Dr STONE (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) (5:36 PM) —This budget continues to provide for record levels of funding for the environment, natural resource and heritage needs around Australia. During its term in office, this government has spent a record amount to protect and restore the Australian environment. I think most Australians understand that in the last 200 or so years we have left an extraordinary legacy of soil and water degradation. We have a great deal to learn from our indigenous original owners about how to manage a very fragile environment, and a great deal of work needs to be done so we in fact can sustain our natural resource foundation in this country.

Where previous governments may not have understood that and certainly did not commit the resources, since 1996 this government has done an extraordinary job, firstly, in identifying significant amounts of funding and then, secondly, working in partnerships with other agencies, from local government communities to state governments, to make sure there is a holistic approach to natural resource management.

In particular, the $1.5 billion Natural Heritage Trust and the almost $1 billion allocated to greenhouse gas reduction programs are the largest environmental funding commitments in Australia's history. That is an extraordinary commitment of a government but, as I just mentioned, it is not an unrealistic amount of commitment, given the state of the environment in Australia. This year alone the government has allocated more than $880 million to the Environment and Heritage portfolio, including funding to the Australian Greenhouse Office, the National Oceans Office, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Heritage Commission.

As I mentioned before, in particular one of the reasons for the coalition's environmental success and its ability to leverage the dollars that the federal government has put into various projects has been the partnerships that we have nurtured and contracted with community, industry and state and local governments.

During the next 12 months, the framework for managing Australia's environment from the Commonwealth level through to the community level will in fact be strengthened and, in particular, that will be achieved through our Natural Heritage Trust. We have allocated over $361.3 million for trust projects in 2000-2001. These projects will continue the work undertaken through the trust program, such as Bushcare, Landcare, Murray-Darling Basin 2001 and Coast and Clean Seas. But the budget also provides $6.5 million over four years to implement the government's mandatory renewable energy targets and I will come back to those in a minute.

Australia is the first in the world to resource a greenhouse office. We have amongst our programs some of the first programs to address issues like renewing or saving used oil and returning it in re-useable form. We are already receiving commendations internationally for the amount of effort we are putting into dealing with the issues of climate change induced by human activities. The government has committed more than $1 billion to honour Australia's obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, and 2000-01 is the first year in which a full suite of greenhouse programs will be funded. In this budget year, the geenhouse measure totals will be over $200 million in funding. They include $6.5 million over four years towards meeting the national renewable energy target of 9,500 gigawatt hours a year. That is to be achieved by 2010. There is another $100 million for the greenhouse gas abatement program.

There is $66 million to help rural and regional Australians not connected to the grid to replace diesel generators with renewable sources of power. It is this government that understands better than any other government that there are a lot of people beyond the tram tracks. A lot of them have to depend on alternative sources of energy because they are way past the energy sources most of us take for granted. There is also $4 million for the photovoltaic rebate program supporting the use of systems for residential buildings. Those are just some of the commitments of this government through this budget that I am very proud to help with as a parliamentary secretary for the environment and heritage. Further on in this debate I may talk about some more of those budget areas.

This is an extraordinarily balanced budget. It is one that has seen increases in spending and one that has achieved a lot of commendation from those who understand the needs of natural resource management in a sustainable way in Australia.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.