Senator COOK (12:59 PM) —Before I turn to my substantive remarks, I acknowledge the last speech and say that the success in winning this contract was a joint national effort. I sometimes think it is a failure in this chamber that we do not acknowledge the bipartisan nature of that support. Certainly Premier Geoff Gallop played a decisive role—

Senator Ian Macdonald —He acknowledged Richard Court.

Senator COOK —That is right. But then to assume that the Labor government of Western Australia played no role is, in fact, not to objectively present the reality. As someone who lobbied in Beijing in support of that project, I say it was a worthy success. All of us played our part and I think the unsung hero of this lobbying exercise was David Irvine, the Australian Ambassador to China, to whom I now pay tribute and who played an on-the-ground, critical role in pulling together all of the interests to make sure that Australia, as a national entity, was properly represented.

Most Australians have heard of the Ningaloo Reef but very few have visited it. That is not surprising; it is among the most isolated natural wonders of the world. It is 1,200 kilometres north of Perth in a region of very low population. About 3,000 people live along its 260-kilometre length, almost all of them in Exmouth, with a small population at Coral Bay and a scattering of people at ecotourism facilities and cattle stations on what is one of Australia's most remote coastlines. The reef is magnificent. It presents as a broken line of coral beginning in Exmouth Gulf, hooking around the headland of the North West Cape then running parallel to the coast down to Gnarraloo Station. The Ningaloo Marine Park covers nearly all of this area, stopping at Amherst Point some 50 kilometres south of Coral Bay. From the shore, the reef appears as a line of white water and breaking surf out to sea and close in to the beach. Waters of startling clarity, whale sharks, dugongs, all manner and colour of tropical fish and the brilliant light display that occurs annually when the coral spawns are features of the reef.

It is Labor policy that the reef should be a World Heritage site—and so it should be. Around Perth these days, the most common bumper sticker one will encounter is a sticker that bears the legend `Save Ningaloo: stop the resort'. Today, I want to speak to both of those propositions: how to protect the reef and how to manage the mounting pressures for tourist development. The geographic isolation of Ningaloo is probably the greatest single reason why it continues to be in relatively pristine condition today. If it were located closer to a larger centre of population, it would now be home to a thriving tourist industry. But that isolation is less and less true now than it ever was. Over recent decades, distance has shrunk, population pressure has grown and the infrastructure in the region has improved—it includes Australia's largest airport at Learmonth, an airport that can land any type of aircraft up to but not including the space shuttle.

Tourism underpins the economy of a lot of the regions of Australia and is beginning to develop in this remote locality as well. As baby boomers near retirement, an increasing number of superannuants are wintering in the near north. Exmouth's population, for example, goes from a base year-round population of 2,800 to 7,000 residents when it gets cold and wet in southern Australia. The most common vehicle encountered on the road to Coral Bay is a gleaming new four-wheel drive with a superannuant at the wheel, aluminium tinnie on the roof rack, towing a caravan with a couple of bikes attached to the rear of the caravan. It is a destination of choice for a lot of retiring Australians.

If you add to those agents of change the human, understandable, insatiable desire and curiosity that we have to marvel at the wonders of nature, it is clear that the relatively untouched nature of Ningaloo will come under mounting pressure to change in the near future. Indeed, to some extent, an unintended consequence of the campaign against the Mauds Landing proposition makes this point. No doubt the sponsors of the campaign are driven by high-minded ideals. Their approach has been to advertise the magnificence of Ningaloo and then link that magnificence to the claim that the resort will degrade these rare ecological values. That tactic has resulted in the best advertising campaign the reef has ever had, an advertising campaign that is a tourism promoter's dream and which makes Paul Hogan's `Put a shrimp on the barbie' pale in significance and impact.

Against this background, the public policy question to consider here is: do we have in place an appropriate structure to protect the reef and manage the pressures inevitably mounting for greater access and more development? I think that is, front and centre, the public policy question we need to face. I agree with the first proposition on that bumper sticker: `Save Ningaloo'. That, I believe, is the predominant public sentiment in Western Australia and elsewhere in Australia. Ningaloo Reef has to be managed to protect its values and to preserve its uniqueness. The question is: how do we best do that? At present, the key agency for doing it is the Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management under the marine park authorities act, but it is not alone. Other portfolios directly engaged are the Department of the Environment and Heritage, which administers the WA Marine Parks and Reserves Authority, the Department of Fisheries, the Department for Planning and Infrastructure—which contains the Pastoral Lands Board—the Water Corporation, and, at a further remove, Main Roads Western Australia and possibly, at a stretch, the Department of Minerals and Petroleum Resources.

