Mr KELVIN THOMSON (5:26 PM) —In speaking on the appropriation legislation, the area I want to focus on is the state of the environment. There was a report into the state of the environment—independently carried out for the government—released this afternoon by the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Dr David Kemp, and by Professor Thom, who is the chair of the committee which prepared this report. It is the first report of its kind for five years. The first State of the environment report was done in 1996. This is the State of the environment report prepared for the year 2001.

The report is a comprehensive catalogue of the failure by this government to address environmental issues, and it must serve as an urgent call to arms and as a wake-up call for both this government and the broader community. We have heard plenty of rhetoric from this government about environmental issues—its commitment to environmental issues via the Natural Heritage Trust and so on—during the course of the past few years, but the on-the-ground results, as indicated by this report, reveal a catalogue of failure. The report says, in its executive overview:

Indeed, Professor Thom said this afternoon that his primary finding was that we are still not sustainable in environmental terms. The report's executive overview says that pressures on the Australian environment continue to grow, that degradation of lands and waters remains of critical concern, especially in the intensive land-use zone upon which much of Australia's agriculture depends, and that population growth has particular effects on coastal Australia, with urban sprawl, high energy consumption, stormwater pollution of estuaries and coastal waters, and the continued decline of biodiversity as a result of land-clearing all arising from population and economic pressures. The report also notes the global pressures on us through global warming. It says that we cannot in isolation deal with this but points out that we have a responsibility to contribute to global solutions to these problems.

The report indicates concerns about the increased area of land affected by salinity and that some of our fisheries are not sustainable—so the old line that there are plenty more fish in the sea is no longer true in some areas. It expresses concern about the clearing of mature forests, woodlands and grasslands and points out that greenhouse gas emissions went up by some 16.9 per cent from 1980 to 1998. So, far from containing our greenhouse gas emissions—which is a necessary part of our contribution to dealing with the problems faced from climate change—they have gone up by 16.9 per cent.

The report says that Australia has the highest per capita incidence of hay fever sufferers. I have to say that I have been experiencing a few problems of that character myself in recent months, so I am apt to believe that conclusion. It also expresses concern about the loss of coastal habitat, the pressures on our coral reefs, the increased levels of nitrogen and phosphorous, and the net loss of vegetation—in particular, noting that broadacre land clearing is continuing in Queensland and New South Wales; indeed, the rate of land clearance has accelerated. Unfortunately, some people think that land clearing and poor land management practices are a thing of the past—when the pioneers did not know any better and they cleared the mallee, with the resultant problems of erosion and the like, and that now we know better—but in fact there has been as much land cleared during the last 50 years as during the 150 years before 1945. Indeed, as recently as 1999, there were only four countries in the whole world with a faster rate of clearing than ours, three of which were Bolivia, Brazil and the Congo.

There is also the problem of dryland salinity. The report says that `two million hectares of native vegetation will be cleared by 2050'. The report also expresses concern about the proposed demise of the Register of the National Estate, which it says will create gaps in the identification and conservation of heritage places. The state of the environment report also raises issues of resource consumption and other issues to do with urban life and our energy intensive ways of living and so on. So this is a substantial report; it is the first one we have had for five years but its bottom line is that the state of the natural environment has improved very little since 1996 and that, in some critical aspects, it has worsened.

As I said earlier, the report lists the clearing of mature forests, woodlands and grasslands for economic reasons as something that continues to raise many environmental concerns about the consequences of such actions on river water quality, soil quality and ecosystem loss in catchments and in areas far removed from the land clearing activities. As the report says:

Their conclusion on this front—and I am pleased to see that the government has endorsed this—is that we need to recognise that `the environment, including our cultural and natural heritage, is everyone's business'. I mentioned before that we have a very high per capita level of greenhouse gas emissions; indeed, the report notes that, since 1910, the average surface temperature in Australia has increased by 0.76 degrees Celsius, which is around the global temperature increase during this period of 0.6 to 0.7 degrees Celsius. We have also experienced a rise in the sea level during the last hundred years of around 12 to 16 centimetres. That is consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change global estimates for the last century of 10 to 20 centimetres.

One of the areas that is certainly of great concern to me and, I suspect, to all Australians is the pressure on Australia's coral reefs, which are of enormous value to us and to the wider world. Those pressures continue unabated from the downstream effects of land use and other human activities. Large nutrient loads of nitrogen and phosphorous are still being discharged into coastal and estuarine waters, both from point sources and from non-point sources.

Similarly, in the area of vegetation cover, we have a problem with land degradation, including erosion, still being a major contributor to turbidity, nutrients and pesticides going into waterways and a loss of soil fertility. These things are a matter of great concern. They suggest that, whatever the rhetoric from the Howard government has been on these issues, when you look at what is happening on the ground the situation is deteriorating. When we look at our land and the issue of salinity, at our surface water and groundwater quality—surface water quality has deteriorated further in many areas because of increasing salinity—at biodiversity, at the conservation of species and at the marine environment, all these areas are showing signs of deteriorating since the first report was conducted in 1996.

