Thursday, 16 October 2025

 Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (14:59): I am here to kick off the debate on the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025. I note that I have half an hour, but when I look at the depth of this bill, I could easily fill an hour. There is so much in this bill and there is so much to talk about, and I am a little bit worried that I am not going to get everything said that I need to say with regard to this. But I do want to start and to thank the minister’s office, in particular Claire, for organising a briefing for me. I think this was over and above because I was unable to get to the first one and I had also just changed portfolios. I do note that Doug Hooley did most of the heavy lifting in that briefing, and I thank him for that too.

What is this bill about? It is about parks and public lands, and it has got a bit of everything in it. There are some parts the opposition likes, some parts we do not like and a lot in between that we can live with. In summary, there are changes to national parks, increasing the land mass. There are changes to conservation areas and regional parks. There is some tinkering around existing parks, and there are some changes to recreational deer hunting by stalking. Each of these I will talk about in a little more detail.

Primarily the bill amends the National Parks Act 1975, the Crown Land (Reserves) Act 1978, the Forests Act 1958 – that is a pretty old one – and the Great Ocean Road and Environs Protection Act 2020, a relatively new one. As always, there are a number of consequential amendments that happen on the way and these are to the Carlton (Recreation Ground) Land Act 1966 about Princes Park – one that I did not know existed – the Heritage Rivers Act 1992, the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Act 1990 and the St Kilda Land Act 1965. The bill repeals the National Parks (Amendment) Act 1989.

This bill pretty well came into being because of a Victorian Environmental Assessment Council assessment in 2019 with regard to the central west investigation final report. Some people will be well versed in the different reports that VEAC have done over time. This particular one and its consequences involve the transferring of large areas of multiple-use forest to national park or conservation park status. This was around a commitment the government made in 2021 in response to the report. There are three new national parks, two new conservation parks and seven new or expanded regional parks.

I am going to speak first of all about national parks. National parks are something I know quite a lot about, having visited national parks extensively in Victoria, Australia and internationally. At one point I had a think about the number of family holidays that I have had in national parks, as I said not just in Victoria but in Australia and overseas. I have been to many of the really big national parks to see the way they operate both here and overseas. In my electorate I have the Kinglake National Park, the Lake Eildon National Park, the Yarra Ranges and the Dandenong Ranges, and I have loads and loads and loads of forested areas. The bill before us adds another 44,000 hectares to land managed as national park. We have new park areas in central-west Victoria: Mount Buangor, the Pyrenees and Wombat–Lerderderg. All of this land is currently state forest. National parks have a focus on conservation ahead of recreation, so there are a whole lot of restrictions in national parks.

I want to start by talking about some of the differences between state parks and national parks, because they are very different in their purpose, access and management. State forests, under the Forests Act 1958, are managed by the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) and operate as multi-use public land. They balance conservation with community access, recreation and local economic activity. In a state forest, hunting, dispersed camping, firewood collection, bushwalking, hiking, horse riding, dog walking, prospecting, forestry, fishing, drone use, four-wheel driving, trail-bike riding and off-road driving are all permitted. These activities support regional livelihoods. I look in and around the area in my electorate between my home and my office in Yarra Glen and you see constantly people coming out of the forests with dirt bikes covered in mud. You see four-wheel drives, because people get out there and use these forests quite differently.

National parks, on the other hand, are governed by the National Parks Act 1975. They are managed by Parks Victoria, and they prioritise environmental preservation and restrict public use.

In a national park, activities prohibited are firewood collection; four-wheel driving and trail bikes – only on designated roads; off-road driving; prospecting; fossicking; horseriding; fishing – allowed in designated areas only; dog walking; camping – in designated areas only; drone use; and resource extraction.

The coalition have had long-held views about the creation of additional national parks, and it is something that we have not supported, because the government cannot manage what they have already. I will point to many, many instances where the government has failed in this area, and I cannot see that altering, let alone how they are going to adequately manage an additional 44,000 hectares. What we have seen in the annual reports over the last 10 years is a sharp decline in Parks Victoria’s capacity to manage the expanding park estate. Despite a 20 per cent increase in land, operational funding fell by 35 per cent – more land, less money. The rangers have also decreased, with ranger numbers dropping by 28 per cent in the last year alone. We see Parks Victoria has become increasingly top-heavy, and there are some changes I understand being made to Parks Victoria. But the decline in the on-ground capacity has led to worsening conditions across the parks. We have multiple parks and campgrounds that are closed for extended periods. We have multiple campgrounds and parks that have broken facilities, things that have not been restored after bushfires. The list is endless, and I will go over some of those in a moment.

But what we have also seen is the decline in the on-ground capacity has meant worsening conditions across the park network. We have fuel load management issues, invasive weeds and pest animals. With regard to the fuel load, there is a reduced capacity for planned burns, and mechanical reduction increases the risk of catastrophic bushfires. If you are not doing the work, it increases the risk. I know that there is a current court case, which bothers me greatly, about firebreaks and the challenges to the government’s firebreak program, which is only going to exacerbate issues with increasing fuel management. Many of the areas proposed for park status are already fire prone and require active management to protect nearby communities, so this worries me greatly.

Invasive weeds are also a huge issue. Blackberries, serrated tussocks and other noxious weeds are spreading rapidly in undermanaged parks, and I see this all of the time. I have people ring my office, and I have even been out with people who wanted to show me that in particular areas where you may not think there are blackberries in fact there are. These species – and this bothers me greatly – outcompete native flora and degrade the habitat, and you do not have to go far from the city and deep into the bush to actually see where this has happened. They overtake, and we end up with a very flammable understorey. If you have a flammable understorey, the flames can move up trees and into the crowns of trees very quickly, and we can have what happened on Black Saturday – enormous, devastating fires – because the understorey is thick. The fire can move up the trunks of trees and get into that top canopy of trees and create some of the worst conditions and fires that we have seen.

Pest animals – foxes, wild dogs, pigs and rabbits – cause widespread environmental damage. Without adequate controls these pests destroy native vegetation, they threaten biodiversity and they are the worst invaders – ‘invader’ is probably not the right word – taking out some of our native animals. Some of the smaller native animals are really devastated by these. These are not managed. These are things that are not managed now.

In the way the current funding is and the way the current operations of DEECA and Parks are, we are not on top of this now, and it worries me greatly that we are not going to be on top of another 44,000 hectares. The bushfires, invasive weeds, pest animals and even the deer – which I did not mention, which cause all sorts of havoc – do not recognise a change in land tenure. They do not recognise a change from forest to national park, and this is a big concern. Also we have the integrity of the Premier at stake here, because at the Bendigo Bush Summit in March 2024 the Premier said:

As Premier, and as a proud country Victorian, I will never put a padlock on our public forest.

She is doing just that through this legislation. She is just doing that.

I want to go through a list that I have, which is publicly available and is quite extensive, of all of the issues and the closures in the forests and national parks that we have at the moment. In the Alpine National Park there are problems where tracks were severely damaged during a series of fire, flood and storm events from 2019 to 2023 – still not open. In Baw Baw National Park the Walhalla tramway bridge closed in 2022. Repairs are pending. 2022 was not the other day, it was a while ago. The Beech Gully Track has been closed since 2023.

Cape Conran national park – all members in this chamber should be aware of the constant advocacy of the member for Gippsland East in this area. He speaks constantly about things that have not been repaired – campgrounds, the cabins that have been waiting since that 2019–20 bushfire. They are still awaiting project completion. There is no money to do these things, so how on earth does the government think it is going to be able to manage an increased footprint on national parks? The jetties at the Mallacoota Inlet have not yet been repaired. The Thurra River Campground, the same period of time, they thought was going to be open at the same time the bridge was repaired. Now they are being told it is not going to be open until 2026, so there will be another summer with the second-biggest campground in that area still not open. This matters. It matters to local communities, and it matters to people who use these campgrounds. It disturbs me greatly.

I have a list of pages – Lake Tyers State Park, Mitchell River, Nooramunga Marine & Coastal Park. Closer to the Melbourne region is the Bunyip State Park, and the William Ricketts Sanctuary has been closed since 2021. The Yarra Ranges National Park in my own backyard, in my own electorate, has had issues. How long it takes to get things repaired has been staggering. The Badger Weir, which was storm damaged in 2016, took two years to be resolved, and then the state of the road leading into that was raised in Parliament in 2020 and again in 2022.

The Dee Slip Bridge on the O’Shannassy Aqueduct Trail was closed in 2021, and it has taken until 2025 for works to begin to repair it. I want to say what that means. The O’Shannassy Aqueduct Trail spans a considerable distance. It is a great trail. A lot of hikers and cyclists will use that, and a kilometre in, maybe only 800 metres in, the bridge is out, so it is not a continual trail. People with bikes would have to hike down a particularly steep little area and then go under the bridge and get back up. That was not safe, and it has been years and years that it has taken to fix these things.

The toilet block at the redwood forest was raised in 2018 and again in 2021, and finally work started in 2025. These are things that the government have committed to doing. The Maroondah Dam has been a real problem area because there is so much work that needs to be done to fix that, and it just has not happened. In the north-east at the Beechworth Historic Park the Spring Creek bridge closed in 2022. In the Lake Eildon National Park the Gap Track has been partially closed. We have people that say Candlebark Park is closed for various reasons, and you find out that the toilets have not been fixed adequately. The drains do not work or the barbecues. They close these things, and it causes a huge amount of negativity within the community about certain areas and whether they want to come back there or not.

We have got the same issues in the Grampians National Park. As I said, I could talk about these till the cows come home, and looking at the clock, I have probably almost started to do that. For this reason I am now putting forward and moving a reasoned amendment. I move:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with the words ‘this bill be withdrawn and redrafted as two separate bills to:

(a)   take into account stakeholder consultation on the impact of the establishment of the Mount Buangor, Pyrenees and Wombat–Lerderderg national parks on traditional recreational activities, invasive species management, fire management and the rural economy; and

(b)   retain the remaining provisions of the bill.’

I have multiple copies here for those who might want to sneak over here and grab one as well.

I think so many of the members opposite do not understand the issues that I outlined, with fuel loads and with invasive species, whether that is pests or whether that is plants, and the issues that they cause. This is essentially splitting the bill into two, because, as I said, there are some parts of this bill that we are okay with, and there are others that we are not.

