise—and I suppose I should have, because it is so topical at the moment—is the declaration of the marine park. Our organisation is absolutely appalled that the Queensland government, which alleges to be the government of the smart state, could make a decision which only allocates less than four per cent of the area as marine national park. When you look at the map of those areas that have been set aside, it is virtually those areas which are totally inaccessible to commercial fishermen. It defies the IUCN’s recommendation that there should be 20 to 30 per cent of marine park if you are going to get any increase in productivity and any benefits from it by way of biodiversity. Yet we have had a Clayton’s marine park zoned so that we are going to get virtually negligible gains and probably a continuing decline in productivity, just because we have had such an inadequate area allocated.
I would have thought that, given the significance of this marine reserve—which is 6,000 square kilometres and probably one of the biggest state marine parks to be declared—the Commonwealth should have at least been looking at what was happening and been urged to
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 111 ensure at least that its commitment to the IUCN to have 20 to 30 per cent set aside was going to be met. I just think it is another example of where the Commonwealth has abdicated its responsibility.
Senator SIEWERT—I have a very quick supplementary question on that one. Are you aware of any state government resources that have been allocated for management for that park?
Mr Sinclair—No, I am not aware of anything. But there was a marine component within the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service in that area before which already was established to manage whale watching, which is a big industry, and to look at some other aspects of management such as the boat race between Tin Can Bay and Hervey Bay.
Senator SIEWERT—But were there additional resources announced when the park was announced?
Mr Sinclair—No.
CHAIR—Thank you for your contribution both today and over many years. Any further input is certainly welcome in the course of this inquiry.
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[4.35 pm]
HEAD, Mr Damien Paul, Member, Australian Workers Union
SIMPSON, Mr Christopher Francis, Industrial Advocate, Australian Workers Union
CHAIR—I welcome our final witnesses for the day, from the Australian Workers Union—our 10th group of witnesses today. We have received your submission, which we have numbered 139. Are there any amendments or alterations you need to make to that submission?
Mr Simpson—No.
CHAIR—Mr Head, you have been here a little while so you have heard me say all the stuff about parliamentary privilege and the like, so no misleading! If you wish to give answers in camera for any reason, you can make the request and we will consider it. If you would like to make an opening statement and we will go to questions after that.
Mr Simpson—Thanks. I am an industrial advocate at the AWU and have been there for about 11 years. For the bulk of that time, I have had responsibility for park rangers within the employment of the Queensland government. The submission that we put in was primarily drafted by one of our senior delegates who cannot be with us today. Mr Damien Head is also a member of the union and has agreed to assist us with technical aspects of the submission on which he would have more detail than I do. As background to the submission, the AWU represents about 620 full-time equivalent rangers employed by the QPWS.
CHAIR—How many?
Mr Simpson—Around 620 full-time equivalents—I will not claim that is precise. Our members come from a diverse range of backgrounds. Often they are formerly tradespeople; some have them have academic backgrounds. They bring a wide range of skills to the job. If you saw 60 Minutes the other night, you would have seen a good example with Mr Frank Manthey and the program about the bilby fence in western Queensland.
Our members recognise that there is a need for further protection of parks; the parks are the general natural estate in Queensland. But the main focus of our submission is on the immediate problem of resources for our members to be able to do their jobs and to undertake the responsibilities we already have. It is the strong view of the union that, before we create more estate or take on more responsibilities, we have to have sufficient resources to do properly what we already have responsibility for doing.
In relation to the issue of technology: as you know, Queensland is geographically a huge state, and the union recognises that the state department have sought to move forward quite a bit with technology in recent years in terms of operating systems, particularly in the area of asset management, with the new SAMS. They have also tried to sort out the problem of computer linkages and technology across the vast geography of our members’ workplaces. Because there is such a huge dependence now on computers in the state department, when there are network
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 113 failures—and there are many—in the system, this causes a lot of frustration and a lot of inefficiency for our members trying to do their jobs. This is exacerbated if you are in a remote or isolated part of the state. You waste time, it is frustrating if you cannot get online and the reality is that most of the reporting functions in your job, and the way you do your job, are electronic these days. So we see there is a huge need to make that system much quicker, more sophisticated and more efficient so that our people can do their jobs properly.
