Friday, 14 November 2025

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (20:26): It is the end of a long week and this is a very important bill, and the government really could not give a toss. Rather than providing a platform –

Members interjecting.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jeff Bourman): Order!

A member: She said we couldn’t give a toss, and we’re all here.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jeff Bourman): Yes, I understand that; that is fabulous. Maybe it was not the most parliamentary thing, but we do not all have to yell at each other. Ms Bath to continue in silence, please.

Melina BATH: As I rise to speak on the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025, I do so with our position that the Liberals and Nationals will oppose this bill. This is an omnibus bill. What the government does when it wants to put a little bit from column A and column B together and wedge communities, it provides these omnibus bills and puts them at the end of a sitting week rather than giving them their due deference.

From the other side – across there, from both the Labor Party and the Greens – we are going to hear about protection. In fact if I take a running bet on this, we are going to hear everybody from that side talk about ‘We are protecting the land. This land is so precious that we’re going to reclassify it and we’re going to protect it.’ Well, reclassifying ‘state forest’ to ‘national park’ is putting a name on a piece of paper. It does not protect the forest, it does not protect the land; it is simply a reclassification. Reclassification does not equal conservation – but we are going to hear that from the other side for the whole of their debate.

There are some elements in this bill that we support. There are some very reasonable and actually called-for elements in this bill. I have called for them on behalf of the Liberals and Nationals in the past. I have called for extended deer hunting in national parks. It has been a platform that we have had on behalf of many community members – law-abiding deer hunters, those people who appreciate going out into the forest, out into the bush – and we support the initiatives of the extension of deer hunting in the Errinundra and the Snowy River national parks.

I could say also that there is going to be deer hunting in the three new national parks that are going to be created with this bill, which we oppose, but there has already been deer hunting in those state forests as they exist now. So this is not new territory, even though we will hear that it is. As I have said, we oppose this bill, and we will seek to make some substantial amendments to stop that division that exists in this bill. In doing so I will outline our amendments that I will declare in a little while. There are also some other technical amendments that are either rats and mice or reasonably innocuous. Now, this bill amends various acts. It amends the National Parks Act 1975, it amends the Crown Land (Reserves) Act 1978, the Forests Act 1958, and the Great Ocean Road and Environs Protection Act 2020. It also makes consequential amendments to the Carlton (Recreation Ground) Land Act 1966, the Heritage Rivers Act 1992, the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Act 1990, the St. Kilda Land Act 1965, and it repeals the National Parks (Amendment) Act 1989.

As I have said, there are some reasonable parts to this, and then there are some quite egregious parts to it. What this government will say – I know the minister now, Minister Dimopoulos, inherited this legacy or historic commitment from Lily D’Ambrosio. Minister D’Ambrosio, who was the then Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, has said that there was a VEAC, Victorian Environmental Assessment Council, inquiry back in 2019, and that provided a compelling case whereby we need to lock up – we need to shut up these state forests into national parks, and the other side will say ‘protection’.

What we also know from that inquiry is that many people in the community, in fact, 66 per cent of the people that wrote in submissions to the Central West investigation – of 3000 submissions that were delivered as part of the consultation process, 66 per cent of those – said that they oppose the establishment of new national parks. However, glowingly and overwhelmingly, Minister D’Ambrosio said ‘We will commit to this’. Well, it has taken them quite some time to get there. Indeed, from our perspective, it could take them to the never-never because this does not need to happen.

The prospectors and miners – and they are a tremendous group of people. In fact 90,000 registered prospectors and miners are out there from diverse backgrounds and right across the state. They at the time, in 2019 – and I am being very transparent about this – asked and employed Dr Alan Moran of Regulation Economics to do a study on this. The VEAC will give you a whole range of things that it did. It said that the reclassification would yield non-use values of $270 million, and that was based on surveys asking respondents what they would hypothetically pay to preserve these forests. This method is known as contingent valuation, and it is widely unreliable and inflated because it is not based on actual market behaviour. Back at the time, VEAC said that the land valuation there per hectare in this Central West investigation would be $4615 per hectare, which was much, much higher than the value of farmland at that time. Now, by contrast, Dr Alan Moran said that the projected net present value loss would be in the magnitude of $2.8 billion and more than a thousand jobs gone, citing mining, forestry, firewood and recreation, and that flows on to all of those towns and communities around there. So there has been a significant disparity between what a government bureaucracy says and what an economic investigator has said. Clearly, there is a disparity. Potentially the reality lies in between those two.