I want to mention firewood collection briefly as well, because firewood collection is something that can happen in forests but not in national parks. With this greater area moving from forest, it will reduce the availability of and the access to firewood collection. I know for a lot of people this is a very big deal. If you live in country Victoria, in a lot of small communities you rely on firewood. You might have a wood fire to keep the house warm and/or backed up by gas bottles, which are fairly pricey, but people are not on the mains for gas. We do not have that; we are relying on bottles. Particularly living on land, on a farm, that is what we rely on. Luckily where I live we plant lots of trees and lots of them come down in various storms, and trees do die. I think that might be a bit of a surprise to the Greens, but trees actually do die after a particular time period. Wattle dies a little bit quicker than many of the others. But in the information that has been provided to us just very recently, and I do thank Claire from the minister’s office for doing that, with regard to firewood access, one of the things that did disturb me was saying firewood can also be sourced from firewood retailers.

Having access means for those who cannot afford it, those from the lower socio-economic areas who want to go and collect their own firewood, firewood retailers are not perhaps the way to go. It is certainly acknowledged in the information provided that sometimes this is a limited resource and, it says, of ‘unpredictable availability’. I can tell you I think that it is available pretty well all of the time. It does refer to what you can get in state forests. It does not help when this area has been reduced.

I also want to mention just very quickly some information we received from the Victorian Apiarists Association about the beekeepers’ concerns. VAA represents 10,000 beekeepers, and they raise concerns in a letter that says the bill fails to mention apiculture or the use of public land for bee sites and makes no reference to the existing apiculture on public lands policy. They have warned that without access to public lands this sector cannot function. Pollination cycles break down and crop yields fail, the food supply becomes unstable, prices rise, inflation follows and interest rates are affected.

As I have said, I live on a property, and we have grevillea and around the house a grevillea hedge, which flowers beautifully and has always been a major attractor of bees. I have noticed this year that there are very, very few bees. That concerns me, because worldwide there seems to be a problem with bees, and they are vital for our food sources. I would like to think that the government will look seriously about what they can do to support this sector.

There are additional conservation parks being installed in Hepburn and Cobaw, and both of these are currently state forests.

Regional parks are closer to major populations and tourism centres. For me in my electorate, right at the bottom is Kurth Kiln. The focus here is flipped from what the focus is in a national park. As I said earlier, national parks prioritise conservation over recreation.

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

Cindy McLEISH: The poor bees. It really bothers me about the bees. The focus here in the regional parks is on recreation rather than conservation. There is land being added to the Bendigo Regional Park and there is the creation of the Wandong Regional Park, and I would like to see how much is being invested in this area. There are so many areas in this bill to talk about. There are amendments to the Great Ocean Road and Environs Protection Act 2020. The coalition is fine with these key amendments that expand the definition of the scenic landscape area, with the strategic framework plan improvements, with the land management strategy requirements, with the corporate planning and oversight and with the ministerial powers and centralisation. I know there have been ongoing issues around here with the Great Ocean Road Coast and Parks Authority, and I see that there have been multiple CEOs and temporary CEOs that have moved on. That is what has happened at the moment – I think there has just been a new CEO appointed. That may be Christine Ferguson, if I remember, who I know from years gone by. I think it is important that, when we have an area like that, it does function well. While there have been some queries about how that works and some difficulties, I am pleased to see that some of this has changed now.

The Yellingbo Landscape Conservation Area is being renamed Liwik Barring. The Yellingbo conservation area is primarily in my area. There are some new packages of land being added into this area. Some are connected to existing packages of land and some are not. When I heard Menzies Creek was part of this I thought that was quite a way from some of the other areas. The Woori Yallock Creek and the Britannia Creek, the Little Yarra River and the McCrae Creek – some of these areas are very close to what was the original Woori Yallock conservation zone. As I understand it, the government would like to continue to build on this. I am aware that some land was donated by a landowner to Trust for Nature and that very, very disappointingly, that land was let go to wrack and ruin. I went out there to look at some of this land. It has now been handed over to the state. I do not know if that landowner made that move to Trust for Nature with the intent that he was donating land straight back to the state. I must follow up and check on that.

I do have reservations electorally about this. People are worried that there is a wick up the middle of these communities, and this is going to increase the fire risk. This was a very big issue when the Yellingbo conservation area was first instituted. I know the minister at the time came out and listened to some of these concerns and that the amount of planting beside the river was brought in from being as wide as maybe 70 metres to 30 metres, if I remember.

There is some tinkering at the edges of the boundaries of the Brisbane Ranges, adding an extra 14 hectares. The Gippsland Lakes Coastal Park is adding an extra 12 hectares and the Yallock-Bulluk Marine and Coastal Park is adding another 80 hectares. Earlier I mentioned Princes Park, Carlton and St Kilda Marina – there is just some tinkering that needs doing around there.

One of the things that the coalition likes here is the additional opening up of land for deer hunting with stalking. Deer hunting is a very popular activity and pastime for many people, and in my area, in parts of the High Country, I know how much of a difference it makes to the local economy, particularly around Mansfield and Jamieson and Eildon. Even people in the area who do not like hunting can see how important it is locally. They are opening up the northern part of the Wombat. I think this is only for, if I remember correctly, a certain period of the year, I think around the wintertime. I do not imagine that the numbers are very huge up there, not like the million deer that are roaming around in the High Country and are now all over my electorate on the edges of towns. That area was not initially opened up to hunting, but there is that deer presence now. There is an expansion in the national parks in East Gippsland and in the Snowy River and Errinundra national parks, which the coalition welcomes. Two thirds of the Lake Eildon National Park is already available for hunting. Perhaps it might not have been a bad thing to extend that a little further.

I want to demonstrate how important hunting is in my area and generally. It was in 2024, in March last year, that Mandy Kirley from the Mansfield Hunting & Fishing shop put on an expo, and they had a record number of exhibitors and probably around 10,000 visitors. Just this one woman in this one business off her own bat held this expo in Mansfield. It was incredibly successful, and all power to her for what she did. I know that there is going to be another one next year. It was extraordinary the amount of support from exhibitors and visitors alike. The trade stalls had record sales, the shop in Mansfield had record sales, and it was all credit to Mandy.

The last area that I do want to mention is that this bill facilitates the transfer of title to traditional owners in a number of areas. The traditional owner groups are the Gunaikurnai and the Taungurung, and the Taungurung are one of the two traditional owner groups that I have in my electorate. The Baw Baw National Park and Avon Wilderness Park are going to have their titles transferred to the traditional owners, and in my area the Cathedral Range State Park and the Kinglake National Park will be moving down this path, as well as the Wandong Regional Park, which is going to be newly established. As I understand and as I was briefed, they will continue to be managed as they are currently legislated under the National Parks Act 1975. The intent is for joint management, with the end game being moving to the full management of national parks under the traditional owners. I am not sure exactly what that is going to look like in terms of funding and how that is going to work – it is not happening tomorrow – but this bill is facilitating the first step to that.

So I want to finish where I began, that there are a lot of things in this bill, and I could have talked about additional areas. There were some things that the coalition did not support: the changes to the national parks, increasing the sizes there. Tinkering around the edges of existing parks and changes with the regional parks and conservation is not so bad. Changes in regional deer hunting is something that we do support. Some of those areas are why we do want to split the bill, because I am sure that other parties within this Parliament may want to carve out areas because they have different oppositions than we do.

 Mary-Anne THOMAS (Macedon – Leader of the House, Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services) (15:29): It is a real pleasure to rise today to speak on the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025. Before I go on, can I just put on the record that we reject the reasoned amendment proposed by those on the other side of the house. We will not be separating this bill. We will not be deferring this important legislation to create new national parks here in the state of Victoria.

There are a few other things that I would like to take the opportunity to address arising from the member for Eildon’s contribution. I assure the member for Eildon, one, that Parks Victoria, now under the distinguished leadership of Daniel Miller as chair and Lee Miezis as CEO, is on a trajectory that will see more and more boots on the ground out in our parks. The minister briefed us the other day that an additional 84 rangers have been appointed since Lee was appointed as the CEO. I can put to bed some of the concerns that the member for Eildon raised in her contribution.

With regard to bees, let me assure you the bees are going to be okay. In fact let me be quite clear: beekeeping will continue to be permitted in the new national and conservation parks and the addition to Bendigo Regional Park and will continue to be administered under the Land Act 1958. Existing licences are not affected, and applications for new sites will be considered on their merits, as they are currently. That is that done as well.

Back in 2014 it was my pleasure as the Labor candidate for Macedon to invite the then Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change Lisa Neville to meet me in Trentham to catch up with Gayle Osborne of Forestcare, and the ask of Gayle to both Lisa and me at that time was for a Victorian Environmental Assessment Council investigation into the Wombat–Lerderderg forest park. Could we have this investigation with the intention, should that investigation demonstrate it was needed and should be prioritised, of establishing a national park? I am really proud to be standing here 11 years later to speak on a bill that will create the Wombat–Lerderderg National Park, and I want to extend my congratulations to Gayle Osborne. Whilst we have had differences of opinion over the years around the margins, I want to congratulate her on all of her hard work.

On that day we went into the forest, and Gayle showed us the unique environmental features of the forest – a forest that is home to powerful owls and phascogales. It was a really beautiful opportunity. I was able to then take that commitment to the people of Macedon at the 2014 election. We got the report back in 2019, and it affirmed what Forestcare had long known: that despite being comprehensively logged in the past, the forest fought back and it had many conservation values that needed to be protected. The land is home to 380 rare or threatened species which rely on the people of Victoria – on us, through our Parliament and our government – to ensure their protection.

My view always has been that in order to protect the unique values of our environment we need to get more people into the environment so that they can grow their understanding and appreciation of all that is precious. More people in more parks more often means greater protection for our environment. Those on the other side continue to run these scare campaigns. In fact I was subjected to a scare campaign by the Liberal Party, in cahoots with the DLP and the Shooters and Fishers, at the 2018 election – a sustained campaign.

Pauline Richards interjected.

Mary-Anne THOMAS: What happened? I received a more than 9 per cent swing to me, thank you. But that is what did happen, despite the scare campaign being run by the Liberals and their conservative mates.

