Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (18:00): I am pleased to associate with this take-note motion from my colleague Ms Lovell and thank her for the work that she has done in this space and thank all those 11,974 people who signed this e-petition in state Parliament. We recognise their dedication overwhelmingly to having continued access to public land but also enjoying the sport or the variety of traditional recreational activities that they participate in. They are also overwhelmingly incredible stewards of that space, wherever it is – in this case, it happens to be the Wombat, the Wellsford, the Pyrenees and the Mount Cole areas – because they care about that land, and overwhelmingly they leave it a better place than when they found it.
We heard from a government member just then a great dissertation about the importance of having access and how much the government member loves national parks. ‘We shouldn’t lock them up’ were the words that I heard coming out of her mouth. Yet back in 2017 the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council actually took over the review of this particular area, and the actual footprint was around 80,000 hectares in the central west investigation, it was called. It did that, and many of the people who signed Ms Lovell’s petition are quite frustrated, I am sure, with VEAC, because it is supposed to be a forensic scientific entity that assesses on merit and assesses the science. There were a couple of rounds of submissions. There were about 3000 submissions to VEAC’s first and second responses. Indeed overwhelmingly in the second tranche 66 per cent of those submissions actually opposed the establishment of a new national park in that area. Moving forward, what we are seeing is the government ignoring those people and going with what many people feel is a biased position from VEAC.
One particular group of those people, called Bush Users Group United, actually spent a forensic amount of time looking into the report and were very frustrated; they felt that it was biased. That was the Honourable Ms D’Ambrosio that led that. It has come through. We have a relatively new Minister for Environment, and that minister has said that it is a historic recommendation – historic from 2021 – to implement this as a national park. I do not consider a recommendation and then a commitment in 2021 historic. The minister does have the capacity to unwind that and leave it as state forest, and that is what we are asking for and will continue to ask this government to do, as have those 11,000 people who have signed this.
One of the key things that we should all be focused on is active management of our public land. I have probably said that about a thousand times in here: active management of public land. I will tell you of one other group who are very committed to that – and we spoke with them, my colleague Mrs Broad and I, in Bendigo the other day – the Dja Dja Wurrung. The Dja Dja Wurrung in that region are very keen to see forest gardening, and it is a fabulous term. Think about that: forest gardening. It is tending the environment, it is actively managing the environment and it is utilising the environment for the best outcomes for country and for people. People should be on the landscape. We have certainly heard Taungurung say that as well, the land and water corporation there. They are people in the landscape, using the landscape.
What the government has not done is make a compelling argument for locking this up. If it is about conservation, we know that our government is not looking after the national parks that we already have – the some 4 million hectares of them. It is not looking after them. It is shutting down services, it is cutting weed control, it is closing tracks and it is cutting park rangers. It has got this the wrong way around. Let us protect our parks and our natural flora and fauna and continue access.
