Mr KELVIN THOMSON (4:01 PM) —I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2002-2003 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2002-2003. I particularly want to talk this afternoon about our present direction on Australia's environmental policies and to map out a future course. Let me make two opening remarks before I get into a more conceptual piece. If you looked at the House of Representatives Notice Paper, you would think that Australia was an industrial relations basket case. I admit that the agenda for this week has been somewhat altered, but the Notice Paper lists five workplace relations bills for debate next week: the Workplace Relations Amendment (Protection for Emergency Management Volunteers) Bill 2003, the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transmission of Business) Bill 2002, Workplace Relations Amendment (Simplifying Agreement-making) Bill 2002, the Workplace Relations Amendment (Choice in Award Coverage) Bill 2002 and the Workplace Relations Amendment (Award Simplification) Bill 2002. On this week's paper, there is also the Workplace Relations Amendment (Termination of Employment) Bill 2002, Workplace Relations Amendment (Compliance with Court and Tribunal Orders) Bill 2003 and Workplace Relations Amendment (Improved Remedies for Unprotected Action) Bill 2002.

The situation is pretty similar on the Senate's order of business. There is the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 [No. 2], the Workplace Relations Amendment (Secret Ballots for Protected Action) Bill 2002 [No. 2] and the Workplace Relations Amendment (Prohibition of Compulsory Union Fees) Bill 2002 [No. 2]. If you looked at the Notice Paper and the order of business, you really would think, from that focus on the part of the government, that we are living in a workplace relations nightmare—an industrial relations basket case—whereas the government frequently informs us that there is very little going on in the way of industrial action.

By comparison, the agenda for many other policy areas—including the environment, my own area of portfolio responsibility—is threadbare. Next to nothing in the way of legislation in that area is coming forward. Compared with our industrial relations situation and with many other portfolios, the environment is an area of real stress and difficulty. That has been pointed out by independent reports such as the State of the environment report, which was released last year; the land and water audit; and information put forward by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the CSIRO and a host of other independent and authoritative sources. All those independent assessments said that there are real problems. I intend to turn to them in more detail shortly. It really is astonishing to see this government's legislative priorities according to the Notice Paper.

The other introductory comment I want to make concerns the issue of ethanol. Since ethanol levels in motor vehicle and other engines have been noted at levels of up to 20 per cent, motorists and consumers generally have been concerned about this issue. Motor vehicle manufacturers have said that ethanol at levels in excess of 10 per cent could damage motor vehicle engines and that use at this level would void manufacturers warranties. Major motoring organisations around the country—the NRMA et cetera—have called for a 10 per cent cap on ethanol levels to protect motorists.

In September last year, Labor acted on those legitimate concerns by announcing a clear policy on ethanol content in petrol. We would cap the ethanol content at 10 per cent and we would require labelling where ethanol levels exceeded five per cent—a clear policy to protect motorists and consumers. Did the Liberal government adopt this policy? No. Did it take any action at all? No. Treasurer Costello said that motorists should be careful, that they should not buy petrol with too much ethanol in it. How are they expected to know, when the federal government has failed to use its powers to require labelling? The Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Dr Kemp, said that action was a matter for the states—a classic piece of buck-passing.

The Howard government commenced a fuel sampling program in April 2002. It tested 520 fuel samples from service stations across Australia. Of those, 42 samples—or eight per cent—contained ethanol. Most of those had ethanol contents of between 15 and 20 per cent, while several had ethanol contents of more than 20 per cent. Most of the results above 10 per cent were from New South Wales. This information was released to the opposition in answer to questions we asked at Senate estimates hearings. The Howard government, having done this testing, has been in the unique position of knowing that petrol with ethanol content in excess of 10 per cent was out there in the marketplace, but it has refused to tell anybody about it or to do anything about it. The way the government has sat on its hands over the ethanol issue is improper and inappropriate.

Why hasn't the government been prepared to take action on ethanol? Why hasn't it been acting in the best interests of motorists and consumers? Perhaps the answer lies in the AEC return from Manildra Flour Mills for 2001-02, which shows that since the 2001 federal election Manildra has donated over $70,000 to the Liberal Party and $52,000 to the National Party—and, in case anyone is interested, nothing to the Labor Party. Manildra, run by Dick Honan, a good friend of the Prime Minister's, is Australia's largest ethanol producer. Australia needs a Prime Minister, a Treasurer and an environment minister who will make decisions based on the best interests of motorists and consumers, not on political donations received.

I said that I wanted to make some remarks about environmental issues in Australia more broadly. I first became interested in environmental issues as a boy. I got interested in Australian birds, plants and animals, and I became involved in efforts to protect them through protecting Australian bushland. When I was a teenager, I got involved in the conservation issues of 1969 and 1970 in Victoria—the protection of the Little Desert and the Lower Glenelg. It was indeed these interests which led me into politics, and many years later I was delighted to be given the opportunity to serve as shadow minister for sustainability and the environment in Simon Crean's shadow cabinet.

