PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS – NATIONAL LANDCARE WEEK
September 10, 2012
Debate resumed on the motion by Mr Chester:
That this House:
(1) notes that National Landcare Week (3 to 9 September) will celebrate the extraordinary contribution by volunteers to practical environmental projects throughout Australia;
(2) highlights the outstanding contribution of Australian farmers and other rural landholders to enhance the environment on public and private land; and
(3) recognises the need for ongoing public funding to:
(a) employ Landcare facilitators and coordinators who manage volunteer programs;
(b) support Landcare groups to achieve strategic goals; and
(c) assist in maximising the volunteer effort.
Mr CHESTER (Gippsland) (18:30): It is with great pleasure I move this motion. Without wishing to pre-empt the debate too much here this evening, it is heartening to see such a strong line-up of speakers prepared to join this debate, and there is definite bias towards members coming from regional communities.
I acknowledge that this is not a particularly controversial motion but it is still an important motion. It gives members on both sides of the House an opportunity to pay tribute to the national Landcare movement, to recognise the outstanding contribution made by volunteer and professional staff and to commit ourselves in this place to working together to pursue the practical environmental outcomes which have become the hallmark of Landcare for more than 20 years. We in this place must never take Landcare for granted. So I welcome the opportunity to speak this evening on a topic that is very dear to my heart and dear to the hearts of about 100,000 Australians that are members of Landcare. I think it is vital that the Landcare movement continues to enjoy bipartisan support.
Last week was National Landcare Week. I was a little bit disappointed with the recognition it received. Perhaps the media were more focused on what the scandal of the day may have been, but they did not really recognise the outstanding and practical environmental work that has been carried out by Landcare volunteers for more than 20 years.
There are now more than 4½ thousand community Landcare groups spread throughout Australia. My electorate of Gippsland is home to some of the most passionate and successful Landcare groups in the nation. I will talk about some of their projects in some detail a little later on but, before I do, I want to emphasise the importance of funding security for Landcare. It is primarily a volunteer based organisation but it does need professional coordination to help maximise the volunteer effort, to help strategies for the different networks and to implement new techniques by training landholders on the most effective ways of carrying out the projects that they are involved with.
The facilitators and coordinators play a critical role in Landcare and that is why I spoke out so strongly when this government cut $11 million out of its forward estimates for Landcare in the 2010 budget. I am not going to revisit that issue too much this evening but suffice to say the funding uncertainty and confusion that was created at that time had an impact beyond the quantum of the actual budget announcements. Funding uncertainty, quite naturally, makes people look for alternative employment. If they do not know whether their contract will be renewed it is only natural that people will start looking elsewhere for employment. I fear that in the past we have lost too many talented people who have a strong interest and passion for natural resource management, because governments and their budgetary processes have bungled the process of continuity of funding.
I think it is very important that we recognise in this place that we do not want our Landcare networks and our volunteers having to spend too much time filling out reports and applying for funding to ensure the future security of their facilitators or their coordinators on a more permanent basis. It is a timely warning to governments and members on this side of the House, if they ever have the opportunity to have that influence over budgetary decisions, that the decisions we make in terms of the funding security for Landcare have a direct impact on the people on the ground. I do believe that it is a key issue for the future when we are managing our Landcare budgets.
I would like to congratulate the Victorian state government in that regard for providing some level of funding certainty over the next four years with its $12 million to support Landcare coordinators. It was an important election commitment and it is being implemented well, along with some significant funding commitments for important local projects. There have been two recent announcements in my electorate, under the Communities for Nature grants program. Yarram Yarram Landcare received $600,000 for the Jack and Albert River Restoration Project and the South Gippsland Landcare group received $600,000 for its Habitat for Life project involving the koala population in the Strzelecki. They are important initiatives that have been well received and well supported right throughout the Gippsland community.
As I said earlier, Gippsland is fortunate—like, I think, many of the electorates of the members here tonight—to have very active Landcare networks. One of my networks was among the 88 finalists in this year’s National Landcare Awards. Since the 1990s, West Gippsland CMA and the regional Landcare networks and groups have forged a unique partnership that acknowledges Landcare as a key mechanism for the delivery of natural resource management outcomes that are both locally relevant and regionally important. I think that is an important point. Governments do have a responsibility to seek value for money and to set priorities across a regional, state and national level but, to get the buy-in from the local volunteers and for the programs to be successful, the programs have to be relevant to the people on the ground. People on our farms or working on public property have to feel empowered and feel that they are able make a difference.
