Australian Greens Additional Comments
1.1
Our Great Barrier Reef is in serious trouble. The recent Australian
Institute of Marine Sciences report shows it has already lost half its coral
cover in the last 27 years, and faces extraordinary threats from climate change
(both extreme weather events and ocean acidification), pollution and invasive
species. The latest threat of rapid industrialisation of the Great Barrier Reef
coastline, largely due to massive coal and gas port expansions, could be the
last straw. The biggest ever dredging, dumping and shipping program in the
Great Barrier Reef's history threatens its integrity directly and also
indirectly through facilitating fossil fuel burning to worsen climate change,
and will seriously reduce the Reef’s resilience.
1.2
The World Heritage Committee recognised this new threat and in 2012
expressed "extreme concern" for the future of the Reef. After an
extensive monitoring mission, clear recommendations were made by the World
Heritage Committee to avoid the Great Barrier Reef being placed on the World
Heritage In Danger list. Sadly, there has been limited progress in acting on
those recommendations, leading the Australian Greens to introduce this bill -
which would implement four of the key recommendations of the World Heritage
Committee through our national environment laws. In evidence, the Law Council
of Australia and the Environmental Defenders Offices accepted that the bill was
an accurate reflection of, and an appropriate and proportionate response to,
those World Heritage Committee recommendations.
1.3
Yet the Senate Committee’s recommendations partially support acting on
only one of these recommendations. While the Senate Committee recommends
confining port development to existing ports until the strategic assessment is
completed, it fails to recommend acting on the World Heritage Committee’s
recommendation to put in place a moratorium on all developments that will
impact the Reef until the strategic assessment is complete, to restrict all
damaging port expansions, and to ensure that no development is approved where it
does not deliver an overall net benefit for the Reef.
1.4
While the Senate Committee’s recommendations are welcome, they fall
sadly short of the action we so urgently have to take if we want the Great
Barrier Reef to survive this century.
1.5
A more detailed discussion of the Senate Committee’s findings follows.
1.6
The Australian Greens welcome the Senate Committee’s findings on the
evidence submitted to the inquiry that:
- the scientific evidence of the deterioration of the Great Barrier
Reef, particularly over the past 20 years, seems to be an indication that the
existing regulatory framework may not be sufficient to protect the Reef's
outstanding universal values [para 3.116]
-
the committee cannot ignore the scientific evidence of the
considerable direct and cumulative impacts associated with port development and
expansion in the Great Barrier Reef region, including the associated dredging,
dumping and increased shipping.. [and] therefore that port development and related
activities in the Great Barrier Reef region should be regarded with great
caution. [para 3.117]
- the concerns from the resources and ports industry about the
potential economic impacts of the bill.. need to be balanced against the
interests of other important industries in the region that are reliant on the
health of the Great Barrier Reef, particularly the tourism, fishing and seafood
industries. [para 3.118]
- the committee is not convinced by evidence from the ports
industry that ports in the Great Barrier Reef region have been well managed to
date from an environmental perspective. [para 3.126]
- one of the World Heritage Committee's key requests was to not
permit any further port development or associated infrastructure outside
existing major port areas in or near the Great Barrier Reef, and to ensure that
development is not permitted if it would impact on the values of the Great
Barrier Reef. In this regard, the committee acknowledges evidence received that
the bill is an appropriate response to the recommendations of the World
Heritage Committee [para 3.115]
1.7
We welcome the recommendation that port developments be confined to
existing (already developed) major port areas until the strategic assessment
currently underway is complete. The communities fighting to protect the Fitzroy
Delta and the endangered snubfin dolphin will be thrilled with this
recommendation by the Committee. However the Government has previously taken
the position that without amending our environment law, a moratorium would not
be enforceable and projects for developments anywhere along the Great Barrier
Reef coast will continue to go through the assessment process unimpacted by the
findings of the strategic assessment. Further, the World Heritage Committee
clearly requested that port developments outside existing major port areas be
permanently off limits, not just until the strategic assessment is completed –
this is reiterated in its draft decision for consideration in Cambodia next
week. We implore the Government to act urgently on this issue.