What we also know is that people have pushed back on this whole national parks agenda. I will speak to this in a moment, but I will put on record: the Liberals and Nationals value national parks. We care about them. We want to see them actively managed. We want to see them better managed. But what this government has done over the decade – I will tell you what it has done. Analysis of the Parks Victoria annual reports over the past decade shows Victoria has increased its public land estate, its national parks estate, by 20 per cent, while operational funding for Parks Victoria has plummeted by 35 per cent. Even ranger numbers – the government is talking about this new initiative that is coming out: ‘We are going to fund more rangers.’ Well, it has cut the ranger population – those people out in the field with their boots on, doing the work, looking after the land, the forests, pulling out weeds, doing maintenance – by 28 per cent in the last year. When we hear the government say, ‘We’ve got a new initiative. We’re going to fund more rangers,’ they have cut them. They have successively cut them over time, and what we know is that Parks Victoria is top-heavy with suits in Melbourne and sincerely insufficient with boots-on-the-ground rangers. Of Parks Victoria’s employment funding costs to pay wages, 73 per cent goes to executives and managers. Isn’t that the wrong way around? This government has got it upside down.

Now let me go back to what I was speaking about in relation to petitions. I was very proud to support a petition that was, until only this week, the largest petition in the history of this place, an e-petition with over 40,000 signatures from Victorians saying no to new national parks and that we should better manage the ones that we have got. If we add that up between the lower house and the upper house, it is up to 80,000 people who have said no to new national parks, and that is what we are saying here: it is better to manage the ones that we have got; do not create more.

This is the thing about national parks. We hear this again and again from the minister and in their media releases, that you can continue to do all the things that you have done in the past. Well, that is just not the case. State parks and national parks differ very sharply in their purpose, in their access and in their management. State forests are under the Forests Act, are managed by the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) and operate as multi-use public land, balancing conservation, community access, recreation and local economic activity. In state forests you can hunt and you can go dispersed camping. We will hear from over there that you can camp in the national parks. Well, you can, but you cannot take your dog, you cannot go off the main track, you cannot set a fire safely – you cannot light that fire – and you cannot camp in a dispersed fashion with your family in a national park. That is a taboo, and it is not allowed. It will not be allowed in these new national parks. I will get to this very important point in a moment, but you are not allowed to go prospecting and mining. You can in some national parks, but this government has failed to introduce that piece into this legislation. You cannot ride your horse unless it is on the main track; I think they will say that. You cannot go off-road four-wheel driving or off-road trail bike riding – many of the things that so many Victorians do to celebrate the outdoors, experience it, feel better about themselves physically, mentally and emotionally and spend time with their family.

National parks are governed by the National Parks Act 1975, are managed by Parks Victoria, prioritise environmental preservation – apparently – and restrict public use. You cannot collect firewood; you cannot go off road; you cannot prospect and mine unless you have got the exemption, which this bill does not include; you cannot go horseriding; you are not allowed to fish unless you are in a designated area; you cannot walk your dog; you cannot, as I have said, use drone extraction; and you cannot use resource extraction.

There are some parts in this bill that are reasonably, I will say, innocuous. Some of them are about amendments to existing land acts. Princes Park land is made leasable. Wandong Regional Park is created. Bendigo Regional Park is updated. But get this: in Bendigo park this government is about to, in making these national parks, stop firewood, period. Stop firewood, period, unless that park happens to be in the Premier’s seat, and then it is going to continue firewood collection up until 2029. Firewood, as I am about to allude to, is such an important aspect of heating people’s homes. There is an amendment to the Great Ocean Road and Environs Protection Act. There are the heritage and mineral resources amendments. It is going to expand the Wimmera heritage area. It is going to declare a Wandong park. It is going to make other smaller conservation parks at Cobaw, at Hepburn and at Mirboo North totalling 5600 hectares. The Yellingbo conservation area is going to be renamed and expanded into there. It is also going to amend the St. Kilda Land Act to allow long-term leases, which we do not feel is a problem; this is reasonable. And it is going to sunset by 2027. One of the things that this bill certainly does is keep dam licenses going, but only for a very short time. As I have said, it extends hunting, and the Nationals and the Liberals very much support recreational hunting. It changes to some gender-neutral language, which of course is now appropriate – ‘he’ just becomes ‘minister’ and the like. These things are all reasonable.