Australia is unique. It is one of a handful of countries with mega-diverse flora and fauna. For example, it has over 700 different species of birds. It is particularly unusual in being a politically stable country with mega-diverse flora and fauna—for example, the northern part of our country has tropical rainforests and Cape York Peninsula has tropical savanna. Other areas of the world with similar botanical regions, such as the Amazon Basin, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, simply do not have a similar level of political stability. This is, by any yardstick, a ripper country. Anyone who is born in Australia or who comes to live here has pretty much won Tatts Lotto.

When we ask ourselves what it is that is so special about Australia or when we ask migrants and tourists what it is that they love about Australia or, for those of us who have had the opportunity to travel overseas, when we ask what it is that is different about Australia compared with other countries, one of the first things that comes to mind is the quality of our environment—the quality of our air, the quality of our drinking water, our unspoilt beaches and our unique and diverse wildlife. All these things make Australia a special place, and having these things imposes on us a special obligation to protect them and to hand them on to our children in as good a state as we found them. We have an obligation to protect our environment for our children and, indeed, to protect it on behalf of the rest of the world.

Australia can and should be an environmental showcase. We have a wonderfully diverse array of habitats. We have ancient and beautiful flora and fauna. We have breathtaking scenery—mountains and beaches which stir and invigorate the soul and deserts and plains which calm and repair it. Notwithstanding European settlement, we are still in the position of having cleaner air, purer water and more unspoilt beaches than any other country on earth. But we will not keep these things just by sitting on our hands. They are threatened by climate change, by indiscriminate land clearing, by profligate use of water, by erosion and by salinity. I believe that the biggest environmental issues confronting Australia are climate change, land clearing and our use of water.

I mentioned earlier the State of the environment report released last year. It must serve as an urgent wake-up call for all of us. The report details a litany of failures. Increasing areas are affected by salinity and land degradation—dryland salinity is predicted to affect two million hectares of native vegetation by 2050 and 5.7 million hectares are now affected by or at risk of salinity. Greenhouse gas emissions are increasing—in 1998 they were 16.9 per cent higher than in 1990. With regard to land clearing, only four other countries exceeded our rate of clearance of native vegetation in 1999. Around 400,000 hectares of native vegetation are cleared in Australia every year, which in turn kills up to 10 million birds, including threatened species. We have unsustainable levels of fishing in some fisheries, and sediment and nutrients from land based activities are placing pressure on coral reefs. The rate of production of non-renewable energy is growing faster than the rate of production of renewable energy, and we have the highest per capita level of hay fever sufferers in the world. We have significant increases in the extraction of surface water for irrigation, and we have declining surface water quality.

In launching the report, Professor Bruce Thom said that its primary finding was that Australia is still not sustainable in environmental terms. There is little evidence to suggest that we have made any headway since the last State of the environment report in 1996. For every step forward, we appear to have taken many more backwards. I believe we have to tackle these problems, but I believe that the task need not be to our economic detriment. In the words of former US President Bill Clinton, `If we do it right, protecting the climate will yield not costs, but profits; not burdens, but benefits; not sacrifice, but a higher standard of living'. There is a huge body of business evidence now showing that energy savings give better service at lower cost with higher profit.

One of the critical issues confronting Australia today is water. This year, 2003, is the International Year of Fresh Water. We have just been experiencing one of the worst droughts on record, and many of Australia's river systems are in poor and declining health. We need to use 2003 to devote much more attention to the health of our river systems. A key new year's resolution, if you like, for 2003 must be to secure more water for the Murray-Darling Basin. The mouth of the Murray River would now be closed if it were not for dredging. We have scientists estimating that, unless we do something urgently, Adelaide water will be undrinkable two days out of five within 20 years.

Scientists tell us that the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin have a moderate chance of survival if we deliver an additional 1,500 gigalitres of water and even less chance if we do not. The federal government, in consultation and partnership with the states, must deliver a long-term plan which will support the provision of 1,500 gigalitres of extra water for the Murray-Darling Basin over the next 10 years. We need to act to secure and restore the health of our river systems, by guaranteeing water flows to ensure basic river health, providing flexibility of water allocation that recognises that natural flows vary seasonally and over time and clarifying water access entitlements and the responsibilities that go with those entitlements.