The marine parks act has jurisdiction up to the high watermark. The land based activities contiguous with the reef are the responsibility of the planning department and other departments, as well as of the Shire of Gascoyne. The Commonwealth is in the act too but in a passive way. The Commonwealth has a marine parks reserve, which appears as a duplicate of the state reserve, although the Commonwealth does not, as I understand it, make a financial contribution to the upkeep and policing of the values of the reef.

To `save' Ningaloo, I think it is desirable to create one single authority with overarching power for all activities related to the reef and the belt of land that parallels it. A model for such an authority could be the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which applies to our most outstanding natural wonder, the Great Barrier Reef. Let me be clear: I am not suggesting yet another regulatory authority which will add to the confusion and duplication that exists; rather, a one-stop shop that discharges all responsibilities with all agencies and which operates under a clear charter of principles that the community can support and that uphold the value and importance of the reef—a charter that reassures the public that the interests of the reef, in all its manifestations, are paramount. If World Heritage listing, as Labor wants, is achieved, that body is ready-made to protect its essential values and to be the agency that reports to the World Heritage List. I put forward this idea as a constructive suggestion to meet the community's desire to protect the reef and the community's understandable desire to see the reef. If there are better suggestions, I would be pleased to fold my argument in favour of them, but I think that this matter is now becoming a central matter of some importance in Western Australia.

I now turn to the second part of the bumper sticker: `stop the resort'. The nature of the campaign that we are seeing to stop the resort is orthodox from an environmental point of view. It is notable that it is a well-funded, slick campaign. It links the reef's beauty, natural wonder, whale sharks and fish life to a specific development. From my point of view, it lacks conviction when you compare the 260 kilometres of basically uninhabited coastline with the small size of the reef development that is being proposed. The reef development is not on the shoreline; it is behind the line of sandhills that act as a buffer between the proposed resort and the watermark.

In this speech I do not intend to make a case for or against the resort, but I make this point: the proposal is undergoing an environmental impact study by the relevant state agency charged with doing such studies to objectively assess whether there are environmental difficulties with the proposal. I think we should await the outcome of that study and, when the facts are before us, then draw conclusions. Having said that, I want to make some points. Firstly, if there is a case against the Mauds Landing project, by the same criteria there is no case for the Coral Bay development. The Coral Bay development exists; it is a development in which you can step from the beach right onto the reef. Mauds Landing, as I have said, is behind a line of sandhills, and the reef is four kilometres offshore from where the development is proposed.

The Coral Bay community has grown up with a freebooting, outback entrepreneurship as its guiding light. It has grown up over the years without much regulation and as a consequence there is over it a number of significant environmental questions. It is imperative to answer those questions directly and honestly. I note that the state government has under way a process in which it expects to do that, and I hope that it resolves those questions. But if there are problems with Coral Bay—and that needs to be addressed—that of itself does not justify other developments on the coast. The campaign sticker that I referred to would be better if it said, `Save Ningaloo: clean up Coral Bay.'

The second point is that the campaign against this development is an expensive one. There is a well-founded rumour—I cannot vouch for it but I repeat it, qualified because I cannot establish it; nonetheless, it is well founded—that $500,000 of that campaign has been contributed by a body called the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. That body is a high-minded, idealistic operation and it requires great community support and approval, but it is not a disinterested spectator; it is also a developer and it favours an ecotourist type development. While it is clear, I think, that the Mauds Landing project is opposed by the celebrated Western Australian author Tim Winton, he seems to support that type of ecotourism development.

The debate we are having is not about whether there is development or no development; it is about what sort of development should occur. That is a sensible debate to have and we should engage in it. It puts the whole issue of the future of Ningaloo into some perspective and it realistically recognises the pressure from the public to view and to have access, in some guarded form, to the reef. It is why there ought to be a clear set of principles governing the management of the reef which can be proclaimed and affirmed bipartisanly and by a large majority of Western Australians by saying, `These are the values we want to protect under such an authority.' It is why there ought to be an identifiable authority in place to enforce and police those values—an authority which is accountable through ministers to the parliament, but a one-stop shop to clear all access and development issues.

Let me conclude on this point: the argument about what type of development. I favour ecotourism development, but the high cost of access to remote ecotourism resorts means that it is the privilege of the wealthy, not ordinary families—mums and dads with kids on school holidays—in the state of Western Australia. There is a place for that development, but the overriding question is: how do we manage to meet the needs of ordinary families who cannot afford the high prices for those remote retreats but do want to meet the aspirations of their children to see the natural wonders and beauties of this magnificent country?