Our government is absolutely committed to creating more opportunities for Victorians in the great outdoors. Let me talk you through the activities that will be permitted in national parks, to put to bed once again the fear campaign, which I am afraid the member for Eildon has sought to continue to inflame: bushwalking, picnics and nature observation, obviously; camping, obviously; fishing; car touring, including four-wheel driving, trail bike riding, mountain biking and cycling; horse riding in specified areas; dog walking in areas that are specified. Recreational prospecting? No, there will not be recreational prospecting. But you know what? There is no recreational prospecting in our regional parks right now, but there is in places that are adjacent to many of our parks. There is seasonal deer hunting, as we have discussed. Let us just stop with the fearmongering. Let us get on with creating these parks, which, as I said, are about ensuring that more people can spend more time in nature more often.

It is fitting, obviously, that I talk about our First Nations people and their unique relationship with these beautiful regions. For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal people have had enduring and profound connections to country in the part of the state that I have the good fortune to represent. I have had the opportunity to spend time on Dja Dja Wurrung country with Rodney Carter and other traditional owners to learn about their aspirations for these unceded lands. Forestry, as I have said, has undoubtedly damaged the Wombat. However, care for country, reforestation and rehabilitation of forests must include traditional owner knowledge, and that is absolutely central to our government’s commitments.

I have got to say, I have seen the paternalism at play, including from those who call themselves progressives, so much so that the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation had to release the following statement in relation to their work to restore storm damage in the Wombat. The Dja Dja Wurrung people said:

… we are deeply concerned at the entrenched racism that we are experiencing and noticing in the reporting around the Wombat State Forest. It is clear that many in the community believe that Dja Dja Wurrung people can be manipulated and do not have the capacity to realise their follies; it is also believed that we are unable to make thoughtful, collective decisions and cannot be trusted to be self-determining. That these beliefs, so entrenched in the world of missions and colonisation, are so prevalent today brings down all in our community. It is perhaps however the unacknowledged paternalism of our friends that is most difficult to experience.

So I say to many of the campaigners: work with traditional owners and listen with respect, and we will move forward in a way that will be to the benefit of all and to our beautiful natural assets.

In case you did not already know this exciting news, Trentham, in my electorate, recently won the gold award for Australia’s top tiny tourism town last month. Of course, Trentham is right in the middle of the Wombat Forest. Having led the tourism review for our government back in 2019, I can say nature-based tourism is huge and will only continue to grow. This bill seeks to support our aspirations to grow nature-based tourism. In fact, national parks and other parks and reserves in Victoria welcomed, in one year, more than 90 million visitors, contributing significantly to local and regional economies. That is just extraordinary. With the creation of these new parks, we can expect to see even more.

As the Minister for Health, let me say this: time in nature is good for you in so many ways. It is good for your mental and your physical health. It is well documented that the experience of awe – having that incredible experience of seeing something in the natural environment that makes the hairs on your skin stand on end – is good for your health. That is well documented. I want more people to have that experience of awe, and Victorians will be able to have that in the new parks that our government is creating.

This is a fantastic bill. The largest of the parks we are creating is in my electorate, the Wombat–Lerderderg National Park – more than 44,000 hectares. The bill will also create, once again in my electorate, the Cobaw conservation park and the Hepburn conservation park. In conclusion, can I call out Gayle Osborne again; she truly is a remarkable woman. But I also, as I said earlier, pay my respects to the traditional owners of the lands. We must work hand in hand with traditional owners. Joint management is the way in which all of our parks must be managed. Indeed, when we legislate treaty later this afternoon in this place, we look to a future where First Nations people will be able to continue to realise their aspirations for their lands.

 Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (15:39): I rise to make a contribution on the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025. I want to take up some comments from the previous speaker, the member for Macedon. If jobs are being added to Parks Victoria, why have I had staff in my office who have had their jobs removed? Why, when questioned, was there a concession that there are 33 jobs from the conservation regulator going? We are seeing cuts to frontline staff everywhere. I had until recently eight fisheries officers in my region; I have now got four. To say that there are not cuts to those who are looking after public land management is ridiculous. I have spoken to these people. I have had them in my office. So regardless of what we hear about additional staff being added, there has been a net loss in my region, and I would argue that I have probably got – I would have to check this –probably more national parks in my electorate of Gippsland East than any other in this state.

But here we are. We are now increasing our national park network. Let us have a look at how things are going at the current time. Blackberries are out of control. English broom, African lovegrass, serrated tussock and other noxious weeds are running rampant through our national parks. When we raise this with the parkies on the ground, who are all good workers – I know quite a few of them; they are very good people doing their best – ‘We don’t have the resources, we don’t have the money to manage it’ is what we are told. Pest plants and animals – sambar deer are out of control. There are foxes, wild dogs and rabbits, and feral pigs are a massively increasing problem in my electorate of Gippsland East. What are we doing about those things? It is a very, very limited effort while we are spending tens of thousands of dollars shooting horses. The priorities make no sense, no sense whatsoever. Pigs are a huge risk to our agricultural sector in East Gippsland. They are coming over the border from New South Wales across the Black–Allan Line and starting to impact on agricultural land north of Cann River, north of Orbost and up around the communities of Bendoc, Bonang and the like, and without adequate controls – I have got the photos of the degradation and the damage that they have caused – that problem is exacerbated. Their breeding rates are absolutely astronomical. When we raise with our public land managers, ‘What are we doing?’, we hear, ‘Yes, we’ve got some controls in place, but we don’t have funds to do any more.’ But we listen to those over here and we think the world is rosy and everything is going to be fantastic. Well, I can tell you that it is not.

Over the past 10 years we have had a 20 per cent increase in Parks land, but operational funding has reduced – the government’s own budget papers say that – and ranger numbers have decreased. How does that ever turn out? When you are not managing our national parks at the moment, when the situation of pest plants and animals is massively getting out of control and when you add to the footprint on the ground of our national parks network while not managing the ones properly that we have now, how is that ever going to turn out? Worse than that – and the minister touched on this – we have now got some user groups that are excluded from these new national park areas. The member for Eildon would be well aware of this because it is applicable to her area as well. Four-wheel drive groups probably do more work in keeping open our bushfire access tracks than staff do at the moment. There is a panel of contractors that are employed by the government to maintain fire access tracks. I have had that panel of worker representatives in my office. I have had four in the last couple of months saying, ‘We were getting contracts of over $100,000, in some cases up to $250,000, to maintain the bush tracks. We bought the machinery. This year we’ve had none – no money forthcoming. The work’s not being done.’ And now we are cutting out four-wheel drive groups from the area, who were doing a lot of work maintaining those tracks.

I want to talk about fuel loads for a couple of moments in relation to managing the bush. In the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission – our highest form of inquiry that we have available to us in this country – pre-eminent bushfire experts from all around the world recommended a 5 per cent annual burn rate as a minimum to give us some level of safety. That is in the bushfire royal commission recommendations. This government came into power and set up its own inquiry that came up with a result that it wished for, and we are now doing less than a quarter of the fuel reduction burning that the bushfires royal commission recommended. How is that ever going to end? I will take any one of those members on a drive through East Gippsland and show that the fuel loads in the bush are back to 2019–20 levels and in some cases worse because of the regrowth – and we have got staff on the ground who are not doing the burns that the royal commission recommended. Someone on the royal commission panel recommended it should be 8 per cent, but they settled on 5.

We are not doing a quarter of that and have not done a quarter of that burning since the bushfires in 2019–20 and even before that – that was why they were caused. We heard in question time today a minister saying we are in for a tough fire season. Of course we are. When you let fuel loads get out of control it cannot end any other way. There is no other way it can end. When the bushfires hit we will hear – well, not everyone – people saying, ‘It’s climate change.’ When you have fuel loads allowed to get to the level they are, there is no other outcome that can possibly be produced than another mega-fire. I am not a climate change sceptic, but fuel loads will be the major driver in the mega-fires that we will have. If it is not this summer – if we dodge a bullet – it will be the one after. Until we control fuel loads we are going to have mega-fires in various periods as we move forward. It is just ridiculous. The government needs to manage these fuel loads better to keep our community safer.

Before I finish I want to have a chat about firewood supplies. When this government ended the timber industry it also wound up our major supplier of firewood in the state. It seemed to be something that the government had not considered. I have got a very ageing population in my area that relies on firewood providers to deliver wood to their homes. They do not have the capacity to go and get it themselves. But the government has firewood collection areas. It opened them up. People were coming to my office less than a week after the firewood collection season opened, saying, ‘We’ve been to the coupes and there’s no wood.’ So what we have got now as a result of government policy is people illegally collecting firewood. They are cutting down trees and they are going into the bush because they do not want to freeze next winter. You have stopped the timber industry that supplied the firewood, and the firewood collection areas that you have put on a map do not have any firewood in them, because you are not allowed to go off the track. You go into a collection area and you have got to get it from the side of the track. You cannot go into the bush. There is none there now, so people are faced, because of government policy, with the options of cutting firewood illegally or going cold next winter – they will not be able to warm themselves. And what are we doing now? We are moving more areas into national park, where firewood collection is restricted. We are making it worse. I noted there is one exemption for three years that the minister spoke about. What happens after three years? We will keep you warm for three years and then nothing? It is just a joke.

Until we get serious about managing our bush properly and doing the fuel reduction burns that a bushfire royal commission recommends, we are going to keep burning every few years because of government policy. If you want to close down the timber industry and not let people collect firewood in the bush, you are going to promote illegal activity within our bush. The one thing in Victoria we should never, ever run out of is firewood. We have got record fuel loads in the bush, and people cannot get firewood. Did we ever think about making the link to give them access to the firewood and lower the fuel loads? One problem can solve the other, but no, ridiculous government policy prevents us from doing that. Think about that: we have got a firewood shortage problem and record fuel loads in the bush. What a ridiculous scenario. The government should split this bill. We support the element of it that extends deer hunting grounds. We would support that if it was not wound up in this bill, but based on the fact it extends our national park network we cannot.

 Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (15:49): I would also like to make a contribution on the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025 and oppose the reasoned amendment put forward by the member for Eildon. Before we get to that, I might just begin as the Minister for Health began by touching on the parts of this bill that relate to granting Aboriginal title and joint management arrangements. That feels particularly appropriate on a day when we will hopefully pass the Statewide Treaty Bill 2025 that is before the house.