We look at that in our recommendations. We talk about the need to develop and further refine existing operating systems, like SAMS and the park info systems, but it is also really critical to improve the network and communication reliability, usability and speed for our rangers. We do not think it is a good idea to be introducing new reporting systems that are required to be done through the computer network until the system is capable of coping with them. The department is looking at doing things like the payroll and other things through Corporate Solutions, a state government system, but that needs to be sorted out first and will require additional resources. Also, our members need appropriate training to handle this new technology.
In terms of resourcing, the state government employed about 140 extra rangers a few years ago as part of a state election promise. They also picked up around 100 extra staff from the department of natural resources. They came across as part of a machinery of government change. But with those rangers also came a lot of the land tenure they already had responsibility for—the state forests. They were also members of our union as well, so they were coming into a larger group of rangers that we had responsibility for. But the reality is that those additional bodies came with existing responsibilities, so you could not see that as an addition to the net number of employees. In addition, we got the extra 140 rangers but we also got the south-east Queensland regional forestry agreement. We got a big whack of land brought in as a responsibility of the EPA to manage. So, in some ways, the staffing increases have been offset by the additional responsibility that we picked up through the settlement of the south-east Queensland RFA. We also understand that there is going to be further land acquisition through the western hardwoods process, which is being worked through as we speak. That will undoubtedly require additional staffing.
The new asset management system, which we support as a good thing, is sucking up a lot of the resources of the staff in terms of doing it and managing it. That is time that would otherwise have been used in other areas. So that is drawing up quite a bit of the QPWS budget. Our members believe that there is a very strong argument—and we talk about this in the submission—for additional funding to come from the federal government. We think there is a significant disparity. I am judging this on the basis of information I have seen in the QPWS’s own submission. There appears to be a downward trend in federal funding.
The areas where we have had major industrial issues historically are places like Fraser Island—World Heritage areas. There are around 50 rangers there. We have just managed to get the state government to build about 20 new houses on the island, at significant expense to the state government. Those houses have been of great assistance in terms of working conditions. They are specifically designed single accommodation. I was up there only two months ago with our union delegates.
CHAIR—We had a look at them just yesterday, actually.
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Mr Simpson—Yes, we have come a long way from living in dongas.
CHAIR—We had a look at what they were in previously, yes.
Mr Simpson—We take a bit of the credit for that. These places do draw a lot of the department’s budget. If the feds are to put more money in, it should go to those World Heritage areas. That would free up state money to go into the other parks. That is what our submission says.
In terms of infrastructure, as I said, significant focus has gone into the built assets issue. This has helped us, because we have been able to say, ‘Hang on, all these houses all over the place that are not up to scratch need to be fixed.’ We have used that to get the accommodation standards right for our members. We have pressured the department to do that, but having done that has probably distracted from natural resource management issues, park enforcement issues, interpretation issues and education issues. Our members are telling the union that more resources need to go there.
In terms of natural resource project funding, our submission says that this needs to be looked at in a long-term way. The reality is that, if you are vulnerable to the vagaries of every 12-month budget cycle, it does not sit neatly with the fact that conservation projects often need to be looked at in a very long-term way in order to deliver results. It is particularly disappointing for our members when they see progress being made and then money diverted. Work that has been done actually gets lost when the resources do not continue to go into a project of value to the park.
One proposal that we floated in our submission is that we should look at project funding in the same way that they have now done with assets management—that is, recurrent funding worked out in regard to the built infrastructure on the basis of: ‘Okay, these are all our statutory obligations. We have got to have safety equipment, we have got to have fire extinguishers, we have got to comply with the building code for the building to be safe.’ So the money is there every year and you know it is going to be there. We think a similar approach should be developed for project funding for conservation projects. That is an idea we have floated in our proposal.
