Mark Butler, TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE ON LABOR'S PLANS TO PROTECT THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

Date:  10 November 2014

MARK BUTLER, SHADOW MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE: It’s a great pleasure to be here with Annastacia Palaszczuk, Curtis Pitt, and Jackie Trad from the State Opposition to make a very important announcement about the Great Barrier Reef, and ensuring that as far as we possibly can that future Australians and tourists from all around the world are able to enjoy one of the seven natural wonders of the world. It’s an enormous privilege, but also an enormous responsibility to have the stewardship of one of the seven natural wonders of the world, but we also know that Queensland gets a great dividend from this. There are almost two million visitors to the Reef every year. The latest study shows that tourism is worth about $6 bilion in economic activity every year and underpins the employment of about 60,000 workers here in Queensland. This is an incredibly important part of Queensland and also the broader national economy.

Unfortunately we also know that the Great Barrier Reef is in very poor health. We’ve heard report after report now for some years that we’ve lost as much as 50 per cent of the natural coral in the Reef over the last quarter of a century, and we know that the Reef is losing its capacity to bounce back in the face of regular storms and the impact of climate change. We also know that the World Heritage Committee is keeping a very close eye on the health of the Great Barrier Reef and will be making a decision next year on whether or not to list the Reef on the ‘In Danger’ list, a decision that, which if it is taken, would have very significant consequences for the tourism industry here in Far North Queensland.

We know from the report that the World Heritage Committee released earlier this year that they have been worried about the dumping of dredge spoil in the World Heritage area. They have been worried about the decision of the Abbott Government to hand over environmental protection powers to Campbell Newman. And they’ve been worried about the Queensland Ports strategy that the Newman Government has released, particularly the fact that it does not operate retrospectively to a range of projects that are currently on the books.

A Senate Inquiry recently had a very close look at the health of the Great Barrier Reef and made a number of recommendations. It dealt particularly with the growing controversy around the dumping of dredge spoil in the World Heritage area, a controversy which perhaps started with the dredging at Hay Point in 2006, and the fact that conditions in the Whitsundays area deteriorated within about 12 months. We’ve all heard from tourism and dive operators in that area now for some time about the very significant drop off in conditions in that part of the World Heritage area.

More recently, we’ve seen the controversy around the Abbot Point proposal to dredge three million cubic tonnes of material and dump that in the World Heritage area as well. We all welcome the possibility that that dumping will not proceed, but we heard in the latest outlook from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority that there are on the books now projects that will involve tens of millions of cubic metres of capital dredging in the marine park World Heritage area. We heard evidence to the Senate Inquiry that more than 40 million of those cubic metres would be proposed to be dumped in the World Heritage area if there is not a change in government policy.

Federal Labor today, joined by State Labor in Queensland, is announcing our policy that there be no further dumping of capital dredge spoil in the broader World Heritage area, not just the marine park, but the broader World Heritage area. If we’re elected in 2016, we’ll make the necessary legal changes to put that policy into practice. But I have to say that I hope that we won’t have to do that in 2016 because I call upon the Abbott Government to join us now and make this a joint ban by the two major parties of government in Australia so that we can present that as a joint position to the World Heritage Committee.

The eyes of the world are on Australia right now. They’re on Australia to demonstrate that we do take the health of the Great Barrier Reef seriously, and that we are able to take courageous policy decisions like the one that Annastacia and I are announcing today.

ANNASTACIA PALASZCZUK, LEADER OF THE QUEENSLAND STATE OPPOSITION: It’s a great pleasure to be here with Mark, Jackie and Curtis. I’m passionate about jobs and I’m passionate about the Great Barrier Reef. This announcement today is clearly a game-changer. This is a signal – not just to Queensland, not just to the rest of Australia, but to the world – that Labor maintains that the protection of the Great Barrier Reef must be our priority. It’s our environmental priority, but we also have a moral obligation to protect the Great Barrier Reef not just for now but for future generations. This is about State Labor working with Federal Labor to come up with an agreed policy that will enhance the Great Barrier Reef, improve water quality, and ensure that there is further job creation here that we’ll see over the decades to come.