The beauty and the great success of Landcare is that it is a grassroots movement and it works best in partnerships with governments and government agencies and businesses in regional communities working together to leverage the maximum value out of every cent that is available to them. The Landcare groups that I have dealt with in the four years that I have been the member for Gippsland have a great capacity to be innovative and creative and they are driven to achieve results and value for money. They can run on the smell of an oily rag. They have a great capacity to leverage the maximum value of every single cent of funding that is available to them.
The West Gippsland CMA/Landcare partnership supports five Landcare networks across my region. There are about 70 groups, consisting of in excess of 2,000 members. In a 12-month period, their work across the region saw more than 200,000 trees planted, 62 hectares of revegetation established, 77 kilometres of fencing built and almost 9,000 hectares of weed control works being carried out. These volunteers are out there every weekend getting their hands dirty and making a practical contribution to the Australian nation.
I appreciate the opportunity here tonight to speak as just one member in support of the outstanding achievements that they have made, both in my region and right throughout Australia.
In proposing this motion tonight, I want to pay tribute to them and also their colleagues in Landcare networks across Gippsland and throughout Australia. We have people who have supported the Landcare movement for more than 20 years—virtually, since the day it was created in my electorate. I do not want to name individuals here tonight, but it is important to note that these are country people who are often vilified for supposedly not caring about the environment when they are the practical environmentalists. The greatest environmentalists I have met have all been local landholders who are passionate about doing the right things as custodians of their own land or of the public land in our region. They understand that link between caring for the environment and making a living from the land. I am not saying that they have not made mistakes in the past but, when local landholders have been informed of better ways to do things, they have been very quick to adapt new technologies and techniques and to implement them on their properties, which has provided great benefits not only to their own properties but to the broader community.
Further to the east in my electorate, the East Gippsland Landcare Network is also very active. As a member of this network, I must confess to not being anywhere near as active on the ground as the other members. I have attended some tree plantings over the time but, fortunately, there are hundreds of other people within the network who are more reliable and turn up to more of the working bees than I do. I try to attend events and activities on a more frequent basis whenever I can.
I cannot really do justice in 10 minutes to the thousands of hours of work that is being carried out every year in Gippsland by our Landcare volunteers. Perhaps it is relevant to consider the reverse question: rather than ask what Landcare has done for Gippsland or Australia, consider what it would be like if Landcare wasn’t there at all. Consider all of the practical environmental projects across Australia that would not be undertaken every year if we did not have Landcare. It would be an environmental disaster for our nation. As I indicated before, it is critically important in this place that we never take Landcare for granted .
Landcare is continuing to grow in my region with new groups forming, including a bit of a recent trend towards urban based Landcare groups where they have taken responsibility for maybe a section of river through the town or some other area of a public park. It has been very well received in towns like Traralgon and the broader Latrobe Valley region, and Bairnsdale also has its own urban Landcare group.
I have had groups take responsibility for a section of river like the Mitchell River or the Traralgon Creek and there has been some outstanding work done quite noticeably by some active retirees who are obviously looking for something to do in their retirement and to give something back to the community. They have made a great contribution.
Landcare by no means is a homogenous group. It is not static. It has evolved in the past, and I think it will continue to adapt to suit the times and the future needs of our communities. One of the unsung roles that Landcare plays in Gippsland, and I am sure in other places, particularly in times of hardship like the long drought we experienced in the previous decade, is it provides a reason for people to come together to Landcare field days, meetings or practical demonstrations on people’s properties. It provides opportunities for people to feel like they belong to something bigger, which I think is critically important when times are tough. It gave people a reason to get away from the drought or the hardship they were experiencing and to mix with others in the same boat. The social networks were incredibly important in helping people get through that drought period.
It may be an environmentally focused organisation which delivers tangible economic benefits but it also delivers very significant social benefits. By any estimation, Landcare is embedded in the culture of regional Australia and, as members of this parliament, we have a responsibility to make sure that we continue to support its development.
Landcare can probably survive without much government assistance, but to maximise the social, economic and the environmental benefits it is important that state and federal governments continue to support the activities of the 100,000 volunteers who are willing to do their bit for our nation. I would like to thank the other members in advance for their positive words about Landcare.