We have also said that, in recent years, a lot of work has been put in by the state government in developing a park master plan. We think it is a pretty comprehensive document; it is a plan that goes into great detail and that looks at the years ahead. But a lot of the support that should have come after that plan was not able to be given to it because of inadequate resources. A lot of the district based planning and a lot of the local park plans which were proposed to be developed at a local level, including all of the community consultation, were not able to be done because they were just too resource and time intensive for our rangers when they are also devoted to other objectives.
We briefly touch on the marine parks to say, again, that more resourcing is needed in this area. We need more monitoring and research to be able to better understand the marine systems and to manage the values in them. We also need to have closer cooperation with local authorities. Our rangers in the marine parks often say that, when councils make decisions that might impact on a
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS Friday, 21 April 2006 Senate—References ECITA 115 national park which adjoins their council, there are no proper legislative arrangements requiring consultation between the council and the parks.
In terms of staff generally, the current major challenges that our members are facing include a lot of restructuring in management units. There are poor communication networks in many cases, particularly in remote areas. There is also a lack of affordable housing in regional parts of Queensland where our rangers are not based on-park. The workload issue alone is leading to high levels of stress amongst our staff.
Those are the big issues. We have a round of enterprise bargaining coming up with the department, and the union is seeking to address these issues in certain ways. But, ultimately, it all comes down to how much money is in the bucket—and we all know that.
Our submission touches briefly on the issue of wage structures, which I will not go into for the benefit of today’s committee, except to say that it becomes a retention and attraction issue. If you want good rangers they have to be looked after, otherwise you lose them. That comes down to the department’s ability to have the funds to pay properly, to accommodate properly, to provide support in remote parts of the state where rangers are living in very isolated arrangements, like out along the Diamantina River, five hours west of Winton. You need to have all the support networks to make living out there a viable option for a family or an individual.
The AWU is also concerned about maintaining a presence. Our members are saying to us that, in a lot of cases, we need to maintain a presence in the national parks. We understand that in many ways this is supported by a lot of local councils and landowners—I do not know if you have had submissions to this effect. There have been a couple of cases where the union has had disagreements or disputes with the state department when it has looked at the idea of rationalising certain parks or locating rangers back in regional towns rather than basing them on- park. Our members are almost unanimously opposed to that. Even though you would think that sometimes there would be clear disabilities in living in these parks, our members are very strongly of the view that in most cases being based on-park is the best way to manage the estate, to protect it from vandalism and to manage pests and the myriad other issues. The best way to have a proper handle on looking after the place is to best rangers there, and sometimes it costs more money to do that. We do not want an agenda that locates staff on the basis of purely budgetary constraints—which again comes back to needing more money.
I think that summarises the bulk of our submission. We also talk a bit more about safety and workloads. We know that QPWS have introduced significant programs in this area to try and improve safety. They have the Not One Not Ever program, which we fully support. But we are concerned that the new systems have not addressed the primary issue of work stress as a result of pure workload. The EPA have provided training and support for many individuals to deal with the symptoms of stress, but we think not having enough resources or enough staff is the root cause of people getting stressed in the first place.
In addition to that, new systems and policies are being introduced, whether it be for you to acquire new technical expertise or other new skill. We have limited support positions to help people in these areas. There appears to be no overall assessment of the cumulative impact on individual rangers from fairly rapid change. There are pressures from having to deal with living in remote places, high levels of enforcement with the public exposure to critical incidents and
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 116 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 accidents and dealing with difficult clients in many areas of the state. One example of that, which we touch on and which Damien can probably talk about in greater detail, is the riot on New Years Eve at Inskip Point on Fraser Island. All our recommendations are in the submission, so I will not read them out to you. I will now hand over to Damien.