The report also expresses some concerns about pressure from human settlement. It says that we need to make these things more consistent with a sustainable environment. It says that most indicators of resource consumption continue to outpace population growth, that there is a high and increasing per capita energy use in human settlements leading to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions—particularly through electricity generation and transport usage—and that environmental noise and its effects on residents is increasing as a result of trends such as increased residential density, traffic volumes and the 24-hour city. I believe the government needs to respond urgently to the State of the environment 2001 report and to take the steps that need to be taken to ensure that our use of land, water and resources is, indeed, sustainable into the future.

I want to focus on one particular aspect of sustainability which has attracted quite a lot of attention in recent years, as it well should: that is, the issues of salinity, water quality and, in particular, the Murray-Darling Basin. The State of the environment report itself has some interesting comments to make in this area. It suggests that regulation, supported by compliance mechanisms, will be needed to improve environmental quality in some areas for land and water use. It says:

To their credit, a number of newspapers have been focusing public attention on issues to do with the Murray-Darling Basin. The Australian has carried a series of articles over time drawing to public attention some of the crises confronting the Murray-Darling Basin and raising issues concerning the health of the Murray River. Similarly, just over the last few days, a number of other newspapers have carried important reports adding to the store of public information on this urgent issue. For example, the Adelaide Advertiser today carries a front page report headed `100 years of talk, but we need action'. The environment reporter, Catherine Hockley, has a quite comprehensive set of articles in the Advertiser. Her report today says:

The Advertiser report continues:

Let me provide some information about the state of the basin: one of the basin's major storages, the Menindee Lakes in New South Wales, is almost dry for the first time in around a decade; irrigators in New South Wales and Victoria who use Murray water are facing water restrictions; demand for water for irrigation from the Murray between Echuca and Wentworth is exceeding flow; and, in South Australia, the flow of the River Murray is less than the amount of water being drawn from it. All of those things indicate a very serious situation indeed.

The Menindee Lakes are at 29 per cent capacity. Some lakes are completely dry; therefore, all the resident fish die. The Hume reservoir is now at only 29 per cent of capacity. As the Advertiser points out, there will be a meeting in the New South Wales river town of Corowa next month, on 12 April. That meeting of federal, state, land, water and environment ministers will be discussing the Murray River and, in particular, water allocations for it. It is absolutely essential that we get action out of that meeting to address some of the issues that I have outlined and which have been outlined in the State of the Environment report and in newspapers such as the Advertiser.

In the report of the Advertiser, I note a reference to the Australian Conservation Foundation's director, Don Henry, who said:

The Advertiser headline was `100 years of talk, but we need action,' and indeed we do. I am therefore disappointed to have come across the responses to estimates questions asked by Senator Bolkus last year concerning the issue of maintaining and upgrading the barrages in the Coorong, at the Murray River mouth, including for installation of fish passage. I mention this in particular because this question of being able to update and/or remove the locks, weirs and barrages along the river is indicated to be one of the ways in which the river can be saved.

The answer to questions asked by Senator Bolkus on this matter of costings was that, in March 2001, the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council agreed to commit $10 million for a structural works program to provide passage for fish on the River Murray from the Hume dam to the sea. This included an estimated budget of $2 million for the modification of the barrages on the River Murray, including the installation of fish passage; however, the structural options for these modifications have not yet been finalised. So, in short, nothing has been done.

Senator Bolkus also asked whether the government had been advised on any costings for replacing the barrages in the Coorong at the Murray River mouth with a new lock upstream. Once again, the answer was that replacing the barrages with a new lock or barrage was one option considered by the Lower Murray Environmental Scoping Study. The study did not include costings for the various options so, once again, no action has been taken on that front. He asked what estimates the government had received of the volume of fresh water that would be saved by returning the Coorong to estuarine conditions and was told that work is about to start on a project looking at the impact of a weir at Wellington on water savings and on water levels in the lower lakes, and that a response would be premature until the study is completed.

Once again, the kind of action or sense of urgency that we need to deal with this problem is simply lacking. Senator Bolkus also asked whether the government was aware of estimates of increased fishing industry productivity that would accrue from restoring the Coorong by relocating the barrages. Once again the answer was that the government had received no quantitative estimates of increased fishing productivity that would accrue from relocating the barrages. So, again, there is an unfortunate catalogue of inaction, of delay—of just sitting there—with substantial and pressing issues needing to be dealt with on the health of the Murray River.

The Adelaide Advertiser is not the only newspaper which has been pursuing this issue in recent times. I noted, for example, the Saturday Age had a book report concerning the history of the Murray River and its people. If you go back to 1937 there was a book called Water into Gold by Ernestine Hill who wrote:

The Age wrote:

Similarly, the Sunday Herald Sun carried an interesting couple of articles about the problem of salinity in a range of areas going beyond the Murray into western Victoria to areas that now have salt levels six times the level of the Dead Sea. So, it is significant that these newspapers are alerting the public to the issues of salinity and water quality. Concerted action, not rhetoric, is needed by this government. The government has to spend the money, take the action and take the hard decisions needed to protect the Murray-Darling Basin system. (Time expired)