Senator MURRAY(7.18 p.m.) —I rise to speak on the Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management and on the issues of land management, biodiversity protection and ecologically sustainable development in WA. The creation and ongoing operation of the Department of Conservation and Land Management, known by its Orwellian acronym of CALM, is a matter of long-running conflict in WA. CALM was created by the Burke Labor government in 1985 through an amalgamation of the forests department, the National Parks Authority and the wildlife section of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. For many years, it has been run by our own version of J. Edgar Hoover, director Sid Shea. I must stress that I compare the two in terms of longevity and the ability to survive successive administrations—and not for any other reason.

Under the CALM act, CALM has paramount responsibility for the ecologically sustainable management of a large portion of WA, including national parks, nature reserves, conservation parks, certain pastoral leases and state forests. It has responsibility also for administering the state's Wildlife Conservation Act. CALM therefore has a critical role in the conservation of WA's unique and now threatened biodiversity and in the management of many of our most outstanding natural environments and landscapes. It also has a major responsibility in terms of the protection of Aboriginal cultural heritage.

Let me say at this point that most people within CALM—and many people who have been with CALM but have since left—are people of the highest integrity and professionalism. They are trying, or have tried, in difficult circumstances to hold CALM to its fundamental legal and ethical responsibilities. It is most unfortunate that, since its inception, CALM has been dominated by an industrial forestry ethic; an ethic which promotes heavy-handed intervention in, and manipulation and exploitation of, natural systems and resources. This internal industrial forestry ethic, when combined with the economic rationalist mind-set of successive governments, has created a department with an aggressively entrepreneurial approach; an approach which sees the public lands, public resources and natural systems it manages primarily as assets for sale or commercial exploitation.

CALM, this government agency, is centrally involved in a range of commercial and entrepreneurial activities including: the logging, via contractors, of native forests and the sale to industry at ridiculously subsidised prices of native forest logs for woodchipping, saw timber and industrial charcoal; the promotion of sales of WA native forest timber overseas, again at ridiculously subsidised prices; commercial ventures with overseas pulp and paper corporations for the establishment and management of blue gum plantations; the capture and sale of endangered species such as blue bonnet parrots and numbats; the sale of rights to the genetic resources of WA's unique native flora species such as smokebush; and the opening up of national parks to increased tourism, and the conversion of nature reserves to national parks to facilitate increased tourism.

Because of this large and growing portfolio of commercial ventures, there is a fundamental and schizophrenic conflict of interest within the department. It is both manager and exploiter, regulator and operator, custodian and developer, and is often solely or largely responsible for monitoring its own exploitative activities. This is why CALM can also be called `Genghis CALM'—a pillager or a conservationist, depending on the moment.

How does this conflict of interest play itself out? Let me give you an example. In February 1992, CALM released two documents for public comment: a draft nature conservation strategy for WA and a draft 10-year native forest management plan. The draft nature conservation strategy was intended to provide a comprehensive and soundly based strategy for protecting WA's immensely valuable and threatened biodiversity. It had an environmental motivation. The draft forest management plan proposed a further 10 years of massive logging operations in WA's native forests. It had an exploitative motivation.

The forest management plan—the exploitative one—was reviewed, finalised and under implementation within less than two years. The nature conservation strategy, on the other hand, still has not been finalised almost five years later. As well as this inherent conflict of interest, the aggressive, domineering, `we know best' approach of CALM gives rise to ongoing concerns over lack of accountability, internal censorship and suppression, and intimidation of critics.

Some examples of the internal censorship and suppression of CALM's scientific research have been published in national and international journals. I fear that this pressure upon scientists within CALM not to produce or publish information which contradicts CALM's reassurances about the sustainability of, for example, logging and prescribed burning, is a particularly insidious and demoralising aspect of CALM's modus operandi.

Let me give you an example of this process of censorship and suppression at work. In 1995, scientists at CALM's Science and Information Division wrote a research proposal that identified the need to study fox control in the northern jarrah forest because of concerns over declining numbers of the endemic mammal species known as the quokka. The research proposal stated:

CALM currently prescribe burns much of the jarrah forest for fuel reduction. In some areas creek lines are totally burnt. Quokkas now appear to be restricted to these areas and it is possible that this fire regime has contributed to the observed decline in quokka populations.

The clear implication in the research outline was that CALM's deliberately applied prescribed burning could be removing the thick creek line vegetation that was now the quokka's only protection against fox predation.

A couple of months later, one of CALM's publications, `CALM News', ran a story on the quokka titled `Quokkas alive and flourishing at Jarrahdale'. In this article, it is said that quokkas survive in the area because `densely grassed swamp areas would be difficult for foxes to penetrate'. Crucially, the article then goes on to state:

Wildfires however, do pose a serious threat to quokkas, as they destroy the protective vegetation and render them more susceptible to fox predation.

That is the very activity that CALM is undertaking. Not only has the CALM PR machine perverted the real concerns of the scientists by substituting `wildfires' for CALM's deliberate prescribed burning, although that is serious enough; what we also have as a result of this change in terms is a further implicit justification for a continuation of CALM's destructive prescribed burning activities, because CALM often defends its prescribed burning activities by claiming they prevent or lessen the impacts of wildfires. Very schizophrenic!

How does CALM get away with all this? Let us look at the recent example of the Court government's new salinity strategy. Here is a long-awaited strategy aimed at reversing serious land degradation problems in the agricultural region of WA. Although CALM has an important role in this region because of the small but very important areas of remnant bush and habitat it manages, it is not usually seen as the lead agency for rural land management. But surprise, surprise! CALM, under this new strategy, has effectively become the lead agency.

The CALM corporate PR machine has an ability to frighten and impress. Ministers and governments are supplied with endless, carefully stage managed public relations events organised for them by CALM—here a launch, there an award, everywhere a photo opportunity. Nowhere has this machine been used more than in the current state election, where CALM is well supporting the Liberal government's re-election campaign. The end result is that governments and ministers come and go, but CALM and its director get more power and more scope for ill-considered entrepreneurial activities, and continue to escape any real government or public scrutiny or accountability.

My concern, and that of the Australian Democrats, is to reform, as quickly as possible, this monster of strange origins and even stranger behaviour. The wonderful natural environment and biodiversity of the state of WA must not continue to be compromised and sold off for the sake of bureaucratic empire building, political convenience, political relations or political obligations. WA's natural environment, as the community and the tourism industry well understand, is the source of our greatest wealth.

If elected to the upper house at the forthcoming state election, the Australian Democrats will initiate a wide ranging Legislative Council inquiry into CALM. The Democrats will push for the creation of a genuine conservation department, truly dedicated to the ecologically sustainable management of our lands and wildlife. We will push for improved legislation to ensure that everyone knows what needs to be done and who must do it; and we will ensure that governments make decisions based on considerations other than their own short-term expediency.

We will also give close scrutiny to the relationship between successive state governments and WA's largest corporate entity, Wesfarmers-Bunnings. It is now a matter of record that Wesfarmers-Bunnings, which is WA's largest native forest woodchip company, is also an exceedingly large donor to the major political parties, especially the Liberal Party.