Mr Head—My substantive position is as a ranger on Fraser Island—the southern end of Fraser Island—in which I have been for 10 years. I have been seconded to the office for a little while; hence my ability to attend today. I endorse everything Chris said. I would like to emphasise further the issue of consideration being given, when land is acquired, to ensuring there is ongoing operational funding for those lands coming across and, adding to that, World Heritage areas. Agreements should most likely be struck between the state and the Commonwealth on some sort of funding arrangement for those areas. A ripple effect occurs across the whole of state when money is not given to the high-profile World Heritage areas. More of the state money has to go towards managing those high profiles at the expense or cost of those more remote and less popular parks.
Concerning the system process for rangers in remote areas, it is inevitably coming that everything will move to IT—where you need systems on IT. It might be GIS to monitor fire and pest—all that spatial data. It is inevitable, yet the technology in remote or semi-remote areas, where a lot of our ranger forces are, is not keeping up with what exists in metropolitan areas. They are probably the key points I would like to emphasise. And the skill set of rangers needs to be adapted to go to IT—from fixing fences to inputting data. We have to make sure that that training is there.
CHAIR—Thank you for that and for your submission. There are a lot of issues you have raised here and in your submission. You would have heard, Mr Head, having sat through a few of the earlier submissions, the sorts of issues that are coming up. From my perspective, one of the reasons I thought it might be useful to hear from you today, beyond what was in your submission, is that some of the issues that came out in our first public hearing, in Canberra, from the Australian Rangers Federation could benefit from more exploration. Clearly, you can have as many parks as you like, but if you do not have rangers there to staff them, or the training or facilities are not there, then you are going to fail in your ultimate goal. The purpose of our inquiry is to look at ways we can improve our performance in protected areas against that staffing role, and rangers are pretty much at the centre of it all. On the issue of remote areas, ‘Not One Not Ever’ meant not having a person on their own—is that right?
Mr Head—It means no accident ever. It is never acceptable. Our goal is not to have one accident ever in the agencies.
CHAIR—Right. I completely misinterpreted what that meant, in that case.
Senator MOORE—I think it is linked.
CHAIR—It could well be linked.
Mr Head—That argument is put forward—that rangers in isolated areas living on their own have some safety issues.
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CHAIR—Partly why I was a bit confused is that it was mentioned when we were on Fraser Island yesterday in the context of discussion we had about the rearranging of where rangers live on the different parts of Fraser, now that people are commuting on and off the island quite regularly or daily. The issue with remote areas came up with AgForce and some of those groups in those types of parks that do not have high visitor numbers but have large or huge areas with a very small number of rangers on them.
From your point of view as a union, you have got that balance between the interests of your members’ working conditions and our perspective of biodiversity conservation. There would be a lot of overlap there, but there may be some conflicts as well. It seems that it is the most pressing in the remote area ones, where resources are always going to mean that you are only going to have a small number. Do you have a view about optimal numbers, or a situation where it is simply not feasible to have only one person, or other sorts of issues regarding that very remote area?
Mr Simpson—Arrangements were struck over the last 15 years, and often what would happen in those very remote parks where there was only one ranger is that the ranger’s spouse would be employed as well by the EPA, on a part-time basis. There are not a lot of those. We have argued for things like proper support for those rangers in terms of having the opportunity to come back in whenever there are training opportunities and having a network of support with other rangers in their area.
One argument we have been pushing, and we will be pushing it again soon, is something a bit similar to the arrangements they have in the education department. That is, you get some recognition for service in a remote area, so you do not get stuck. Sometimes the skills that you develop in a park close to the coast make you more employable than someone who is in a remote park, and so when positions come up you do not score as well on the selection process. We have been arguing for a weighting to give rangers in remote places an opportunity to get a leg-up. So, like a teacher does, you would do some country service and it could be a career progression. We do not have that at the moment in the state system. It is a mixed bag in other states.