1.8
The Greens position on developments within current major port areas is
reflected in this bill, and intends to reflect the World Heritage Committee’s
recommendation that no there should be no new developments approved that would impact
individually or cumulatively on the OUV of the property, or compromise the
Strategic Assessment. As such recommendation two of the Committee’s report,
which foresees damaging projects continuing to be approved without any
amendments to strengthen protections for the Reef, falls short of what the
World Heritage Committee has said is needed. This recommendation also risks
entrenching the dangerous culture within Australian environment regulation that
all projects must go ahead, and community and expert concerns can be allayed by
“stringent conditions” – we urge the Government to urgently reject this culture
and entrench protection and conservation, not regulated destruction. The Reef
is too precious to lose.
1.9
We welcome the Committee’s finding in para 3.123 that sea dumping of
dredge spoil should not occur in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area,
and the recommendation that regulation of sea dumping be reviewed. This bill
does not address sea dumping specifically rather, in line with the World
Heritage Committee’s recommendations, the bill proposes to prohibit all
developments (including dredging and spoil dumping) that would significantly
impact the Outstanding Universal Value of the Reef.
1.10
It needs to be noted, however, that offshore dumping of dredge spoil is,
under the current laws already intended to be an option of last resort, yet an
extraordinary 22 million cubic metres of dredge spoil has been approved for
dumping within the world heritage area since 2000. In light of this, we would
hope that how these “last resort” provisions have been applied in the past, and
how they need to be urgently tightened is a particular subject of this review.
1.11
Based on the available science it is already the Greens’ policy position
that the Reef should be free from the dumping of dredge spoil, and that no more
offshore dumping within the world heritage area should be approved.
1.12
We agree with the committee that evidence presented by industry that
ports in the Great Barrier Reef region have been well managed from an
environmental perspective was far from convincing, and welcome any steps that
increase scrutiny of the management of Gladstone harbour, which has been the
subject of local and global concern.
1.13
The Senate Committee cited concerns with the drafting of 24G which
proposes a process for the established of a net benefit test to ensure that
only projects that deliver a net benefit for the Reef are approved. We note
that this provision intends to implement a recommendation of the World Heritage
Committee, and in fact this is one of the few recommendations made by the World
Heritage Committee in its 2012 recommendations that the Government has
committed to implementing. In its state party report to the Committee, of
February 2013, the Government stated:
1.14
Developments will only be approved subject to robust and best-practice
conditions that ensure that the integrity of the property is preserved, that
any remaining unavoidable impacts are minimised, and any residual impacts are
offset in a way that promotes a net benefit overall.[1]
1.15
Given the World Heritage Committee’s request, the Government’s
commitment, and most particularly the high risks that come with allowing any
kind of offsetting of potentially irreplaceable values within the world
heritage area, it would seem only appropriate to increase the rigour and
transparency with which this commitment to ‘net benefit’ is implemented.
1.16
On World Environment Day two weeks ago, 150 scientists from 33
Australian institutions, along with a number of prominent international
researchers from Natural History Museum of London and the University of
California, Berkeley issued a statement stating the additional pressures from
the expansion of coastal ports and industrial development either immediately
adjacent to, or within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area will
exacerbate impacts upon an ecosystem already in decline.
1.17
The inquiry into this bill has given the community and our best reef
scientists a critical opportunity to put to our nation’s leaders, and on the
public record, their serious concerns about the huge threats to the Great
Barrier Reef posed particularly by industrialisation of the Reef coast, and the
steps we urgently need to take to protect the Reef.
1.18
We would like to thank the Committee Chair, committee members and the
secretariat for facilitating such a thorough inquiry process that allowed
evidence from the community, experts and industry to be presented and carefully
examined by the Committee.
1.19
There are innumerable experts and community members working hard across
Australia to secure better understanding and political action to save our Reef.
We’d like to warmly acknowledge their tireless work and invaluable
contributions to this inquiry.
1.20
With the World Heritage Committee meeting in Cambodia only a week from
the release of this report, it will be interesting to see what the world
community, free from the pressures of an excessively influential fossil fuel
lobby that too often overshadows long term sustainable decision making in our
country, believes is needed to ensure the Reef survives this century.
1.21
The Greens believe our environment laws are failing to protect the Reef.
The Reef is too precious to lose - this bill presents the opportunity to lock
in the protection the Reef urgently needs, and safeguard the 54,000 people
whose jobs rely on a healthy reef - not a World Heritage In Danger reef.
1.22
The Australian Greens commend this bill to the Senate.
Senator Larissa Waters
Senator for Queensland
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