Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Petitions

National parks

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:28): I move:

That the petition be taken into consideration.

This historic petition has garnered 40,208 signatures, and it sends a clear message to the Allan government: Victorians deserve public access to public land. Labor must preserve the status quo, preserve the current land tenure and not create any new national parks. What we want to see, what these 40,000 Victorians want to see, is our cherished national parks and our loved state forests and reserves open for public access.

Responsible for public land management, the Allan government is a poor neighbour, and we know that from our bushfires and an inept public land manager. Visit any of our national parks, visit any of our state forests, and you will see overgrown tracks and you will see decaying infrastructure – if it is still there. A cash-strapped government is cutting frontline boots on the ground and neglecting forests, which leads to poorer environmental outcomes. This is a perverse outcome this government is seeking. There are insufficient field staff, there are insufficient rangers and there are a proliferation of pests and weeds – ask any country person and they will tell you that – and there is an ever-increasing threat of out-of-control bushfire.

Coupled with the loss of our experienced timber workers and the bungled and botched transition, our regional communities are more and more at risk. Parks Victoria has had $95 million gutted from its budget and a halving of its core services. Locking up more of our state forests as national parks serves no-one, and restricting Victorians from our traditional pursuits, such as free and dispersed camping, dirt and trail bike riding, horseriding, hunting, four-wheel driving, prospecting and fossicking, does not guarantee any better conservation of vulnerable species. This country, our country, evolved by and through people – First Nations people – managing the land in the landscape. Forests were selectively cool-burned, species were hunted and people lived in and around their environment. Today this government is finding excuses to restrict access. In flawed ideology, Labor has committed to locking up 50,000 hectares in the Pyrenees, Wombat and Lerderderg state forests as national park, and the minister has doubled down on this today. While Labor’s Great Outdoors Taskforce has announced it will not be recommending any new national parks, caveats hide the reality. The footprint in the Central Highlands was excluded from this probe. The great forest national park threat is live – 350,000 hectares are under consideration.

The groups that have energised this petition deserve great thanks. The work of the group Victorians Against the Great Forest National Park has been influential in leveraging signatures and raising the issue’s profile. The genesis, though, of the movement came decades ago with Bush Users Group United Victoria and Prospectors and Miners Association of Victoria, and we thank them for leading the charge. The late, great Rita Bentley, our fierce champion for access to land rights, and the prospectors and miners are remembered today. The Fuel Reduction Saves Lives campaign was a passion of hers, and I reignited that passion with her shortly before her death after the 2020 fires. The Nationals and Liberals have stood, stand by stand, with BUGU – champions like Bill Schulz, thank you very much.

If you want to go and have a look at a shining example of conservation, go and have a look at Heart Morass in my electorate. Field & Game do an amazing work for conservation. The stewards of the High Country, the Mountain Cattlemen’s Association of Victoria, keenly recognise how to better manage ecosystems. Sporting Shooters Association Australia and the Australian Deer Association are exemplars too. Not all Victorians respect, unfortunately, the bush as they should. However, there are a plethora of bush user groups who are instrumental in removing debris. The Erica community is teaching people how to respect free camping sites, and our volunteer groups are increasingly lifting that heavy load of weed eradication and pest eradication because the government has dropped the ball. People need not be excluded from the bush for conservation to occur. Neglect must be reversed and public access must be maintained. With the passion that is been kept by this 40,000 people in Victoria, this government must listen, must respect and create no new national parks.

Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (17:33): I want to start by acknowledging everyone who has signed this petition, but I also want to note the mistruths of the Liberals and the National Party in the campaign that they have run. There are two separate issues at hand, and the two have been conflated. There is the west of the state and there is Gippsland. The Nationals and the Liberals have run around stoking and whipping up fear, as they always do in this situation. The Nationals know the government has no intention to create national parks in Gippsland, but they have no interest in the truth.