Governments can find solutions. The once mighty Snowy River had become a trickle but the New South Wales and Victorian governments together have started putting water back into the Snowy to ensure that it will flow again. In the International Year of Fresh Water, we need a national water policy. Our task is to find water for our farmers and irrigators, environmental flows for our stressed rivers and sustainable supplies for our cities and urban industries. Last year's national land and water resources audit found that 84 of Australia's surface water management areas are either close to or overused compared with their sustainable flow regimes. Many river basins in New South Wales have a greater than 100 per cent water diversion as a percentage of sustainable flow regime. There are too many nutrients in 43 river basins, water is excessively turbid in parts of 41 basins and water is too saline in 24 basins. In much of the state of Victoria, water combines all three of these problems. I believe the Year of the Outback was a disaster for the outback. We need to make sure that the International Year of Fresh Water is a year of progress for our stressed river systems.

I want to talk next about the related issues of salinity and land clearing. If we are serious about salinity, we must tackle its principal cause, which is land clearing. The best way to prevent salinity is to control land clearing. Unregulated land clearing is the principal cause of rising salt levels in our soils and rivers. It also destroys the habitats of birds and animals and degrades the land, and cleared and rotting vegetation contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Unless we are able to control land clearing, we will face even greater devastation and loss of productive land, continuing greenhouse gas emissions and the extinction of a range of native birds, plants and animals. Since European settlement, Australia has cleared 90 per cent of native vegetation in the eastern temperate zone, 50 per cent of rainforests and one-third of forest or woodland.

Back in August last year, the actor Jack Thompson spoke stirringly at the National Press Club, calling on the government to control land clearing. Some of the disturbing statistics on land clearing that he highlighted included the following: a piece of land the size of a football field is lost to salinity every day, 60 per cent of coastal wetlands in southern Australia have been lost and 20 billion trees have been cleared since 1788, with over 70 per cent of Australia's native vegetation cleared or substantially modified. Thousands of volunteers plant hundreds of thousands of trees each year on days like National Tree Day. They know that we have a problem. But, because the laws preventing indiscriminate land clearing are inadequate, for every tree planted by volunteers, 100 are cut down. We need to stop the year in, year out decline in our native vegetation cover.

I want to turn now to the critical global issue of climate change. The CSIRO has reported that New South Wales will be 2.7 degrees Celsius warmer by 2050, with double the number of droughts. The number of Sydney days over 35 degrees Celsius will rise by 50 per cent. Insurance and reinsurance companies the world over are already taking a bath as a result of the increasing frequency of extreme weather events—

Mr Georgiou —Was that a pun?

Mr KELVIN THOMSON —Indeed. We have had cyclones, storms, floods, bushfires and the like. A document was released by the environment minister at the end of last year entitled Living with climate change: an overview of potential climate change impacts on Australia. The following were some of its findings. Firstly, Australia's water supply and hydrological systems are likely to become increasingly vulnerable to climate change due to projected drying trends over much of the continent, with stream flows in parts of the Murray-Darling Basin decreasing by as much as 45 per cent by 2070 and increased river salinity and saltwater intrusions to ground water from rising sea levels. Secondly, natural ecosystems may undergo significant and irreversible damage, with the World Heritage listed wet tropics of Queensland potentially reduced by as much as 50 per cent and endemic species decreasing their current range size by 63 per cent. Thirdly, the RAMSAR-listed Macquarie Marshes, semipermanent and ephemeral wetland vegetation, may reduce by up to 40 per cent of their original area by 2030, resulting in less frequent breeding events and local extinctions.

The report recognised that we will get natural adaptation, but that will probably be too slow to avert a decline in the quality of our coral reefs, with increased incidence of coral bleaching, damage from cyclones and reduced growth rates from higher CO2 levels. At the other end of the spectrum, the report indicated that the alpine ecosystems are highly vulnerable to climate change, predicting that a 1.8 degree Celsius temperature increase will cause snow areas to decline by two-thirds by 2030, significantly reducing alpine habitats. This finding was reinforced by the Victorian government's Alpine resorts 2020 report, which shows that climate change is soon to have a significant effect on Victoria's snowfields, with a reduction in snow cover at alpine resorts predicted within 20 years.

In south-west Western Australian, a study on climate variability and change found that there has been a decrease of up to 20 per cent in winter rainfall over the past 30 years. It has been predicted that a long-term decline in rain in the south-west will occur between now and 2070. An increase in temperature since 1960 has already occurred and a further increase of up to three degrees in the average maximum is predicted over the next 68 years. The conditions for drought are going to worsen over the next half a century, and climate change is resulting in conditions that are more variable and less predictable than they have been previously. South-west Western Australia has, in effect, suffered 25 years of drought conditions—that is climate change, clear and simple.

The work by the CSIRO makes it clear that, if we do not do something to curb it, climate change will make our future droughts more frequent and more severe. Australia can and should be an environmental showcase. If we take action to halt land clearing, if we take action to contain greenhouse gas emissions and to curb climate change and if we use our water more wisely, we will become an environmental showcase. We need to resolve to do everything we can to see that we do become an environmental showcase and to ensure that we can pass this beautiful country on to our children in at least as good a condition as we found it.