Locally, in our part of the world, we have certainly seen the benefit of those sort of joint arrangements. We have seen the involvement of the Narrap rangers and Uncle Dave Wandin and the Wurundjeri in some of our local projects, so we are very supportive of the larger scale arrangements that we see in the recognition and settlement agreements. The Dja Dja Wurrung, as the Minister for Health touched on, have been very actively involved, and we had Rodney Carter here earlier this week. This bill that we have in front of us also implements parts of those agreements with the Gunaikurnai and the Taungurung, and I am sure that as treaty progresses and we continue the work that is here in this bill we will see more of those arrangements, and we welcome that in the future.

I would like to take up the comments made by the member for Eildon and the member for Gippsland East about firewood. I was surprised that they did not touch on commercial timber harvesting. Those of us who have been involved in the forestry debate over recent years – I think anyone involved – would be amazed that we have had two opposition speakers on a bill that deals with the Wombat State Forest, which famously did supply salvage logging timber to commercial sawmills, and the members for Gippsland East and Eildon did not mention the timber industry. If the Minister for Health were still here, as a former Minister for Agriculture, I think she would agree it is surprising. But given they have not mentioned it, I would love at some point to speak a little further about that issue. But I will jump to firewood, which they did touch upon.

I am sure we all appreciate that personal firewood collection is very different to commercial operations. I think we can all put ourselves in the shoes of someone who may have limited financial resources. They may live, as the member for Eildon suggested, in a smaller country town and rely on that firewood for heat and collect it themselves. It has been tried before, and it is very difficult to have a permit system. In fact it slightly defeats the purpose if those people have to go through a lot of hoops to get a permit, but if there is no permit system, it is true that we do not have a lot of oversight over that activity. Whilst we can put ourselves in the shoes of one person who might be in that situation, if we are talking about hundreds of people and if we are talking about potentially 10 or 15 square metres of firewood that they are each taking, we are then talking about thousands – possibly 10,000 – of square metres of firewood coming out of an area, and that is back on the scale of commercial timber harvesting, let alone commercial firewood collection. The bill we have in front of us strikes the right balance between recognising that we do allow people to do that but having to put some limits on it. I am sure we all agree that if we lived in an absolutely perfect world in which those on low incomes in particular could somehow be means exempted from this, we would probably do it. But I think in the practical world that we live in, that is not possible and the measures in the bill are the closest that we can do.

Having touched on firewood, I do want to come back to the bigger picture of what we were doing with the bill that is in front of us, and that is fundamentally protecting the important biodiversity and the important cultural values of forests in our state. One very important way that we do that is through active management of our reserves and our parks. We live in a post-colonisation world. There are introduced species, invasive species. There are a whole lot of issues in which we have to actively manage parks to get the best possible biodiversity outcomes. As the Minister for Health said, I very much welcome the arrival of Lee Miezis at Parks Victoria. We are sad locally to lose him from the EPA, because naturally in Preston we have more EPA issues than we do Parks Victoria issues, but Lee does great work, and he is very strongly supported by this government in terms of resourcing and giving Parks Victoria the powers they need. The bill before us expands the area that Parks Victoria will have responsibility for. It is not an appropriation bill, so I am sure there will be changes to the funding arrangements made accordingly. But I just want to recognise that when we talk about protecting biodiversity, dealing with pests, dealing with weeds, dealing with the reality of modern fire suppression, dealing with the fact that some endangered species require active management, they are all things that this government has invested strongly in.

The other thing we do in terms of protecting biodiversity is that we prevent some human activities that could threaten species and damage biodiversity. Most importantly we prevent large-scale land clearing. If you look at the history of extinctions in this state, it was the large-scale land clearing that occurred in the 19th century and the early 20th century that really caused all of those extinctions. We cleared somewhere between 10 million and 20 million hectares of land. We left ourselves with only about 8 million hectares of forest, and we lost a lot of species as a result of that.

Having said that, as far as I am aware – and this is actually a question for those involved in sustainability that is not entirely known – I am fairly confident there has not been an extinction of any species in this state in the last 50 years. I think there was some grey fireweed or a spider orchid that may have been thought to be extinct and then they might have found one species and then they have not found another, but even that dates back to the 70s, and I think it is a credit to the work of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action and its predecessors, but it is also a credit to what our system of parks and reserves has done that we have not seen an extinction in the last 50 years. Of course we continue the important work that the Minister for Health and others have talked about in order to ensure that we do not see one in the future either. This bill that we have before us is exactly that work.

As all of us know, the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council’s Central West reports are quite well known. A report that the minister referred to looked at about 150,000 hectares of public land, and it goes without saying that the most important thing we are doing with that public land is maintaining the forest on it – we are not selling it, we are not clearing it, and we are also of course preventing large-scale commercial extraction from those public lands. Of course we know that if we just let mining or timber harvesting happen in a completely unregulated way that would do very significant damage to our environment, but of course that will not happen, because we are creating national parks and state parks in which those activities cannot be done.

Once we move beyond land clearing and those really big commercial activities, then of course there is a long list of other human activities that I suppose are smaller in scale in their impact. I have not got time today to get right into the debates about beekeeping or prospecting or other activities, but suffice to say, I think it is very important to keep in mind the big picture, that those activities are often a question more of our human preferences for the forest. Most of them have a much, much smaller impact, but not zero impact, on biodiversity than land clearing and large commercial resource extraction.

Coming back in the time I have left to the big environmental questions, I just want to thank some people who I have met with, along with the member for Northcote and the member for Pascoe Vale, discussing some of the key parts of this bill. Recently we met with Matt Ruchel from the Victorian National Parks Association and Jo Hopkins from the Wilderness Society. The member for Northcote and I also met with Darebin Climate Action Now with Professor Ann Sanson there, Suzie Hoban, Karen Large and Graham Jameson. And then locally, I should note the advocacy of Newlands Friends of the Forest group, including Pauline Galvin, Julie Mason, Marion Cincotta, led of course by the inimitable Cath Rouse, who actually worked at the Maryvale pulp and paper mill that has been so central to our forestry debates back when it was under Amcor in the 90s. Some of the key issues we have discussed with those people include forest produce licences, whether they should be removed from the Forests Act 1958 – certainly not something that is in the bill before us. I think the act actually touches fairly lightly on those licensing arrangements, but I do understand that the minister is considering how they do continue to work in what is obviously a post-commercial timber harvesting world.

We have also discussed with them logging on private land. They describe logging on private land as a loophole, but I think in fairness that is a different policy area to our decision to end commercial timber harvesting in state forests. Obviously, as this bill sets out, there are important decisions we make about how we manage the government’s own land, but then questions of logging on private land are a planning matter that really are separate but nonetheless important. If we go back to what I was saying about the damage that land clearing in particular does, I do think there is some value, particularly when we do now have native vegetation protections in our planning scheme, in further considering that particular proposal, but we will take that up with the Minister for Planning.

Strategic fuel breaks are something we discussed with them. We certainly have a large strategic fuel break operation happening at the moment. I think as the member for Gippsland East touched on, it is a complex relationship with biodiversity. Deer hunting – I think the question of whether deer come out of the Wildlife Act 1975 is one that is part of the review that is going on currently, so I will not touch on that.

Then finally, the Great Forest National Park – that was never a commitment of this government, but I think I will end by saying that when we talk about large-scale conservation decisions, there is nothing that matches the scale of this government protecting literally millions of hectares with our decision to end commercial timber harvesting. I commend that decision and the further measures that are in front of us in the bill today to the house.

 Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (15:59): I rise this afternoon to talk on the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025. I felt it important to speak on this matter today because in my constituency, the good seat of Polwarth, where there are significant levels of state park, national park, marine park and other protected areas, this of course will always be a big issue. Some of the issues that will raise themselves in the seat of Polwarth, for example, will be the long-term consequences of more national parks. As one of the areas that former Labor governments were very proud to trumpet as national parks, the Great Otway National Park, we know full well that a government that is unable to properly fund, maintain and look after wild areas actually, over time, do more damage to the environment than if they were to fully fund and maintain them and/or allow some sort of commercial enterprise to help in the management and rejuvenation and care of these places.

What do we mean by that? For example, it does not take long for land that is locked up and no longer accessible for people to maintain with equipment and other things to be taken over by the blackberries, the ragworts and other feral plants. We have got all the feral animals in the Otways now – wild pigs, wild deer, dogs, cats, all sorts of vermin that get into these areas and do a lot of damage to our native flora and fauna. The humble pig may seem, ‘Oh well, does that really matter’, but pigs are one of the worst offenders when it comes to destroying native habitat, river flats and other areas.

This bill, like so many bills that this government brings forward, does not tell the public how it plans to maintain the extra nearly 70,000 hectares they plan to make national park in the Central Highlands. For the people of Polwarth, myself included, who have taken advantage of some of these areas in the Central Highlands that they are talking about, they are talking about changes to various parks in the Central Highlands where people regularly go camping, where in the past they gathered firewood. Beekeepers have used them, prospectors – prospecting is a very popular pastime in rural and regional Victoria, particularly in the Central Highlands area. These are all activities that will not continue with the passing of this bill.

Why is that sad? It is sad because when communities use and activate public spaces, they tend to create a demand to make sure that they are better looked after and better cared for. Taking beekeepers out, taking prospectors out, not allowing sensible firewood management – somehow the government has allowed the concept that firewood collection is the work of the devil, bearing in mind that firewood reserves and areas that have been used for low-scale firewood production across Victoria have existed for well over 100 years in areas that provide what is one of nature’s great gifts of a renewable energy source, being firewood, allows it to regenerate and be well managed. The government has failed in its duty of practical, sensible management of a forest resource. When I go around my electorate and see now closed up firewood reserves, without some sort of management they become huge bushfire risks.

The irony is we have spent time this week talking about the gift that our First Peoples gave to the state of Victoria in woodland management, and if anyone here has attended cultural burning exercises or cultural land management exercises, which I have on many occasions, they would understand that avoiding mass, big, high-temperature fires by keeping the ground clear and free is a natural part of managing our landscape. On one hand we talk about the benefits of it but on the other hand we bring in pieces of legislation like this that do not allow us to continue to manage land area in a way that is better for the long-term benefit of the land but also delivers a benefit to the community.