The Great Outdoors Taskforce is talking about how we grow regional Victoria, get better visitor experiences and more tourism and economic activity. In the west, in all three new national parks you will be able to go camping, fishing, hiking, four-wheel driving, trail bike riding and mountain bike riding. In all three national parks you will be able to go horseriding, dog walking and undertake dispersed camping in specific areas outlined by the land manager. And in the new Wombat–‍Lerderderg National Park you will be able to undertake seasonal deer hunting in the areas that were previously state forest. We have found the right balance here to protect what needs to be protected, while keeping the land open and accessible for the activities that Victorians love. It is far from being locked up. That is why the disinformation campaign being waged by the Liberal and National parties is so cheap. The future use of public land should be debated and discussed by the community, but it should only be done with all the facts at hand. All this information that I am just talking about now can be found and is publicly available.

I personally do not believe in the term ‘wilderness’. I think that we should engage with our natural places. I think people should use them and enjoy them and value them, but we want everyone to do it safely. We want to keep pests and feral animals out of there, so we need to work together to get good environmental and economic outcomes. I am proud to be from a party with four regional Premiers who do the things for regional Victoria that are so, so valuable. While the Nationals and Liberals close schools, we build them and open them. While they close or privatise hospitals or aged care centres, we build them. While you might shut train lines, shut train stations and rip them out, we build them. While you wanted cheaper metro fares at the last election, we gave regional Victorians capped fares – and by God has it been popular. While you shut TAFEs across regional Victoria, we build them. We train the chippies, the plumbers, the sparkies, the hairdressers and the nurses to work in these local communities. This generation of workers that we train we ensure are well paid, because it is the Nationals and Liberals’ economic policy to drive down the wages and conditions of workers. You know that is the absolute truth.

It is the continual negativity of the Liberals and the Nationals that has seen you cop an absolute bollocking at the federal election. You have copped an absolute hammering with false promises for regional communities like nuclear energy that would not deliver power for 20 years, that would not deliver jobs for decades. You bring no policies and no plans to the Victorian people. And no wonder the National–Liberal coalition is under question by many people around the country, because you are being driven by the by the Queensland Nationals and you are unable to bring policies to this place to debate for Victorians.

I want to acknowledge all those that have signed the petition. I want to acknowledge why you have come to a position of concern and fear, but I ask you to go and look at the publicly available information. I would ask the Liberals and Nationals for once to get on with something positive and bring something that resembles a set of values, some policies and a plan for Victorians to actually look at. Give Victorians something to consider, particularly regional Victorians. Give them something that they can look forward to rather than looking in the rear-view mirror and running the divisive, negative politics that you always do.

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (17:38): I rise to speak on the petition. Victorians love our native forests, and we know people want to get out and enjoy these natural wonders and protect them for future generations to enjoy as well. So it is no surprise that Victorians overwhelmingly want more national parks. Polling by RedBridge last October found a whopping 80 per cent of Victorians want more national parks. That is four in five Victorians who want more of these kinds of protection – an incredible level of popularity. So my question today is: why is Labor dragging its feet on the three new national parks in the central west? Back in 2021 Labor promised national parks in the Wombat and Wellsford forests, Mount Buangor and the Pyrenees. It is now 2025, and we are yet to see a single new park. There is no good reason for this delay. The vast majority of Victorians support the move, as I have said, and Labor would have crossbench support to make them a reality. So think of the legacy that will create.

It is especially infuriating for communities in the central west, who have been campaigning for these protections for decades. These forests are irreplaceable country for First Nations people, home to endangered brush-tailed phascogales, greater gliders, rare plants like the wombat bossiaea and the hundreds of other unique and threatened species that call them home. National parks would guarantee protections for these species for generations to come while ensuring communities today can get out now and enjoy these places with their families. And of course Victoria’s ecosystems are in a state of crisis, and national parks are one of the best, most popular ways to arrest that.

Just this week in the latest alarming move from the Trump administration, we have seen disturbing moves to gut national parks in the US. Funding to run parks has been cut with expectations that some parks will have to cut services and the ability to open. There are also reported plans to privatise those glorious national assets, and Americans are rightly appalled at this. There is a proud and historical link between parks in the USA and Australia. Yellowstone, in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, was the world’s first national park, established in 1872. But not many Australians would know that in our history the national park in New South Wales was the world’s second national park, established in 1879 and renamed Royal National Park only in 1955. And Victoria was not far behind, with our first national park being the Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve, where my mum and I actually had a memorable and terrifying encounter with an emu that was a big fan of barbecue sausages near the Great Ocean Road. It was established in just 1892.