I had a good conversation with my colleague the member for Polwarth, and I will be asking, certainly, some important questions in committee of the whole on this. The bill introduces amendments to the Great Ocean Road and Environs Protection Act, addressing several concerns raised by the Liberals and Nationals when it actually came in in 2020. At the time we opposed the creation of the Great Ocean Road Coast and Parks Authority, warning it would duplicate the responsibilities of Parks Victoria and local governments and create confusion over land boundaries. Indeed some of the amendments that we have in this bill now actually tidy up some of our concerns. It expands the definition of a scenic landscape area. It provides strategic framework improvements. The land management authority must prepare a long-term strategy, and it must be approved by the minister and published in the gazette. It incorporates planning and oversight and annual plans, and the minister has the power to approve or amend or reject these plans. One of my concerns is – and I do want to flesh this out in committee of the whole – that from 1 November, Parks Victoria formally transferred the management responsibilities, the assets and the funding of the area to GORCAPA. We raised those concerns in the bill briefing, and we still did not get any clarity around how the operational costs will be managed post the transfer. I put on record that it is really important that we delve into that to get some straight answers.

The thing about national parks – we will hear it is going to protect. The greatest threats to public land, to forests, are out-of-control bushfires and pests and weeds, and out-of-control bushfires and pests and weeds do not recognise a reclassified piece of land. What this government has done over time has really endangered regional Victorians – but not only regional Victorians; it is actually nipping at the heels of suburbia as well. During its time this government has introduced Safer Together, and if you go out into the regions and talk to people about the Safer Together policy, they throw their hands up in frustration. In fact I even spoke recently to a fantastic fellow who worked for DEECA. He is now retired and onto other things, but he was a facilitator who implemented, who sorted out, this Safer Together, and he said it is still hard to manage and hard to define. And it is clearly, with this government, hard to bring to fruition. Over the last decade this government has only provided a reduction in burns – and by that I mean fuel reduction and mechanical burns – of 1.5 per cent. This is an indictment, because the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission said that the appropriate target, the rolling target per annum, should be 5 per cent. In fact I think they actually were up to 8 per cent, but they brought it down – for, we will say, the rationale of actually making it happen – to 5 per cent. And what does that mean? It actually protects people if you do cool burns, if you take the fuel load out. You cannot know where lightning is going to strike or if there is a fire bug. You cannot stop the wind blowing and the conditions being dangerous. But you can – this government can and should – manage fuel load. And it has not for a decade, and regional Victorians are paying the price.

In terms of invasive weeds, go out there; go and talk to some of these people. Walk into our state forests and national parks, and you will see blackberries in vast quantities choking out our naturally beautiful areas, our iconic areas and landscapes that all Victorians treasure. You see serrated tussock and other noxious weeds, and you see them competing for and overtaking natural flora. Of course it degrades the habitat. Also, you get foxes, wild dogs – they are wild dogs, not dingoes; there is a difference – pigs and rabbits. Feral cats kill thousands and thousands of native birds every year. But what happens with these bushfires – and we saw it in 2019–20 and we saw it this year in the Grampians area – is they incinerate everything. Unless this government is going to take this seriously and turn around its mode, we are going to see, again, more serious impact on life, on property, on stock and on native flora and fauna. And what have we got now? We have got a government that is not fire-ready, and it will not be fire-ready in these new national parks either. We have 350 either G-Wagons or Unimogs offline. I had a former forester who lives in East Gippsland contact me. He is working hard, and he rang me today and said, ‘I just have to tell you, Melina, those Unimogs, they overheat. When they go out in the bush up into the tracks, their engines overheat and they won’t work.’ So you are putting these people in these vehicles and putting them in front of out-of-control bushfires. Now the government has taken them offline, and what has it done? It is borrowing other vehicles from interstate and it is calling on the CFA to backfill. It has known about this problem for best part of eight years. This is dangerous.

And what did we have? We also had the Premier talk – and I must just go back to that. The Premier said, hand on her heart in Bendigo a year and a half ago:

I want to be very clear as premier and … a proud … Victorian, I won’t be putting a padlock on our public forests. It’s not who I am. It’s not what I believe in.

Well, I have said this before, and we will say it again, the Liberals and the Nationals: this is being cute with the truth, because whilst you are not putting a fence around it with a padlock, you are restricting access – and not only that; you are restricting access for traditional owners too. I know that at the time in the Wombat forest when there was a shocking windstorm and there was a lot of windrow and there were trees falling over, VicForests was engaged to take that windrow timber off and use it. The people that threw their hands up in outrage were the Greens, and I find that the most amazing thing. You have got, on one hand, ‘Protect and facilitate and bring about better outcomes for traditional owners’, but if you are doing something that they do not want you to do, like actually taking the timber off the ground and making the best use of it, they have got an amendment coming through to say that you cannot do that. We will wait for them to bring that amendment on. But indeed it works as long as you suit their ideology – well, certainly we do not subscribe to that.