Already some 60,000 people are employed in the tourism industry and in relation to the Great Barrier Reef. We know we need to do more and that is why, today, I am proud to say that Labor will take this stand. Labor will take this stand to make sure that the capital dredging spoil is not disposed in our World Heritage area. We know this is an important step. We’ve been talking at length to environmental groups. We have been listening to the community and this is what the community has been saying to us. They want us to take action and today I’m proud to be here to take those necessary steps to protect our Great Barrier Reef for future generations.

JACKIE TRAD, QUEENSLAND SHADOW MINISTER FOR ENVIRONMENT AND HERITAGE PROTECTION: Since 2008, both the Queensland Government and the Australian Government have been working and driving water quality improvements so that the water going into the Great Barrier Reef does not contain sediment loads which lead to turbidity and really does decay the health of the Great Barrier Reef. In that time there have been some marked gains, but they have been overshadowed. They have been eclipsed by the fact that capital dredge spoil has been permitted to be dumped in the World Heritage area. I’m very happy to be a part of this announcement today, an announcement where both Federal and State Labor together stand in opposition to allowing any more capital dredge spoil to be dumped in the World Heritage area. This will guarantee that jobs in the tourism industry will continue into the future. It will also guarantee to the Australian people, and to the people of Queensland, that they can trust the Labor Party when it comes to the management of the Great Barrier Reef.

JOURNALIST: Mark, why didn’t you impose a ban when you were in power? Also, you had an opportunity to reject the Abbot Point dredge proposal; why didn’t you do that?

BUTLER: When I was Minister just before the change of government and just before we moved into caretaker mode, I received a series of this reports – three days before we moved to caretaker period – which were prepared as part of a comprehensive strategic assessment that our Government and the Queensland Government had agreed to undertake as part of the World Heritage process. One of those reports cast some very serious doubt on the previous advice that had been given to me and to my predecessors about the impact of dumping dredge spoil in the World Heritage area. In particular, that report suggested that dredge spoil that was dumped in the World Heritage area would travel for further distances for longer periods of time and therefore have a more significant impact on the health of the Reef.

I took the view at that time that I should not make a decision about the Abbot Point proposal without putting that report out to the local community, stakeholders, to the proponents and to the environmental groups who had been watching this proposal very closely to get their advice about that new scientific piece of research. What we found since, and this was canvassed in the Senate inquiry, is that scientists are developing their thinking about the dumping of dredge material in the Reef very quickly. You’ve seen the Marine Park Authority and also AIMS [Australian Institute of Marine Science] and a number of other significant institutes saying we need to do more work to understand this, and so the Institute of Marine Science and AIMS and the Marine Park Authority are currently doing joint work to lift our understanding about research in this area. We take the view at the moment that at the very least on the basis of the precautionary principle to protect the Reef, we should take this decision to ban the dumping of capital dredge spoil. We will continue to look very closely at the work that AIMS and the Marine Park Authority are currently undertaking to see what other changes we might want to talk to the community about in this area. But, at the very least, the community and the proponents need to have the confidence of knowing that that 40,000 cubic tonnes or more of dredge spoil that could potentially be put into the World Heritage area if there is not a change of policy is not going to touch our Reef.

JOURNALIST: Will Labor try and get the Government to join the ban in dumping in the Reef marine park?

BUTLER: We take the view that the ban should extend beyond the marine park. It should extend to the broader World Heritage area. That part of the Far North Queensland coast that is listed as a World Heritage property. Now the Liberal Party might want to strip away 5,000 kilometres or so – which is the difference between the marine park and the World Heritage area. We take the view, that on the best advice that we have, that this ban should extend to the whole of the World Heritage area, which for example includes the port areas like Cairns. We want this to be a joint position of the major parties. We want it to be the position of the LNP and of Labor at state and federal levels so that everyone has confidence in Australia, and also that the world community has confidence that no more dredge spoil is going to be dumped in our Reef.

JOURNALIST: So just to clarify, you didn’t impose the overall ban when you were in power because you didn’t have enough information at the time? Is that what you’re saying?