National parks speak to who we are as Australians. National parks protect, restore and rejuvenate, and we need to open up more national parks so Victorians can get out and enjoy these precious areas. That means bushwalking, picnics, photography, camping and more. It is an absolute furphy that anyone is getting locked out of Australia’s national parks. Everyone is welcome in a national park. The only things that are locked out are activities that destroy natural wonders for short-term gains: shooting, mining and logging. Despite the immense popularity of national parks and despite knowing, as Mr McIntosh has just said, that the coalition is just cynically spreading misinformation, Labor under Jacinta Allan seems petrified of acting. Last October the Minister for Environment promised that the bills for the first two parks would come later in 2024. Well, it is now May 2025, and we have not seen a single bill for the creation of these parks come before Parliament. Why is Labor dragging its feet over these three national parks? We are concerned it could be backflipping on another pledge for future generations.

In 2023 the Great Outdoors Taskforce was established to investigate and recommend new areas for national parks, and in particular areas that were part of forests that were saved from logging. A year later the taskforce had that remit revoked. Clearly Labor is in danger of bowing to a scare campaign and refusing to even consider protections we know Victoria will need down the track, like the great forest national park, which would create an amazing new nature experience just an hour north of Melbourne. We have more than 2000 listed threatened species and ecosystems, and all indicators are that this situation is getting worse. That is not good enough for our natural resources and for our communities who want to enjoy and preserve them. Labor, it is time – time to finally deliver these national parks. We know that future generations will thank you for it.

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:42): I rise to join in this debate on this petition that has been signed by 40,208 Victorians protesting against the Allan Labor government’s plans to create new national parks in Victoria. But I note that this is not the only petition that has had a lot of signatures in the last six months. You can add to that 40,208 the 13,969 Victorians who signed a petition that was tabled by Wayne Farnham, the member for Narracan, and I have a petition that is still live that has 11,767 signatures on it at the moment. So that is over 66,000 Victorians – 66,044 Victorians – who have signed petitions saying they do not want new national parks in Victoria just in the last six months. I would say to Mr McIntosh that the government should start listening to these Victorians. The government is tone deaf in this state. The Premier stood up and said the federal election was won because Victorians support the Suburban Rail Loop. You guys live in the land of delusion – you are totally delusional. If you think that the SRL is going to win you an election, you are wrong. And if you think that Victorians want more national parks, you are also wrong.

No-one actually gets any benefit out of a national park. Changing the status to a national park does not actually guarantee it any additional resources. There is no additional money that comes with that for the management of the park, for the protection of the park. And we have seen the government flip-flopping around on national parks. In 2021 they promised three new national parks. We have not seen them – thank goodness we have not seen them. But then in August last year the Premier stood up at the bush summit in Bendigo and lied to the community. She said she will not put a padlock on our state’s public forests, yet only a couple of months later, in October, a spokesperson for the government let the cat out of the bag. In response to questions from the ABC, the Victorian government spokesperson said legislation relating to the two national parks will be introduced next month:

Legislation to create the first two national parks, Wombat–Lerderderg National Park and Mount Buangor National Park, will be introduced to parliament in November …

But of course that was November last year. Then in December we had another article, in the Sunday Age on 8 December, that said the Victorian government has now abandoned its promise to create a new national park in the state’s central west by the end of this year. The government do not know what they are doing and they are flip-flopping around, but in the meantime this causes great distress, particularly in regional communities, because we are the people who are impacted by this. This actually restricts tourism in our area. Everyone says, ‘We’ll create a national park. That creates tourism.’ It does not. It kills industries in our area, and it does not create any new tourism. Our national parks are an absolute fallacy.