Let me get to the point on firewood, because this is a really significant issue for regional people. One of the most damaging and short-sighted aspects of this bill is its treatment of firewood. This government has stubbornly refused to understand that once the bill has declared a national park, national reserve or heritage area, firewood collection is permanently banned – as I said, unless you are in the Premier’s seat, where until June 2029, after the next election, you can collect firewood in Bendigo Regional Park. It is saying no to firewood. For thousands of regional families, particularly older residents, low-income householders and communities without access to natural gas, firewood is not a luxury, it is a basic necessity. Once the government shut down the sustainable native timber industry it also made it excruciatingly difficult for people to access firewood, and my colleague Tim Bull has raised this on many occasions. Sometimes you are looking at the difference between people actually heating their homes and not. It is absurdly breathtaking in its ridiculous nature. Of course collection of firewood also helps to reduce that fuel load build-up.

What I would like to do now is just speak to some of our amendments, and I am happy to circulate them now. There are a couple of amendments. One: we will stick to our guns in terms of our opposition to creating three new national parks – 65,000 hectares – and that will be by moving a reasoned amendment to call on the government to basically withdraw the bill and then redraft it into two separate bills. That is taking into account more stakeholder consultation, and this is about the establishment of Mount Buangor, Pyrenees and Wombat-Lerderderg national parks. We want to make sure that people are able to communicate in terms of traditional recreational activities, invasive species management, fire management and the rural economy and then retain the other parts of the bill. As I said, some we support – deer hunting – and others we are more ambivalent about. The other amendment in relation to this would be: should that fail, and I hope that it does not, we will then move amendments subsequently in each of the associated clauses to remove them – to pick the national parks out of this bill. So that is the second one that I would seek support on.

The third one – and I appreciate the fantastic people, prospectors and miners, who helped me to understand; indeed, I sent a letter off to the department, and I thank them for their response – is that in the 1975 parks act there is a section that facilitates the minister to issue mineral search authorities for national parks. It is consistent in that National Parks Act. Now, what the government has not done in this bill is actually include these new national parks and incorporate that particular section – it is 32D of the National Parks Act – which allows the minister to authorise, by notice in the Government Gazette, prospecting and recreational fossicking in limited areas listed in certain schedules of the act. It is about saying you actually can do this – you can go out – and the minister can then facilitate and enable this to happen. It is not in this bill at the moment, so right now it does not exist, and we would seek to put that in. It is still the minister, the power is with the minister, but certainly it is an important one, and we thank the prospecting and mining fraternity, those people that love to get out there.

What we know with so many of the people, four-wheel drivers et cetera, is they actually leave the bush in a better state than when they started. They look to improve it; they look to take the rubbish out. I was talking to somebody from that area as well who said that they actually got sick. They would take all the junk and rubbish and old tins and whatever, because that area out there is not pristine. It has actually been used for forestry over the years. It is not pristine Wilsons Promontory forested area. It is great scrub, a great location, there is no doubt about it, but please do not think that it is this pristine forest. But those prospectors and miners take that rubbish out.

In conclusion, the Premier said she would never put a padlock on public land, but Labor has systematically, over time, underfunded Parks Victoria and DEECA. They have cut rangers and field officers. They have created more suits in Melbourne – pen-pushers that are not supporting our native flora and fauna. This government has also not released a state of the forests report. The last one was in 2018. That is the report on its own homework. How is it actually looking after all of the important values in the forests, in our national parks and state forests? It is not doing landscape assessments, it is not doing monitoring and it is not doing reporting. That is not good enough. The government has stopped fuel reduction burning, drilled it down to a minimum. They have allowed pests and weeds to explode. They have ended the native timber industry. They have removed legal firewood supply in these areas specifically. They have ignored recreational groups and ignored farming groups. They have ignored beekeepers, and they are shutting them out of Wilsons Promontory. They have ignored local councils, they have ignored the science and they have ignored common sense. The Liberals and Nationals will stand up for regional Victorians. They will stand up for city people who want to enjoy life and get out there, be with their family and experience the very best. They will stand up for traditional users. We will, and we will stand up for common sense.