CHAIR—I do not know if you were here when AgForce were here. They were giving evidence about the lack of contact—not hearing from anybody or not seeing anybody for five years. You can have all the good formal structures in the world, but it is often the informal, irregular, incidental contact that can be the more valuable. They gave the impression that things had got worse in that regard, because of the way things were being restructured in recent times. Do you have a comment on that?
Mr Simpson—We did have a disagreement with the department about the Longreach district, but we managed to turn that around. They were looking at pulling all the staff off Welford, Diamantina, Idalia—four or five big parks—and basing them in Winton and Longreach. I went out there and met with all the staff, and they said they all disagreed with it. They wanted to be based in the parks. So they reversed that decision.
I hear what you are saying. The thing about our members is that they are very passionate about their work and they have very strong views about the environment. In some ways you might say that there is some merit in their living in a regional centre like Winton and Longreach. But at the same time they would have to travel enormous distances to and from work. They were
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS ECITA 118 Senate—References Friday, 21 April 2006 universally opposed to that. In the end, the departments agreed to maintain staffing on those parks, and we are looking at additional support systems for the people on those parks.
CHAIR—My final question links to that but is wider. This morning the department raised the point about rangers, broadly speaking, who are qualified and have whatever the degrees are that you get—biological sciences or environmental management—but they are not necessarily trained in community consultation and how to get on with difficult people, idiosyncratic land- holders and all of those sorts of things. We could probably do with some training in getting on with idiosyncratic people ourselves. Is that an issue in terms of the sort of training you have to get? It was mentioned in passing today, about the Inskip Point incident. I was not aware of those sorts of things. Is that something where more training needs to happen? I am probably more interested in the community consultation in a broader sense, to do with park management, rather than how to deal with drunken tourists or whatever—although I do not dispute that is an important workplace issue. From our point of view of biodiversity stuff, is that something where more needs to be done?
Mr Head—Firstly, on the issue of rangers in remote parks, undoubtedly there is a benefit if you can have rangers in the park. There are going to be better neighbour relations through that incidental contact. It might be passing on the road. Those opportunities can be missed. In relation to the training aspect, training has improved in recent years and, through the work of the AWU, we have now ensured that all staff have chainsaw training, enforcement training and verbal judo. So the key elements—the bread and butter work of ranger training—are there now, especially for permanent staff. I heard AgForce comment earlier that training is not undertaken and PPE does not exist. I have not encountered that in my movements at all. I have never seen someone not receive PPE.
Mr Simpson—The verbal judo has been very popular. We were a little bit sceptical about it, but it has been hugely popular—overwhelming—and staff think it is great. I think it originated as training for the police. Our members have told us they think it is great and everyone should get it. Unfortunately the verbal judo is not accredited. It is run by someone I think in WA. There is another course which essentially does something similar and which is accredited. In terms of the training with community consultation, I cannot tell you off the top of my head precisely whether there is formal training.
Mr Head—No, there is no formal training that rangers undertake in that consultation field at this stage outside what they may come into their agency with from experience in previous jobs.
Senator MOORE—I asked the department this morning about the training, in terms of the expectation of the people who work in the department. It seems that people who are rangers are all things to all people. The department in their documentation say that they have developed a list of competencies for each level within the department and they have said that they are going to provide that to us. I also asked about the transferability of those skills, so if you are a skilled, trained ranger in Queensland, would you have an ability to work in the field anywhere and would you be able to compete for jobs in New South Wales, Tasmania—that kind of thing.
Mr Simpson—It is not a neat fit. If they are talking about the conservation land management course, it is nationally accredited.
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Mr Head—Anything that is nationally accredited stands you in much better stead. So, if you have done the chainsaw course in Queensland which is nationally accredited or the fire fighting course which is nationally accredited, that stays on your resume and you can use that to go for jobs in other states.