Today we see another article, in the Weekly Times, that says that Lisa Neville’s group has recommended no new national parks for Victoria. The only problem is that they were prevented from actually looking at the areas that have been proposed for those other three national parks. But her taskforce looked at whether there needed to be any further national parks in Victoria and said no. The government should listen to Lisa Neville and they should abandon their plan for these three national parks that they have been proposing.

We know that the people in country Victoria are the people who have looked after these areas of these forests. The only reason we have the parks and natural forests that we have today is because seven or eight generations of Australians have cared for those forests alongside our Indigenous people, who have cared for them for a very long time as well. Particularly in the Barmah, the Indigenous population up there worked hand in hand with the rest of the population to care for the Barmah forest. That was locked up as a national park. It has not improved the park. We have weeds everywhere. The park has fallen into disrepair, and it is a disgrace.

Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (17:48): I rise to congratulate Ms Bath on this historic petition, and Mr Farnham on his petition in the other place. 40,200-odd people is a serious effort – a very serious effort. I know that some of those people responsible for getting those numbers are in the gallery, and I congratulate them. The public response to this clearly indicates how Victorians outside the quinoa curtain feel about public land access. Victoria is the envy of the nation when it comes to access for hunters. Few places in the world enjoy the access that we do and want to keep. It is important to note that our duck hunters led the way in the 1950s by voluntarily paying a licence fee, using the funds to conserve habitats for all Victorians. That conservation philosophy is still strong today. You only need to have a look at the awesome work that Field & Game have done at Heart Morass and Connewarre for shining examples of this.

Hunting contributes $335 million to the Victorian economy and underpins over 3000 jobs. Victorian deer hunters take an estimated 140,000 deer a year, most of them on public land, and hunters tend to eat what we hunt too – a stark contrast to the millions of dollars that agencies spend shooting deer to waste from helicopters. This protein should be going to feed the hungry, but that is a different story for a different day.

Let us have a look at what this petition is really about. It is about the Greens proposal to lock up the Victorian Central Highlands into a massive new national park. Greens-aligned groups have been pushing for this since before I came into this place 11 years ago. The driving motivation used to be the end of native timber harvesting. I am sad to say they got what they wanted there, and that industry has effectively been killed off. As I warned the government at the time, giving these extremists what they want was never going to appease them; it was only ever going to embolden them. So having got what they wanted, why are they still trying to lock up this public land? Who are they trying to protect this land from? The only answer I can see is that they are trying to protect it from us, from people who they do not agree with and who they – frankly – look down their noses at. They want to lock out people who are sustainably using public land. They want to lock out people with Ford Rangers and flannel shirts, prospectors, dog owners and, God forbid, camo clothing and Remington rifles. They want to lock out people who work real jobs and enjoy their weekends. They want to lock out people who live outside the shield of the quinoa curtain. They will carry on that anyone who opposes their elitist agenda is anti-environment or anti-conservation. This is not about the environment or conservation. This is about the politics of snobbery and division. It is about the cultural elite telling the millions of Victorians living outside the echo chamber what is good for them. It is the same politics that saw the Greens get sent packing in the federal election just a week or so ago in what I hope is the beginning of the end for that political movement.

There are a wide range of bush users, and I acknowledge all of them and the great Victorians advocating for them, many of whom are in the gallery. The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party stands steadfast with you – we always have; we always will. In particular I want to acknowledge the shooting and hunting groups that have worked with me and others on this issue over the past decade, notably the Sporting Shooters Association of Victoria, the Victorian Hound Hunters, the Australian Deer Association, Field & Game and the Gippsland Deer Stalkers. The fight, sadly, is not over yet. We will all keep pushing together until this toxic, elitist, anti-user nonsense is killed off for good.

Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (17:51): It is an honour to be able to speak on this petition today signed by over 40,000 people, the largest petition we have ever seen in the history of this chamber. I do want to acknowledge Melina Bath for being the sponsor of that petition and also acknowledge every single person who signed it. It has been signed by bush users, it has been signed by small businesses and it has been signed by regional families who are impacted by the decisions made in this place. This is a historic petition, and it does make a very strong statement in response to the Allan Labor government’s plans. They have indicated that legislation will be introduced to create three new national parks.