Another issue that the people of Polwarth will be very interested in is the mention of GORCAPA, the Great Ocean Road, Coast and Parks Authority, in this piece of legislation. In the lead-up to the briefings and so on that the government has provided on this, this provides for handing over more assets to an already cash-strapped, cash-poor agency. We have Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action parks facilities in Barwon Downs, we have them in Apollo Bay, we have them in Port Campbell and in other communities – what level of these are being handed over? We were not able to get an answer on that, so that is an outstanding question that still exists. Will these assets transfer from the broader state budget and the broader control of the state, or are they all going to be handballed to this cash-strapped entity that is being handballed all the responsibility of a very diverse and complex environmental scenario to manage? That is something we do not know.

I have raised many times in this house the absolute dire state of national and state assets along the Great Ocean Road and in the Otways. At the moment in the tally of popular visitor spots there are more closed than there are open. Cape Otway lighthouse is closed indefinitely. Gibson Steps is closed, the Arch is closed and Loch Ard Gorge is closed – all indefinitely closed. We will never know when they are going to open, there are no funds available to open them and now the state is putting upon this authority even more assets to manage, more costs and no understanding of who is going to pick up the bill. Will there be money in this legislation transferred across for the local management and organisation of these authorities? That is of huge concern to my local community, because we have seen in recent times huge culling of staff in fisheries, culling of staff in forest fire management and a lot of pressure put on the local workforce. The assets are still there. Are we going to have assets that need to be maintained that will not be generating revenue?

In this legislation I have highlighted today an area that I know my own community will be very disappointed in, and that is the concept that this government continues its narrative that we cannot as regional and rural communities live harmoniously with our natural environment. That is the lie in this. We want and expect a good government to put guardrails around how we behave and interact in these places, but it does not make sense to exclude human interactions from these spaces. Often there can be a mutual benefit for both the local communities and the environment when they work well together. My plea to the government is that before adding even more land to the national park estate, which is what this legislation does, we really have to have a good hard look at the land that we are managing now, what the economic model is for it and how we plan to manage it. Locking a forest or a state park up and turning it into a national park 200 years after we have introduced no end of vermin, weeds and other pests and interferences into that environment, it has to be actively managed. Locking up a forest, putting a ring fence around it and saying ‘We will no longer do these things’ does not stop the spread of diseases and plants and animals that cause damage to that environment. We know the state does not have the resources to manage it.

We also know with literally millions more people in the environment today than there were 200 years ago that the chance for fire is much greater. Just the mere existence of humanity in a landscape means the risk of fire is higher. The locked up protected estate in our state of Victoria now is around 18 to 20 per cent of the landscape. That is a big percentage, and that big percentage of landscape is where a lot of people live and a lot of communities exist. We all know only too well how dangerous fire in the landscape can be, and it is a lot more dangerous when we do not have the equipment, we do not have the skills and we do not have the expertise. Worst of all, what we are increasingly doing is increasing the fire load in those communities. It is a huge responsibility. It is disappointing that the government has again focused on a very shrill, amateurish approach to how we need to continue to look after and maintain our landscape into the future. We will be opposing this bill, and we are opposing it because it is just setting the wrong tone for how we can best manage our natural estate into the future.

 Kat THEOPHANOUS (Northcote) (16:09): When I was first elected to this Parliament I came with some priorities, and one of those priorities was to be a voice for real action on climate change and to work within a government to advance our efforts towards clean energy, a circular economy and, critically, strong environmental protections. It is something felt deeply within my community in the inner north and an ethos I have grown up with as a lifetime local. We are a community with a long history of environmental activism, whether that is the likes of Sue Course and other residents who in the 1970s lobbied to protect and renew the Darebin Parklands, saving it from becoming a freeway and factories, or the fierce resolve of Darebin Climate Action Now, who have engaged with me over the years on projects such as an all-electric homes and the push to end native forest logging.

It is also in the quiet diligence of our many stationeers along the rail lines, our Merri and Darebin friends that volunteer to protect our waterways, and in the small but mighty resident groups that have achieved everything from establishing CERES environmental park in the 1980s to saving two huge sugar gum trees on Ballantyne Street just a few weeks back. Importantly, it is also deeply enmeshed in the custodianship of First Peoples, whose care for the lands and waters for tens of thousands of years is seen in the scar trees and sacred sites along the small creeks and mighty Birrarung and echoed in storylines that tell of creation and seasonal cycles, sharing the resources of the land and giving back. Ours is a community that knows and understands the moral obligation and the existential imperative to safeguard our natural environment for the future.

In Victoria I am proud to be part of a Labor government that is at the forefront of that work. I will never forget the day we ended all native forest logging in this state, the biggest environmental protection policy in Victoria’s history, a landmark decision to protect over 1.8 million hectares of forest into the future to restore critical habitat for native plants and animals, to keep our air clean and lock away millions of tonnes of carbon in healthy forests – the kind of deeply meaningful, tangible, progressive change that makes me proud to be a Labor member of Parliament.

Ending native forest logging – our Labor government achieved that despite huge resistance from those opposite. The bill before us today builds on that legacy and that determination to make real and lasting changes to the way we nurture our environment and the future. I say nurture because at the heart of this bill is care – care for country, care for climate, care for communities. Victoria is blessed with natural beauty, rugged coasts, deep forests, wild mountain ranges and native grasslands. They are important to us for so many reasons and in so many different ways. Protecting them is vital, and it is why we already have a world-class system of national, state and other parks, which covers a vast 3.5 million hectares of our state. Together they allow for conservation and recreation in the understanding that caring for nature also means having the opportunity to connect with it, relish it, feel its magic.

The bill will create three new national parks at Wombat–Lerderderg, Pyrenees and Mount Buangor. It will establish new conservation parks at Cobaw and Hepburn. It will permanently protect Mirboo North as a conservation park, add Wellsford forest to Bendigo Regional Park, expand the Wimmera heritage river and create Wandong Regional Park.

Importantly, it will modernise public land legislation and support the granting of Aboriginal title pathways, recognising the close connection with traditional owners, and in a week in which we are passing treaty legislation in this house, that is particularly significant. Together, the new central west parks will permanently protect habitats, animals, plants and fungi. They will protect the headwaters where six major rivers begin their journey and let forests and wildlife heal after years of damage. There will be safe opportunities for respite and recreation for both locals and visitors. People will enjoy bushwalking, picnicking, camping, birding, fishing, mountain biking, four-wheel driving, trail bike riding and so much more in these new parks.

This is a lasting legacy for future generations. Local communities and nature conservationists have spent decades advocating for better protection of these landscapes, and rightly so. These landscapes are habitat to more than 380 rare and threatened species, from the powerful owl and the southern greater glider to the Mount Cole grevillea and the Pyrenees gum. They are the kinds of places that also restore people, close enough for inner-city families like those in Northcote to reach on a weekend, rich enough for a lifetime of visits.

Our parks welcome around 90 million visitors each year, contributing significantly to local and regional economies and showing that protection and public enjoyment belong together not at odds.

This bill will add ecosystems that have been missing, making the network of parks more representative, more connected and more resilient in a warming climate. We are plain about our purpose: protect what is irreplaceable, invite people in and care for those precious landscapes ongoingly. That ongoing care is important – it means we will keep investing in things like track fixing, signage, weed control, revegetation and improving the ecological condition of parks.

My community is one of the most environmentally conscious in the state. We may be a far way from Wombat forest, but on any given weekend you will find Northcote people there walking, camping, birding and teaching their kids what an old tree looks like and how a creek sounds after rain. They expect their government to protect these places and to keep them welcoming for walkers, families, schools and citizen scientists. And at home we practise what we preach. Last Thursday I joined the Merri Creek Management Committee and Friends of Bracken Creek for one of their regular community clean-ups – 14 volunteers, 40 kilograms of litter and 1874 pieces of rubbish removed from a single stretch of urban waterway in a couple of hours. Stewardship is not a slogan; it is done with gloves on and results measured.

We have been listening too. Recently I had the opportunity, along with the member for Preston and the member for Pascoe Vale, to sit down with Jo Hopkins from the Wilderness Society and Matt Ruchel from the Victorian National Parks Association. Earlier in the year I met with Luke Chamberlain from Environmental Justice Australia and touched in again with Professor Ann Sanson, Karen Large and Suzie Hoban at Darebin Climate Action Now. These organisations have been in the conservation space for decades and bring a wealth of experience and expertise to conversations about how we can further embed our commitments to protect Victoria’s environmental assets. It has been incredibly valuable to have that sounding-board with them and to elevate their voices within government. To see the VNPA call this legislation ‘a historic win for nature, climate, and community’ after years of advocacy is really moving. Our conversations have been wide-ranging, but there are a couple of things that they have put on our radar, including a desire to see stronger controls around private land logging, more independent oversight and regulation of fire management operations in forests, more explicit emphasis in legislation about the intended uses of public land and movement towards more forest protection in parts of the east. I hope to have more conversations with the Minister for Environment and the Minister for Planning on those matters in the future.

Fundamentally what we are doing here today is acting decisively to leave a healthy, thriving world as a gift for our children, our grandchildren and the planet. It is something I am immensely proud to champion. I know that there will be those in the chamber who resist that kind of reform, standing up that false dichotomy between conservation and recreation. It is a weak and lazy argument. National parks create custodians, because when you let people love a place, they look after the place that they love.

I know that the Greens will also have something to say today – probably one of those deriding-Labor speeches saying we are not going far enough. It is a tired trope from a decaying party that has never had to do the hard incremental work that real progress demands. It is a cynical campaign tool with a set formula: grandstand your aspiration, then oppose or deride each practical step that enables the next to get there. But progress is not posture; it is a sequence, navigated at every point through listening, learning and making choices that bring more people with us along the way. Only Labor does that real reform, embedding lasting energy and environmental policy in a way that does not leave people behind or alienate communities. I commend the bill to the house.

 Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (16:19): It is a pleasure to follow the member for Northcote, who has gone back to her old habits of using her time in this chamber to attack the Greens, a party that a lot of people in her electorate actually vote for. I think they expect her to bring some kind of semblance of dignity to this chamber rather than attacking the party that is standing up for the environment. Let us move on.