Mr Simpson—There is a certificate III and a certificate IV. The difference between the Queensland workforce and some of the ones in New South Wales and Victoria, we understand, is that down south they tend to divide the workforce into, for want of a better term, professional rangers and construction maintenance crews. In Queensland, we have deliberately never done that. It is all one group running right through from a 002 to a 006 to a senior ranger. In Queensland we do get a vast array of skills and we do not segregate the workforce and put a cap there saying, ‘You will be construction maintenance and if you want to be a professional you have to have a university qualification.’ You get 006s or those at a ranger in charge level who have never been near a university and you get plenty of people with university qualifications coming in at the lower levels working their way through and there are lots of people with trade skills. It is a much more multi-skilled group up here. We have never split the workforce as some of the other states have.
Senator MOORE—Is it a career service? Do people work through the levels?
Mr Simpson—Yes. You can move into the administrative area, the senior ranger and management area, or into the technical and professional area if you want to. We want a lot more money for our members, but I think a 006 comes out at about $50,000 at the moment as a base rate. That is really the cap for a ranger, a field ranger, unless you are going to move into senior management or—
Senator MOORE—And that would be augmented by allowances?
Mr Simpson—Yes, they get more if they do weekend work. They are entitled to a remote area allowance and penalties. So they will get penalties for weekend rates. But as for incentives for working in the really remote areas, when they are competing against some of the mining communities for housing, the rents are a lot higher. That makes it difficult to attract good staff into those areas.
Senator MOORE—Senator Bartlett was asking a lot of questions both yesterday and today about Indigenous employment and communication with Indigenous people. In the past there has been a push at levels of government to have specific recruitment programs to draw people in to give them the opportunity to work in the field. From your point of view, does your service do that?
Mr Head—It does do it. It has Indigenous specified and Indigenous identified positions and people are appointed to those positions and the claimant groups may have input into who is appointed to those positions.
Senator MOORE—In terms of selection processes?
Mr Head—Yes. It is more common in the cape and Northern Queensland but Moreton and Fraser have specified positions as well. Percentage wise, I do not know what that is.
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Senator MOORE—Under the terms of reference for this inquiry we are looking at the quality of service and also resourcing. It would seem to me that staffing would fall under both those areas. If you do not have the strength and the skills and the staffing, which are adequately resourced, you will not have good park management. Mr Head, I do not think you can answer this question, because you are employed by the organisation, but there has been considerable discussion about the development of management plans for each of the parks. I am asking this question particularly because Senator Ronaldson is not here and he was very deeply concerned about it. The information from the department is that, from my point of view, a very small number—I forget the actual number—of the parks have current management plans, which was of surprise to me. Does the union have any view about the aspect of the development and the implementation of a plan as parks are developed?
Mr Simpson—We do touch on that in our submission.
Senator MOORE—That is why I wanted to have your response on the record.
Mr Simpson—The position that we have is that, as I said, the park master plan for the whole state was a good process. It was comprehensive; it was good. We have not had the resources to follow through. We feel that there has not been enough support staff with the technical expertise to help at a local level to do that work. We think there could be a capacity to delegate some of the work which currently, I think, sits above district level, to develop some of that work, if the resources were provided to do that. But we are also aware—and our members are also aware— that it is resource intensive. It involves all this community consultation. If you are going to do it, you have to do it properly. It is a bit like the argument about not taking on more parks without the resources; it is taking on more work without the resources. We want to see the low number of rangers significantly increased but, as I said, we need more resources to do it and we think one way of doing it is devolving some of the responsibility down to a district level.
Senator MOORE—Provided that is augmented by training?
Mr Simpson—Yes.
Senator MOORE—Damien, do you want to say anything else?
Mr Head—If I may.
Senator MOORE—Certainly in terms of what you can say as an employee.
Mr Head—From a range of perspectives, if plans exist it provides the support mechanism for when you are having consultation with locals. You can say you had that opportunity for input there and support some of the decisions that you are making. It gives you clear direction that is lacking in some areas.