There is a big difference between state forests and national parks. I know; I live in close proximity to both. I know from speaking with a neighbour who loves horseriding that he was horseriding in the national park and was warned that if he was found there riding a horse, he would be fined. But thankfully in the state forest near where I live people can ride their horses on a regular basis and enjoy the beautiful, great outdoors. I know that we enjoy being out there and we enjoy walking our dog, which is not something that you can do in many national parks. People love camping – and free camping in many instances, which is so important for families, particularly with the cost of living – four-wheel driving, trail bike riding and hunting. I thank Mr Bourman, who has spoken about that experience and the valued contribution that hunters make to our local regional economies. And prospecting is so important. I have an uncle, Doug Stone, who has written numerous books about gold prospecting and has made maps, and he has taken tours of people. So many small regional towns, particularly in central Victoria, rely on that tourism economy. They depend on the prospectors that are coming to the region.

I am not surprised that many have signed this petition, because they are concerned. We know, and Wendy Lovell spoke to this, about the Premier, who attended the Herald Sun bush summit. I was there in Bendigo, and the Premier at that summit talked about not putting a padlock on public forests. Yet a very short time later we saw the impact that this government’s decisions had on Mount Arapiles. I have seen correspondence from businesses who have been impacted by that decision. It is world-class climbing site. It attracts tourists from around the world, yet it has been severely limited. And that does impact the local community, the residents that live there. It is destroying the local community there.

Mr McIntosh gave us plenty of spin, but the action of this government certainly speaks for itself. The Nationals are opposed to new national parks because we believe the government should be focused on taking care of the existing ones. When it comes to state forests, our public land is public land, and it should remain accessible to the public. We know there are proven benefits, mental health benefits, to being able to enjoy our great outdoors. I recall during COVID there were so many cars that were parked near the state forest and people getting out and enjoying the beautiful environment that we live in in regional areas.

We do support ongoing and active land management of parks, not neglect. Under-resourcing leads to increased bushfire risk and to an increase in feral animals, and we have seen weeds get out of control. Under this government we continue to see city-based decisions being imposed on rural communities and regional communities with little regard for the people that live there. The Nationals will continue to stand up for regional communities, for fairness and for practical, sustainable land management. I do thank Melina Bath for sponsoring this petition and every single person who signed it.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:56): I thank the members in the chamber who are listening to this and also made a contribution. I was interested that Mr McIntosh could only devote 1 minute of his speech to actually talking about national parks and public land, and the rest was a conflated discussion around federal politics. That is a bit of a sad indictment on what we heard.

I note Ms Copsey’s contribution, and I appreciate her love of the forests and national parks. What she failed to admit or understand in terms of the Central West investigation is that over 65 per cent of the public submissions to the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council were actually opposed to the locking up of those state forests into national parks. What she failed to recognise too is that the government is not correcting its own homework in this instance. It is not correcting its own homework because it has failed to produce the State of the Forests report, which actually looks at what it is doing in conservation. There is no report card on this, so the government therefore cannot be failing, but clearly it is. Also, nature-based experiences can occur now in any location, including state forests. So the government is just blindly carrying on.

I acknowledge Ms Lovell’s contribution and identify the fact that there were a great number – 29,000 people – of Victorians who also passionately signed the member for Narracan’s petition.

Mr Bourman spoke very clearly about hunter conservationists. My goodness, hunter conservationists and harvesting hunters – what wonderful people, what a wonderful traditional pastime. We should still be supporting these people because they do such work in our environment, but they also create vibrancy in our small communities when they bring their people there.

Finally, Mrs Broad, thank you so much. You talked about prospectors. You talked about Mount Arapiles, which has been shut down. There are a whole raft of issues with Parks Victoria – that is another story.

The last thing I would like to say is that if we ask people who are sitting in that gallery to show us their hands and put their hands out, they would not be soft and mealy; they would have calluses on them. Why? Because they have been working in the bush. They have been doing the conservation work, and I thank them for their work.

Motion agreed to.