We will move these amendments. We will oppose the locking up of land provisions, and we will continue to fight for public access to public land and better management, active management, of our public land. I move:

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

1.   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

2.   retain the remaining provisions of the bill.’.

 Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (20:56): I appreciate the call and the opportunity to speak in support of the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025. Victoria is known around the world for its natural beauty. From the tall forests and winding rivers to the open grasslands, our landscape is simply remarkable. These are the places where families camp, where children learn about nature and where communities come together to celebrate the outdoors. These are also places of deep cultural and environmental significance – country that has been cared for by traditional owners for countless generations and country that continues to provide habitat for wildlife and space for people to reconnect with the world around them – and they remind us all of our shared responsibility to care for the land that sustains us all. This bill strengthens that responsibility. It ensures that some of the most valued and vulnerable natural environments are protected for the future while also supporting recreation and community access. It is also about caring for the land, creating opportunities and giving Victorians more reason to get outside and enjoy what makes our state special.

This bill establishes three new national parks, Mount Buangor, Pyrenees and Wombat-Lerderderg, along with two new conservation parks at Cobaw and Hepburn. It also expands the Bendigo Regional Park and creates Mirboo North Conservation Park. It adds new areas to the Yellingbo Landscape Conservation Area, which will be renamed the Liwik Barring Landscape Conservation Area, and provides for new riparian management licences along three riverfront sites. It also adjusts the boundaries of several existing national and coastal parks, including the Alpine, Brisbane Ranges and Dandenong Ranges national parks, as well as the Gippsland Lakes Coastal Park and the Yallock-Bulluk Marine and Coastal Park. This bill also establishes a new Wandong Regional Park and updates plans for a number of existing parks to support the granting of Aboriginal title over those areas, including Baw Baw and Kinglake national parks, Avon wilderness park and Cathedral Range State Park.

Further amendments strengthen the operation of the Great Ocean Road and Environs Protection Act 2020 and authorise small extensions of the lease areas of Princess Park and the St Kilda Marina to allow for long-term leasing. Finally, I will say that the bill makes a series of minor improvements across several acts, such as removing outdated provisions and replacing some gender-specific language to ensure consistency with modern drafting standards.

Each of these areas has its own story. I just think of the Pyrenees ranges, which offer sweeping and rugged terrain. The Wombat and Lerderderg forests sit at the heart of Victoria’s park network. They are close enough to Melbourne for a day trip but extraordinary enough to feel like a whole world away. Families, hikers, campers and other visitors already know how special these places are. In Hepburn and Cobaw, the creation of new conservation parks will link and protect vital corridors of bushland, supporting biodiversity and providing open space for people to walk, ride and explore. Taken together, these reforms expand Victoria’s network of protected public land to over 4 million hectares.

This work builds on years of scientific assessment and consultation through the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council central west investigation. That process began all the way back in 2017 and drew on the expertise of traditional owners, community groups, scientists and land users. These new parks were a recommendation from the 2021 response to the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council’s Central West Investigation Final Report. The bill ensures that sensitive ecosystems are managed appropriately and that species that depend on them are given a better chance to survive. It also reflects our state’s Biodiversity 2037 strategy, a commitment to reversing the decline of native species and to secure healthy landscapes for the future. The reality is that the pressure on nature, growing climate change, invasive species and land fragmentation threaten biodiversity across the state. Expanding and connecting our park estates helps to build resilience. It provides the space for ecosystems to adapt and to thrive. These protections are an investment not only in nature but in clean air, healthy water and quality of life.

The bill also recognises that our parks are there for everyone. They are places to walk, camp, picnic, ride and simply enjoy. They provide an escape for families and a challenge for those seeking adventures. From a hike through the Lerderderg Gorge to a quiet afternoon near the Avoca River, public land gives every Victorian the chance to slow down and reconnect with nature. That accessibility matters. For young people discovering the bush for the first time, for families looking for an affordable way to spend time together and for older Victorians who simply want to enjoy the peace and beauty of our landscapes, parks are a vital part of our shared culture. They bring people together in ways that few other spaces can.

This bill supports that vision for ensuring that these new parks are well managed and safe. It gives Parks Victoria and the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) the tools to protect biodiversity while also improving visitor facilities, signage and access. Visitors will benefit from clear walking tracks, upgraded picnic areas and safer camping sites. Regional communities will benefit too, as these investments attract more people to visit, stay and spend locally. These spaces attract more visitors to our region, create local jobs and educational opportunities and boost the regional economy. The creation of these new parks will add to that. Towns like Daylesford, Beaufort, Trentham and Avoca are already gateways to the central west, but with this bill, they can look forward to even more opportunities in hospitality and local services.