Senator MOORE—Where you have worked with Fraser Island, that does have a plan.
Mr Simpson—I am very lucky.
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Senator MOORE—So you have had that backup, but people you know work in parks where there has not been a plan?
Mr Head—I am very lucky where I work in that we have been planned and planned!
Senator MOORE—Within an inch of your lives!
Mr Simpson—Almost as good as working at the union!
Senator SIEWERT—I want to pick up from that question. When we asked the department this morning about management plans they said that, if they do not have a management plan, what comes into effect are operational plans they have for weeds, ferals et cetera. In your opinion, how effective are those operational plans in providing guidance to rangers when they have to implement them on the ground, in the absence of a management plan?
Mr Head—The systems relate to a criteria that may swing around fire management intent for areas, so the criteria would be protection burns first, then conservation burns second so that gives you a fairly clear direction. Some of them have allowed funding that was initially being absorbed by the major parks and it allows a funding stream into some of those more remote parks and gives them certainty about their position. The union is of the belief that they are good but that the administration of them is rather burdensome. That is not being adequately taken into account when they are rolled out, and they need to be streamlined. They have been a good initiative from that perspective. I agree.
Senator SIEWERT—You also recommend that there be an increase of 50 full-time ranger positions across the state. Is that on top of the recent increases? We were told this morning that there are now 612 full-time ranger positions. Are those 50 on top of that?
Mr Simpson—Yes. We would argue that that would need to be increased further and looked at depending on how much extra land we end up with after Western Hardwoods.
Senator SIEWERT—If I interpret your submission correctly, if you put on those 50 extra staff on, you will put on extra money for operation?
Mr Simpson—Yes.
Mr Head—That would cover vehicles, uniforms, housing, computers and training.
Senator MOORE—Can I ask one question on those numbers. I do not know how much you saw, Mr Head, but there has been considerable discussion about the numbers, and we have had a look at the department’s submission. You said in your earlier statement, Mr Simpson, that over 100 came across to your base figure when there was a machinery of government change, and that your agency picked up work from DNR—so you got about 100 there—and the department is also claiming about 140 new ones.
Mr Simpson—They were a separate group.
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Senator MOORE—So that is 240 out of the 612-odd before the last machinery of government change. Is that an accurate process?
Mr Simpson—I think that is right, because if you go back to the early nineties—I started with the union in about 1995 but I think that just before that, if you look at the figures, there were only 250 or 300 rangers in Queensland.
Senator MOORE—So that has been a big chunk in that period of time, but 100 of those was simply because one lot of work—
Mr Simpson—A machinery of government change.
Senator MOORE—When they cut up the last department—
Mr Simpson—They were there in a way; they just went from here to here.
Senator MOORE—That was a primary industries, natural resources carve-up?
Mr Simpson—That is right—state forests.
Senator MOORE—That makes it clearer.
Mr Head—I will elaborate on the point about 560 rangers. Those are rangers in a protected area looking after a national park. There are other rangers—whatever the remainder is—who do conservation services work. They might be working with koalas or endangered species. They are not on a park; they roam and pick up work off-park.
Senator MOORE—They could be the ones AgForce got confused about. When we had that little flurry with AgForce about how many rangers there were, it could be them.
Mr Simpson—I do not think the figure of 612 full-time equivalents counts people on temporary contracts, does it?
Senator SIEWERT—No, it does not. My understanding of how they answered this morning was no, it does not.
Mr Simpson—Or short-term casuals.
Senator SIEWERT—They were very clear that it is full-time equivalents. That is how I understood it, anyway.
CHAIR—Thank you for your evidence. As you may have heard me say, the inquiry is continuing until the end of November at least. If there is any further information you want to provide flowing out of what has come up today or other issues you think may be of benefit to us, we would be happy to receive it. I note a motion to accept all tabled documents presented today as evidence and the additional submission from Professor Buckley.
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Committee adjourned at 5.17 pm
ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS