Wednesday, 31 July 2024

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (18:38): (1018) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Environment. This is a tale of two concurrent investigations, both of which are causing considerable distress to thousands of my constituents in the Eastern Victoria Region and indeed across the state. One is the eminent panel – these are your words, Minister, not mine – for the Central Highlands state forest, which is about to deliver its final report and recommendations through VEAC, the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council, to you, Minister. The other is the Great Outdoors Taskforce’s future of our state forests taskforce – again, your terminology, not mine – that you announced on 1 April this year. I quote you:

Victorians have a landmark opportunity to help design the future of the state’s public land estate – which now includes more than 1.8 million hectares of forest previously used for timber harvesting.

The Great Outdoors Taskforce is supposed to be assessing all state forests, including that of the Central Highlands, so you are double dipping in these two different organisations. There is cross-membership in these, of some but not all. Karen Cain and VEAC’s Mellissa Wood are in both, and both have a history of advocating for the locking up of more Crown land into parks and reserves. Mr Dear and Mr Robinson I know are very good people from Gippsland, and I am sure they are seeking a balanced analysis, where the former clearly have a bias.

There are 17,000 Victorians who have already signed the petition that I am sponsoring on behalf of bush users, and they want to send a clear message to you and your bureaucrats: no more new national parks. The petition and movement are in response to massive community concern at Labor’s woeful management of the public land estate as it is, noting that the reclassification of state forests to national parks will not ensure greater health for the environment or the preservation of biodiversity. It will only seek to exclude traditional pursuits that provide wellbeing to thousands and thousands of Victorians. Public exclusion of traditional pursuits does not equate to better conservation; better land management and active management of our forest estates, whatever the land tenure, is far more important. This government has 60 per cent of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action workforce sitting in metropolitan Melbourne. We need more boots and less suits in our environment. Bush users such as hunters, four-wheel drivers, horseriders, trail bike riders, prospectors and fossickers, anglers and those Victorians who like to camp in state forests with their family and their pet will face exclusion. You are saying in the Guardian that the Nationals are running a scare campaign. The action I seek, Minister, is for you to rule out the curtailment of traditional bush-user activities right across this investigation and allow people public access to public land.