I rise to speak on the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025. The Greens will be supporting this bill, which will at long last create the Mount Buangor, Pyrenees and Wombat–Lerderderg national parks. Communities have been waiting for these parks for years, and really this is a victory for them, for everyone who was involved in the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council’s (VEAC’s) central west investigation and for all the community members, environmentalists, traditional owners and others who have campaigned for these national parks for years and years.

The bill also fulfils several other outstanding commitments from the government’s response to the inquiry in 2021. It has been a few years coming, including but not limited to creating the Cobaw, Hepburn and Mirboo North conservation parks, adding land to the Bendigo Regional Park, extending the Wimmera River Heritage Area Park and revoking several native game sanctuaries in central west Victoria.

We also support the other changes in the bill, like changing the name of the Yellingbo Landscape Conservation Area to Liwik Barring Landscape Conservation Area and updating plans to support the granting of Aboriginal title over several parks – particularly important in a week like this week, when we are voting on treaty.

The Greens absolutely, as I have said, support these new national parks. They are very important parts of our state and parts of our state that deserve to be protected. As I mentioned, the disappointing thing is that these parks were promised years and years ago, and the government has dragged its feet to get to this point. I have had so many emails, phone calls and meetings from environmental groups and community members just despairing and saying, ‘When are these coming? Are they coming? Is this going to be a broken promise? When will we see these new national parks?’ And they are very pleased to see this legislation come, if a little bit despairing at how late it has come.

There is an element of this bill that does cause concern. Not many people probably canvassed this too much in their speeches – a few did – but in this bill Labor has given a small but vocal and influential group of hunters and shooters the permission to expand recreational deer hunting in our national parks, and it has tacked this onto the bill really at the 11th hour. Under this bill our national parks, the three that are being created in this bill as well as the Errinundra and Snowy River national parks in East Gippsland will be opened up to recreational deer hunting for fun. I want to take some time in this chamber to explain why it is a bad idea and why the Greens do not support it.

Feral deer are a huge problem. Their numbers since the end of deer farming in the 1980s have been increasing rapidly in Victoria, and they are now one of our biggest environmental threats. The Invasive Species Council estimates that the current population is over 1 million and rising. A few years ago, when this was becoming a real and present danger, environment groups, local people and the Greens raised concerns with the state Labor government and with the minister. We asked and we begged them to do more to control feral deer while the numbers were still low enough that we could make a significant difference. But they acted far too late, and now really the problem is almost out of control and very, very difficult to rein in. Once an invasive species gets to a certain threshold it is very, very difficult to reverse the damage, and that is a tragedy in our state of huge, huge scale.

I am sure that so many people in this chamber right across the political spectrum have seen the damage that deer are doing to our state. Environmentally, the deer are trampling native vegetation, reducing food sources for native animals, eroding bushland through trampling and destruction of delicate ecological communities, wallowing in wetlands and waterways and creating a huge environmental disaster. Feral deer are also a safety problem, with more deer on our roads causing more traffic accidents. And deer are even turning up on primary school playgrounds and even on the streets of the inner city – running into people’s homes just a couple of kilometres down from Parliament House. So they are a huge public safety and environmental risk.

The thing is that Labor will try and convince people that recreational deer hunting helps to do something about this problem, but the research that we have read and the evidence show that actually that is not the case; in fact it can lead to a worsening of the problem, the opposite of fixing the problem. So rather than this tacking on of recreational deer hunting to this bill being something to help the environment, it is actually a plan for Labor to appease their friends in the hunting and shooting lobby. That is a small group of people, but they are vocal and they are powerful within the Labor Party. And it is bad news for the environment, bad news for animal welfare and bad news for public safety.

Research across Australia has shown that recreational hunting does not help to curtail deer numbers. Recreational deer hunters also typically do not remove enough deer. It is an argument that perhaps on its surface takes a little bit to understand. But what we need to do when we are talking about the environment is look at evidence. I think the most important thing that we should be doing in this place is genuinely looking at evidence, not just what might make intuitive sense. The thing is that recreational deer hunters typically do not remove enough deer to have a meaningful impact on deer numbers and lead to a shrinking of the population. You need to remove over 35 per cent of a population every year to actually lead to an ongoing decrease in that population. With recreational deer hunting they do not remove enough deer, and that means that the number of deer born each year far outweighs the number removed by recreational hunting. That is for a few reasons. Hunting occurs generally during the day, when deer are less active, because people are doing it for fun, and so they are out with their friends during the day. Recreational hunters usually stick to areas that are easily accessed, so areas near roads or near tracks. Deer learn to avoid those areas. Recreational deer hunters have also been shown to be much less accurate than professional animal controllers, which means they often miss their target, leaving deer to run off into the forest wounded but not dead, which is also very cruel and an animal welfare concern.

The other issue is that recreational deer hunters actually have a very different objective and incentive to those who might want to reduce deer populations. Recreational hunters are doing this for fun, and that means that their incentive is more along the lines of maintaining deer numbers so that they can come back tomorrow, the next day and the next year and keep enjoying their deer hunting sport. In fact research shows that recreational deer hunters will often selectively hunt deer, keeping breeding females – the does – alive and only targeting the stags. That actually helps populations increase so that they have a continuous population of deer to hunt in the future. Research has also shown that hunters have been known to move feral species like deer, and we have also seen this with pigs, into new areas where they are not currently to give them more areas to hunt in. It is a national park that they particularly like, and there might be an incentive to move feral species into that area. This makes the problem a lot worse by increasing the distribution of feral animals across the state.

And this is just talking about the environmental impact. What about the public safety impact? For all the safety mechanisms that are put in place during recreational deer hunting, bullet holes have been found lodged in trees close to people’s homes. Bullets have also been found in people’s bedroom walls. When I had a briefing on this legislation by the minister’s office and the department, I was interested in the evidence. I said in my maiden speech that I would be guided by the evidence. If there is evidence, change my mind. I am happy to read it. I asked the department and the minister’s office for any evidence that they had that recreational deer hunting helps to bring down deer numbers, and if they sent it to me, I would have a read. Nothing was ever sent through. Not surprisingly, that email never arrived in my inbox, and we did not receive that evidence, because I do not believe this decision by the state Labor government is based on evidence. I believe it is based on politics. It is based on what will keep people in the hunting and shooting lobby happy. Screw the evidence. Screw the environment.

In the same briefing I also raised the question of public safety. When you go into a national park in Victoria, you expect that you will be able to enjoy nature. Because firearms are usually banned in national parks, you expect that when you are bushwalking, birding or doing any of the other activities that Labor members talked about people enjoying in our national parks you will not be shot at. I asked the government how they will ensure people are safe while they are camping, hiking, enjoying nature or riding their bikes with deer hunters in those exact same areas. We know that deer hunters are usually going to stick to areas that they can also access with tracks and roads. For example, will there be extra signage or alerts? No, we did not hear any of that. All they could say was, ‘We think deer hunters will stay away from busy hiking trails.’ I have to say that is pretty cold comfort, especially for the people who found bullets lodged in their bedroom walls in the Yarra Ranges. The thing is our national parks are supposed to be enjoyed by everybody. Parks Victoria used to have the slogan ‘Healthy Parks Healthy People.’ They are places that, as the member for Northcote said, people go into. If you let people go and love a place, then they will protect that place.

They are public land, and public land belongs to all of us. But by allowing recreational hunters with not a huge amount of training but with high-powered firearms into our national parks you are preventing other people from going into that same area and enjoying it, because guns and hunting make the park unsafe for other people to enjoy. The two uses are not necessarily compatible, and I just do not think it is fair for a large group of people to essentially be prevented from safely enjoying nature to appease a small group of hunters and shooters who are influential within the Labor Party for political reasons.

It might be possible, if you put aside animal welfare and safety issues – and I do not think we should – for a very targeted recreational amateur deer hunting program to support a broad deer control program in very specific areas. But that is not what is happening here. Instead Labor is making a political decision that a small group of influential people want to hunt so let us open our national parks regardless of the evidence. The reason that we are quite animated about this is because it is not the first time that Jacinta Allan has prioritised the hunters and the shooters over good environmental policy and over nature.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): Order! Just a reminder for the member to use correct titles.

Ellen SANDELL: Thank you. It is not the first time the Premier has prioritised the politics of hunting and shooting over nature protection. We all remember that the government was about to ban duck shooting in Victoria, as it has been banned in many other jurisdictions across this country, and then the Premier made a political decision and decided to intervene and say they are not going to ban duck shooting. Labor likes duck shooting so we will continue duck shooting in Victoria. The government has also pulled the remit from the Great Outdoors Taskforce. It had a remit to investigate new parks as part of the $1.5 billion transition away from native forest logging. That remit was revoked, so now it does not have a remit to investigate new parks. The Minister for Environment Steve Dimopoulos even explicitly rejected a decades-old plan for the Great Forest National Park in the Central Highlands while concurrently announcing his plan to expand recreational deer hunting at a forum with a small number of hunters recently, which was all over social media.

I do not think this is what Victorians want. I think Victorians want to protect nature, and it is pretty disappointing that Labor has backtracked on their promise for future national parks. When it announced that it was creating these central west national parks Labor put out a press release and said it will not be creating any new national parks. It is more than a broken promise, it is a betrayal. It is a betrayal of future generations who deserve to see our forests protected for them, for their children and their grandchildren. It is also baffling, because we know that the vast majority of Victorians want more national parks. Redbridge polling in 2024, just last year, found that 80 per cent of Victorians support the creation of new parks. Victoria has some of the most biodiverse, beautiful forests in the world. People absolutely love them. They are a national treasure. They are the most carbon-dense forests in the world, the tallest flowering plants in the world. If we fully funded our national parks and protected these forests, we would get out and enjoy them, safe in the knowledge that they are protected for future generations, whether that be from loggers or from shooters.

Labor wants the Greens to get up and give them a big pat on the back for finally delivering one of their promises when it comes to national parks, but this really is the bare minimum. It is something that has been promised for many, many years. You cannot just promise national parks and in the same media release close the door on any future national parks. That is not a good, evidence-based environment policy. It is not thinking with the future in mind. It was a huge win to end industrial-scale logging in Victoria, and it is something the community is very proud of. People still talk to me about what an incredible win that was, that our forests can finally be protected from logging. But it did not happen because Labor just woke up one day and decided; it came after a long, long fight and after decades and decades when so many of our forests were destroyed. Beautiful, irreplaceable areas have been destroyed, and people still contact me distressed that logging is still happening by stealth in some areas of Victoria in our incredibly precious forests.

We have just seen over the last few weeks that the damage done in Victoria is not quite over. We learned last month that Japanese timber company Opal, or Australian Paper, is suing the Victorian government for over $400 million simply because they were not able to destroy the little remaining native forest left in Victoria. Logging companies could have transitioned to plantation timber and recycled paper decades ago, but they wanted to keep getting this free resource from Victoria and destroying native forests for as long as they could to make as much profit as they could. And now that is over – finally, the ride is over – they are looking for even more handouts from the Victorian taxpayer. The thing is they are only able to proceed with this case because there is a dodgy piece of legislation still on Victoria’s books, the Forests (Wood Pulp Agreement) Act 1996, a gift from the Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett in 1996 to the native timber industry. The wood pulp agreement still exists here in Victoria. It should have been torn up years ago. We, the Greens, have a private members bill right now to do just that. We first introduced it in 2018. There is nothing stopping Labor picking that up and passing that legislation next week. Labor has been very reluctant to get rid of that, and now look at what has happened: the state is open to lawsuits from logging companies because we are not letting them log our incredibly precious resource for free.

We know there are other loopholes in the end of native forest logging. There are forest produce licences, which any government in the future could simply revive for timber harvesting. There is the possibility of so-called salvage logging or bushfire prevention works that are being co-opted by timber companies for profit and greatly damaging our native forests.

A member interjected.

Ellen SANDELL: It is true. I have seen it for myself. I have seen the evidence. I have seen the evidence from the Australian National University that shows that salvage logging and excessive bushfire works are actually being used as a smokescreen for commercial logging and causing huge devastation and actually making our forests more fire-prone – that is the thing. They are making our forests more fire-prone by opening them up, and I do not think any of us want our forests to be more fire-prone, given what is happening with climate change.

The Greens, as I mentioned at the start, will support the creation of new national parks in this bill, but given the issues that I have canvassed, we will be putting forward some commonsense amendments in the upper house to close some of the native logging loopholes and to stop the dangerous deer hunting that are included in the legislation.

Finally, during this historic week, we acknowledge all the traditional owners who were involved during the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council’s consultation process prior to this bill being introduced to Parliament. While much of their feedback has been adopted in this bill and process, many did stress that there needs to be stronger and more collaborative engagement in the future. As we know and as others have said, First Nations Victorians have managed this land for tens of thousands of years. They have knowledge that is too often ignored or put to the side, and we would do well to listen and learn from them about how to care for country and ensure that traditional owners have the power over their land that rightfully belongs to them.

Currently, under our National Parks Act 1975, as I understand it, only Parks Victoria can be designated as the land manager for a protected area. We understand that there is legislation being brought to Parliament soon, hopefully, to change the law that means traditional owners and First Nations custodians can be designated to be land managers of protected areas. We look forward to seeing that legislation as soon as possible to help move forward the fight for land rights and self-determination in this country. We hope that in the creation of this legislation the government will meaningfully engage with and listen to traditional owners about how land should be protected and managed and that, in line with VEAC’s recommendations, adequate resources are provided to traditional owners to be land managers of new parks and reserves in Victoria.

 Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (16:39): I rise to support the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025. In doing so I would like to acknowledge the Minister for Environment and the Parliamentary Secretary for Outdoor Recreation and member for Kororoit as well for their and their teams’ work in bringing this bill to the chamber. Victoria is home to diverse landscapes, from native grasslands to dense forests, from wild mountain ranges to rugged coastlines. They harbour our native species and are havens to Victorians from all walks of life. We have a responsibility to care for these landscapes to make sure that Victorians can experience and enjoy them in the ways that they love to. That is why we have continued to work and progress reforms, investments and initiatives that have all been designed to better protect, preserve and secure the future of our natural environment, landscapes, waterways and of course forests for current and future generations to continue to enjoy. That is why we have continued to take, first and foremost, real action on climate change. We have implemented the nation’s leading carbon reduction and renewable energy targets. We have brought back the State Electricity Commission, the SEC, to oversee and drive our efforts to support the return of public-owned and zero-emissions energy. We have introduced Protecting Victoria’s Environment: Biodiversity 2037 strategy, which sets out our plan to stop the decline of native animals and plants.

We have developed our first ever adaptation action plan to coordinate a whole-of-government plan to embed climate resilience into every sector. We have introduced the state’s first container deposit scheme, the CDS, to drive recycling efforts and help keep our natural environment and local communities free from litter, and we have supported many local environmental sustainability initiatives, including via some of our shared interests here, Acting Speaker Walters: the Moonee Ponds Creek, the Merri Creek, the Edgars Creek and the Westbreen Creek, which are beacons and lungs through the northern suburbs corridor. But it is also of course through the historic steps that we have taken to end old-growth forest logging and, more recently, to end native forest logging and harvesting. The biggest environmental policies in our state’s history, when combined, are helping take real action to protect our state’s environment and future sustainability. That is why we are bringing this bill to the chamber.

National parks are not only about caring for important natural and cultural values, they are also about providing opportunities for the public’s enjoyment, recreation and education. Whether it is walking, hiking, picnicking, nature observation, fishing, camping, a bit of four-wheel driving, trail bike riding, mountain bike riding and more, the reality is more and more people are continuing to enjoy and experience our wonderful outdoors, particularly people from Pascoe Vale, Coburg and Brunswick West. In 2022–23 national parks and other parks and reserves in Victoria welcomed 90 million visitors alone, contributing significantly to local and regional economies in terms of jobs, small business and other outcomes. But along with these measures in the bill, the recent release of Victoria’s new tourism plan 2025–2030 and Experience Victoria 2033 also highlights the important role our national parks and natural outdoor spaces can continue to play to drive further economic and visitation growth for these communities. The visitor economy of course is growing, and visitors are no longer solely drawn to flagship attractions here in the Melbourne CBD, but increasingly, particularly those coming from the Asia-Pacific and China are looking for those authentic heritage, cultural and environmental and nature-based tourism experiences. As I said, whether it is through First Nations cultural experiences, Victoria’s incredible natural outdoor spaces, one-of-a-kind biodiversity, our unique early pioneering and gold rush period or our national parks, our outdoor offerings are truly well positioned to all be leveraged for further preservation and visitation.

That is why, following the cessation of old-growth forest and native forest logging, we moved to establish the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council reference group and Great Outdoors Taskforce to consult statewide and local communities about the future conservation and recreational tourism opportunities across these 1.8 million hectares of Victorian native forests, home to 380 rare threatened species which rely on government protection for their future. The government’s 21 responses to VEAC’s report committed to creating three new national parks, two conservation parks and seven new or expanded regional parks, as well as retaining areas of state forest and creating several nature and other smaller reserves. The Minister for Environment at the time noted the wideranging demands on this public land to not only provide safe homes for our threatened species but also provide more opportunities for Victorians to recreate and connect with nature and their communities. This bill reflects that need for balance and responds to the needs of Victoria’s general community and our flora and our fauna.

That is why this bill provides for a number of new national, state, regional and conservation parks and reservations, including the creation of the Mount Buangor National Park, Pyrenees National Park and Wombat–Lerderderg National Park. It will create a new Cobaw Conservation Park and Hepburn Conservation Park and add hectares to Bendigo Regional Park and the Wimmera Heritage River area. It will create the Mirboo North Conservation Park in West Gippsland. It will add 230 hectares to the Yellingbo Landscape Conservation Area, extend the Liwik Barring Landscape Conservation Area and excise some areas around the Alpine National Park and Dandenong Ranges National Park. It will add land to Brisbane Ranges National Park, Gippsland Lakes Coastal Park and Yallock-Bulluk Marine Coastal Park. It will create Wandong Regional Park – 850 hectares – and update plans for a number of other parks, including Baw Baw and Kinglake national parks, Avon Wilderness Park, Cathedral Range State Park and much more. It will make several improvements to the Great Ocean Road area and also Princes Park, St Kilda Marina and make a number of other miscellaneous changes.

Through the creation of these new national parks and reservations in this bill, in combination with the cessation of large-scale native timber harvesting in Victoria, this government is delivering landmark protections for precious biodiversity and endangered species, providing a lasting legacy for future generations. This largely completes the establishment of Victoria’s outstanding system of national parks. The bill will ensure a large part of the most important habitat of 380 rare and threatened species that live in these areas is better cared for. Some of these species include Mount Cole grevilleas, southern greater gliders, brush-tailed phascogales, mountain skinks and powerful owls.

In supporting this landmark bill I would like to acknowledge the many stakeholders and passionate locals I have engaged with over many months as it has progressed and developed, including my colleagues the members for Preston and Northcote, who I have advocated together with on these matters. I would like to acknowledge Kelvin Thomson, former federal member for Wills and Pascoe Vale for his passion in this space. I used to work for him, and his passion for the environment, for a nature base and open space and our forests is absolutely contagious. In his honour, in many ways, I am advocating very strongly for this bill and ongoing reforms as we progress. Also, Matt Ruchel of the Victorian National Parks Association, Jo Hopkins from the Wilderness Society, Luke Chamberlain from Environmental Justice Australia, many, many locals who have contacted me, Maggie Cowling, Nina Killham, Stirling Edwards, Graeme Lechte and so many others I have spoken with, met with and doorknocked with since being elected. Maggie Cowling wrote me a really beautiful email on behalf of the local Australian Conservation Foundation community and Wilderness Society members. It states:

As your constituents, we’re relieved and grateful to see the three National Parks legislation finally brought before Parliament. We also deeply acknowledge the work that has got it to this point.

Your advocacy and the work of citizen scientists, local volunteers on the ground, traditional owners, the campaigners from Victorian National Parks Association, Wombat Forestcare, Wellsford Forest Alliance, Wombat Action Group, The Wilderness Society our local ACF community … and other nature groups, all reflect just how much we Victorians love our natural place and want them protected.

We overwhelmingly love our National Parks. We visit them, use them for recreation and treasure them as havens in our increasingly urbanised world. We hugely support the creation of more of them. Locals who walk with Victorian Mountain Tramping Club and other recreational groups have actively campaigned for these parks that are under two hours from our homes.

Of course, they love us back: they clean our water, benefit our health, store carbon, supply pollinators for agriculture, provide tourism for local communities and help reduce flood damage. And they are important in their own right as precious ecosystems protecting rare and threatened plants, fungi and animals like Powerful Owls and Greater Gliders.

The new parks will give sections of Victoria a chance to heal after years of damage. The result will be to protect the headwaters of six major rivers, keep out damaging industries like mining and logging, help Traditional Owners to care for Country, keep clean drinking water flowing to farms and towns, and provide us with beautiful places to explore, camp, hike and restore our own health through connection with nature.

We thank the Environment Minister –

Mr Dimopoulos –

… and hope the next steps of securing other VEAC recommendations will soon eventuate with a new Public Land Act.

We hope protections will be extended to our precious Central Highlands and East Gippsland native forests and that this will mark an end to native forest destruction throughout Victoria.

The bill does strike the right balance between enhancing protections afforded to some significant areas of Victoria’s natural and cultural heritage and providing opportunities for tourism, recreation and connection.

I would like to just go to those points that were made earlier by the Greens, if I can just rebut some of those points. No matter what Labor does when it comes to the environment, they are never happy. It does not go far enough and it is not done soon enough. All the Greens are good at when it comes to the environment is making and breaking fake promises. They cannot deliver anything on the environment or any other policy area for that matter, because they are not in government and they do not seek to be in government. It is only governments – Labor governments – that make those decisions. They always claim the moral high ground while simultaneously climbing that mountain of hypocrisy. Look no further than what is happening in Canberra at the moment. The federal Labor government is trying to introduce the first ever national environmental protection authority – EPA – which the Greens, since before the federal election, have been opposing and resisting and campaigning against.

It is the same with this bill here. These are practical reforms to expand our national forests across the state for future generations to protect, and they are still not happy. In the name of my local activists, I commend the bill to the house.

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (16:49): I rise today to speak on the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025, not to question the value of our natural environment but to challenge the illusion that simply drawing new lines on a map is the same as protecting it. This bill promises new national and conservation parks across central-west Victoria. It speaks of legacy, of biodiversity and of recreation. What it does not speak of and what it fails to address is the hard, unglamorous work of maintenance – of weed control, of fire mitigation and of hard work on the ground. Victoria’s bushlands have suffered extensive damage from bushfires over the past two decades, with millions of hectares burnt, ecosystems degraded and in 2009 the devastating loss of 182 lives, with thousands of dwellings and structures having been lost.

We have had devastating fires recently in my electorate and locally in the Grampians and Budj Bim national parks, yet effective land and fire management has deteriorated under Labor. Analysis of Parks Victoria’s annual reports over the last 10 years shows a sharp decline in the capacity to manage park estates. Despite a 20 per cent increase in land under management by the government, operational funding – cut by the government – has fallen by 35 per cent. Ranger numbers have decreased, dropping 28 per cent in the past year alone. Our local park rangers work tirelessly to preserve the beauty of our parks. But it is a struggle that they cannot do alone without support, and they are not getting it. They are clearing trails, protecting wildlife and educating visitors. Their dedication is unwavering, and it certainly does not go unnoticed. Parks Victoria has become increasingly top heavy whilst on-the-ground capacity has withered. This decline has led to worsening conditions across the park network, particularly in three critical areas: fuel load management, reduction in capacity for planned burns and mechanical fuel reduction, which increases the risk of catastrophic bushfires, and the evidence is clear that the government is failing.

Invasive weeds, blackberries, serrated tussocks and other noxious weeds are spreading rapidly in undermanaged parks, and these species outcompete native flora, degrade habitat and increase fire risk by creating dense flammable understoreys. I will talk to you about a specific example in a moment in South-West Coast. Pest animals such as foxes and rabbits are going rampant. Deer and pigs are causing widespread environmental damage. Without adequate control these pests destroy native vegetation and threaten biodiversity, and they undermine the ecological objectives of the parks themselves. Bushfires, invasive weeds and pest animals do not recognise a change in land tenure.

We have seen what happens when governments focus on park creation without committing to long-term care, and look no further than the Cobboboonee National Park in South-West Coast. This was created under Steve Bracks. At the time it was hailed as a triumph for conservation. In fact member for Western Victoria Gayle Tierney said at the time that it would permanently protect what is a very beautiful area. Well, not so much. Because of poor maintenance there is an infestation of sweet pittosporum. It is a native vegetation species, but it is not native to the Cobboboonee, so what has happened is it is creating a monoculture and absolutely threatening the biodiversity of that forest. It is a woody weed that is out of control.

Locals were so concerned that they formed the South West Woody Weeds Action Team. Volunteers, who work hard, come together once a week, beg for funds from government and try to make a difference to get something to occur before the forest is destroyed. This small group of dedicated volunteers are doing their best to save the forest, which has been smothered by sweet pittosporum, but without proper government support their efforts are like trying to knit a jumper faster than someone else is unravelling it. Every stitch of progress they make is undone before they can finish the next row. It is not a lack of effort by the volunteers. It is a lack of backing by the Victorian Labor government, who create national parks – and this is the example – but then walk away. They do not do what is needed to care for it and maintain it. The locals see what is being lost, and they will act. They have come together, but they simply cannot keep up with the threads being pulled so loose. Responsibility for environmental protections and infrastructure and maintenance is what we do not see once these areas are protected. This is the perfect example, and as a result, native flora are being choked out. The very biodiversity we seek to protect is under threat not from development but from neglect.

The government’s Glenelg Eden project, which began in 2008, was designed to combat weed infestations across 90,000 hectares of public land. However, more than 87 unique weed species have invaded the region, threatening native biodiversity and highlighting the consequences of insufficient long-term maintenance. This example underscores my point: creating parks is only the beginning. Without sustained investment in upkeep and ecological management, conservation efforts falter.

In another area of the Cobboboonee the Great South West Walk is another great treasure that is an area of neglect.

This walk stretches 262 kilometres through some of the most breathtaking landscapes, and this loop showcases everything that makes South-West Coast extraordinary. From rugged coastal cliffs and remote beaches to majestic river gorges and tranquil forests, it is a walk that speaks to the soul of our region.

It is not just the scenery though; it is the story behind the Great South West Walk. It was a trail that was built by Portland High School students, their families and the community back in the 1980s – 40 years ago. I went to the anniversary; it must have been last year or the year before. It is cared for by a dedicated group of volunteers who mow, weed, whipper-snip and keep the track thriving. Their passionate and tireless volunteers are called the Friends of the Great South West Walk. Many of them cherish the Cobboboonee National Park and have contacted me numerous times over the last 2½ years because of a modest footbridge called Ralph’s Bridge that they built 40 years ago and have had problems with because a tree fell on it in July 2023, 2½ years ago now. Since then, this beautiful section of the trail has remained closed. Why? Bureaucracy.

The volunteers did the right thing, because it is in the national park, and alerted the government to the problem. These are the volunteers, as I said, who are whipper-snipping, mowing, weeding and doing all the work for the government. But the government have said that instead of being able to just get a chainsaw and remove the tree and rebuild the bridge like they did 40 years ago, they had to wait for an environmental assessment. It took eight months for them to remove the tree, and the volunteers had to wait for that to happen. They then had insurance delays and then came more bureaucracy. Now, 2½ years later, despite their cries for common sense, the repairs, they are told, are out of scope for the volunteers to deliver. Remember, they did it 40 years ago themselves and it lasted 40 years – not a bad effort – and a tree fell on it and broke it, so not even because of dilapidation.

But Parks Victoria now propose a full replacement requiring heavy equipment to be brought to the site with the bridge intact instead of in parts, with significant disruption and no doubt much damage to the environment – the irony of this decision being made when this is about protecting the environment. This is despite even the independent insurer preferring a simpler repair using the existing timber. The volunteers who have the capability, skills and commitment have been ignored, and their offer of help to reinstate a bridge has been sidelined by the minister, who should be honouring the spirit of volunteerism that built Ralph’s Bridge in the first place. You would not credit this, would you – talk about allowing red tape to stand in the way of something so simple, so meaningful and so achievable. Ralph’s Bridge should be opened. This is not about shortcuts. This is about common sense. It is about respecting the legacy of a community-built project and the people who maintain it. It is about reopening a treasured trail that connects people to nature, history and each other. I call on Parks Victoria and the responsible minister to truly listen and let the community do what is common sense.

Creating new parks without a clear, funded and enforceable maintenance strategy is not just irresponsible, it is environmentally dangerous. It risks turning our most treasured landscapes into ecological disasters, like the two examples that I have put forward here, and it betrays the very environmental values we claim to uphold. The real test of conservation is not just how many parks we create but how well we care for them. If we are to expand our parks system, then we must expand our commitment to maintaining it. Otherwise we risk repeating the mistakes of the past, and that is what Labor do very well.

 Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (16:59): We have the most extraordinary natural, diverse landscapes and native grasslands, dense forests, wild mountain ranges and rugged coastlines. I know as a Victorian growing up how delightful it always was to go into the bush, to see the beautiful birdlife and see the delicate ecosystems that we all treasure and how quickly it can help you to relax and centre and have a much better nexus to land. I am very excited about the expansion of parks and, I should say, creating three new national parks, two new conservation parks and seven new or expanded regional parks. This is a great thing for all Victorians and not least for fostering biodiversity in our great state of Victoria.

The SPEAKER: The time set down for consideration of items on the government business program has arrived, and I am required to interrupt business. The house is considering the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025. The minister has moved that the bill be now read a second time. The member for Eildon has moved a reasoned amendment to this motion. She has proposed to admit all of the words after that and replace them with the words that have been circulated. The question is:

That the words proposed to be admitted stand part of the question.

Those supporting the reason amendment by the member for Eildon should vote no.

Assembly divided on question:

The SPEAKER: The question is:

That this bill be now read a second time and a third time.

Assembly divided on question:

The SPEAKER: The bill will now be sent to the Legislative Council and their agreement requested.