BUTLER: Yes, the latest Senate inquiry that reported in September confirmed advice from a whole range of scientific bodies, most of them from Far North Queensland, that our understanding of dumping of dredge spoil into the World Heritage area is really still an ongoing piece of work. But what we do know from the outlook that’s only published every five years by the Marine Park Authority – which was published in the last few months – we do know that the Reef is in very poor health, and that local stressors like the dumping if dredge spoil or agricultural runoff are diminishing the Reef’s capacity to respond to events like storms and climate change. As Jackie said, there is very significant work being undertaken in the land sector. Farmers and graziers are working very hard to reduce the nitrogen that is running off of their properties into the Reef area. We think it would be a slap in their face to have that sector working so hard to reduce their impact on the Reef while at the same time not taking a courageous decision to reduce the amount of dredge spoil going into the Reef from the ports sector.

JOURNALIST: Is Labor happy with the Government’s consultation process with industry, the community and conservation groups to formulate their legal agreement?

BUTLER: Well we don’t understand what their process has been. As with so many other areas, the Federal Liberal Government does not have a transparent approach to policy making. We don’t understand what the Federal Liberal Party’s position is on this. Greg Hunt has said some encouraging things about his personal views on the dumping of capital dredge spoil on the World Heritage area, but there’s often a very significant distance between what Greg Hunt says on the one hand and official Abbott Government policy on the other. That is why I’m calling on the Abbott Government, not Greg Hunt, to adopt this as a joint Liberal and Labor position. We would very happily support them moving the amendments to the relevant legislation in the Federal Parliament so that that message can be given to the World Heritage Committee and to the Australian community.

JOURNALIST: [Inaudible]

CURTIS PITT, MEMBER FOR MULGRAVE: What we have at play right now in Cairns in the Trinity Inlet is a maintenance contract that goes up to 2020, which talks about only maintenance dredging. At the moment we are waiting to see the outcomes of the Environmental Impact Statement in terms of what this will mean for Trinity Inlet. This announcement today is about future expansion plans, not maintenance dredging, so maintenance dredging will be allowed to continue as per the contractual obligations. There has been some suggestion that the EIS may be looking at a series of sites on land for disposal, not at sea, and that’s encouraging, but we’re yet to see the details of that. What we do know is that the promise made by Campbell Newman before the last election was a promise of $40 million to dredge the inlet. Everyone, including insiders at Ports North, said that this figure is far too small. It’s certainly far too small if we’re to consider looking at land disposal. But it’s far too small even looking at the cheaper option of $100-120 million. So yet again another promise made on the run by Campbell Newman, of course [inaudible].

What this announcement today is about is making sure proponents are put on notice and have notice and certainty around what will happen. This announcement is far from the suggestion that we will not be having further port expansion or further dredging in our inlets such as Trinity Inlet. What it does say is that it needs to be done properly and that disposal will not be done under a Labor government at state and federal levels in a World Heritage area.

JOURNALIST: I thought part of the argument for offshore dumping was that it was a lot cheaper? So will this mean, if this policy was introduced, will it mean that it will potentially cost developers a lot more to expand or build ports along the Queensland coast?

PITT: Well there’s going to be a trade-off. Let’s look at the first very important number here. Let’s look at the figure of $6 billion – and that is what the Great Barrier Reef means to the Queensland economy and to the Australian economy. It’s very important to ensure that we continue to have those tourism jobs and those related industries. When it comes to what this is going to mean for the proponents, today’s announcement by Labor does is actually give certainty. It gives certainty to the sorts of expansions we might see over the next 20-30 years. That’s the important thing here. We need to be very aware that this will come at a cost but, of course, what cost do we want to put on damaging our Great Barrier Reef? Once it’s gone, it’s gone. As we’ve heard today from Mark, Jackie and Annastacia, this is an issue of future Reef health. We are very close to potentially having this very important icon in the world put on the In Danger list. This is a very important initiative today and I think in terms of looking at other remedial options, land reclamation is an option. Certainly so is expansion and lengthening of trestles in terms of existing ports facilities and, of course, making best use of the dredging areas we already have. So this is about making sure that we use what we have already to the best of our ability. And, of course, giving very clear signals hopefully in a unified way between Labor and Liberal to make sure we have no dumping of capital dredge spoil in the Great Barrier Reef.

JOURNALIST: They say the money’s just not there to be able to afford onshore dumping. Does that mean this project can’t go ahead under your policy? 

PITT: Well, let’s have a look back at the costing again - the $40 million that was put up by Campbell Newman at the last election was not going to be enough to even do their bare minimum approach. Before this discussion  [inaudible]. Let’s also have a look at what the Member for Cairns has said. The Member for Cairns has said that they would consider selling port assets to pay for dredging, of course another discussion that they have not had with the people of the Far North and Cairns area. So I take with a grain of salt any suggestion by the LNP that there may not be an affordable approach to this. They could not get their costings right before the last election and I have no confidence that they’re going to have them right going forward either.

JOURNALIST: Mr Butler, can I ask you a couple more environment questions?

BUTLER: Can I just add to what Curtis said about alternatives? What we want to do with today’s announcement is provide proponents with a very clear understanding of how their proposals will be assessed in the future from Labor’s point of view. And that is that they should not put proposals to government that involve the offshore dumping of dredge material. Now that means they’re going to have to do some serious work around thinking about alternatives. The alternatives do not just involve onshore dumping. For example, in the Abbot Point case I was having discussions with the proponents before the change of government about the possibility of a longer trestle at Abbot Point, or a series of longer trestles, about six kilometres, which would mean that there would not be any dredging, no capital dredging, and no maintenance dredging. So proponents are going to have to think about alternatives and in dealing with the potential costs of those other alternatives, I just want to reinforce what Curtis said. The proponents may take a particular view of the cost, but as governments and alternative governments, we need to take a much broader view of the potential impacts on the Queensland economy and the potential impacts on the tourism part of the Queensland economy of these things cannot be overstated.

JOURNALIST: Mr Butler, what is the latest on the Renewable Energy Target negotiations?

BUTLER: As I’ve said a number of times before, we’re engaged in some discussions with the Government to see whether we can get the Renewable Energy Target back on track. This has been a bipartisan decision for well over a decade between the Liberal and Labor parties. And because of that confidence given to investors, that notwithstanding a change in government, that the same policy would be in place for renewable energy, literally billions of dollars flowed from the rest of the world into Australia, creating thousands of jobs, bringing down carbon pollution in electricity, and also holding down power prices. We think it’s critical that we get that bipartisan support for the industry back on track. At the end of the day, the industry, the banks, the investor community tell us they’re not so interested in what the Greens Party think or what the Palmer United Party think; they want to know if they’re making a 20 or 25-year investment. They want to know what the alternative parties of government think. That’s why we’re involved in these good faith discussions. We are a fair distance apart. We think the existing policy has worked. Even the Prime Minister’s own hand-picked panel indicated it worked. On all of those indicators it worked, investment, jobs, pollution levels and power prices. But we are a fair distance apart from the Government. We’re going to try as hard as we can to get that position back to a sustainable position that underpins continuing robust growth in wind and solar power in the future, but they’re still ongoing so I can’t really tell you much more than that.

JOURNALIST: Any idea when that might be reached?

BUTLER: Well I think we need to deal with this quickly. The industry is telling us that the level of uncertainty that has been in place now for several months has killed investment in the large scale sector. Literally several billion dollars were invested in the large scale sector last year. Next to nothing has been invested this year because of that loss of investor confidence. We’re getting a very clear message from the industry; this needs to be resolved quickly.

JOURNALIST: Is Labor standing firm in its opposition to a Real 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target?

BUTLER: Yes.

JOURNALIST: And what’s Labor’s thoughts on climate change being on the agenda when President Obama meets with Tony Abbott in China?

BUTLER: Well ultimately it’s up to President Obama and Tony Abbott as to what they’re going to talk about, but our concern with the Prime Minister’s position on this for so long has been that he tries to pigeonhole climate change – when he’s willing to talk about it at all – he tries to pigeonhole it as some sort of niche environmental issue. President Obama, the Chinese leadership, and the leadership of so many other countries recognise that climate change is an environmental challenge, it’s an economic challenge, and it’s a social challenge. It’s a core business for the leadership group of the status of the G20. So, we’ve always had the view that this should be a discussion point at the G20. It’s been quite clear, not backgrounded, from America and Europe and a range of other countries that they want it discussed as well. At the end of the day, I’m not going to presume to say what should be discussed between the U.S. President and the Australian Prime Minister, but I will say this; Tony Abbott needs to understand that climate change is recognised around the world by world leaders as one of the most significant challenges we face. As much as he might not like discussing at international forums, the other leaders are going to want to discuss it.