It is a win for conservation, but it is also a win for regional jobs. The process that led to this bill has been detailed and deliberate. It balances environmental protection with practical land management. It considers the interests of local communities, traditional owners, environmental organisations and industry. Some existing uses of public land will continue under clear and sustainable conditions. Beekeeping, grazing and firewood collection have all been reviewed to ensure that they align with best practice. Transitional arrangements are in place to help users adapt to new boundaries or management arrangements, and Parks Victoria will continue to engage closely with affected stakeholders. Fire management and emergency access remain the utmost priority. The new park boundaries have been carefully designed to ensure that firefighting, forest health and public safety operations can continue without interruption. These are practical measures that make sure conservation and safety go together.

It also formalises the permanent protection of Mirboo North as a conservation park. This area, whilst small in size, is rich in biodiversity and community significance. For years local groups have worked hard to protect it, and this bill delivers on that advocacy. Along the Great Ocean Road, the bill supports improvements to how public land is managed. That includes ensuring that iconic sites such as the Twelve Apostles and the new visitor centre are protected and maintained for the millions of people who come to see them each and every year. This legislation ensures that these irreplaceable landmarks remain accessible while preserving their natural and culturally significant values. Together these measures show a government that is serious about environmental protection and ensuring Victorians can continue to enjoy their parks safely and sustainably. The Allan Labor government has a strong record when it comes to caring for public land. Over the past decade we have invested in expanding and restoring Victoria’s parks, improving biodiversity monitoring and delivering programs that connect people with nature. Initiatives such as Biodiversity 2037, the parks revitalisation program and the creation of new marine and coastal reserves have all been part of that effort. This bill before us continues that work.

Importantly, it has been shaped through genuine consultation. Community input was vital. Environmental organisations, Landcare groups, local residents and small businesses all contributed to the process. DEECA has worked closely with traditional owner groups, Parks Victoria, VEAC and local councils. The government acknowledges the leadership of groups like the Victorian National Parks Association and Environment Victoria, who have long championed stronger protections for the central west. Their advocacy and their passion have helped shape a bill that delivers both environmental and social benefits, and I would like to give my thanks to them both.

Moving on now to traditional owners, they have certainly played a central role throughout this process. These lands included in the bill are part of the country of the Dja Dja Wurrung, Wadawurrung, Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Taungurung and Gunaikurnai peoples. Their knowledge and care for country continue to guide how these landscapes are managed. The bill allows for co-management arrangements that recognise leadership and embed cultural knowledge in how we care for these places. This approach reflects the truth of our parks – that they are living landscapes. They are places with cultural heritage, environmental conservation and community enjoyment – they can all coexist. When we protect the land, we protect culture. When we share these spaces respectfully, we strengthen our connection to country and strengthen our connection to each other.

Victorians have a strong sense of pride in their natural spaces. They expect government to protect them, to manage them responsibly and to make sure they remain open to everyone. This bill delivers on that expectation. It provides a clear and practical framework for protecting special places, strengthening biodiversity and promoting sustainable recreation and tourism. It also shows that conservation and access are not in conflict. We can preserve what is special while still encouraging people to experience it. We can protect wildlife and still make room for walking tracks and picnic tables. We can care for land while sharing its beauty with others.

When we talk about national parks, they are not just patches of green on a map. We are talking about preserving deep history and beauty, about what we hand on to those that come after us. Expanding Victoria’s park network means cleaner air, healthier water and thriving ecosystems. It means that future generations will have places to explore, to learn and to fall in love with nature, just as we have now. These new parks will stand as a reminder of what good environmental leadership looks like: practical and forward looking. These parks offer a refuge for wildlife, a classroom for students, a playground for families or just a quiet retreat.

The bill before us is an important step in Victoria’s ongoing story of protecting land for the public good, a story that, for me, began when I moved back home and found myself working in the public land division of the then Department of Sustainability and Environment. This work has been quite foundational to my Melbourne story, and so to stand here today with a piece of legislation before us that builds on some of the aspirations that I heard all those years ago from traditional owners and other groups managing our parks and our public land is a point of great pride for me because this bill further strengthens protection for our most precious natural areas. It honours our partnerships with traditional owners, it supports regional communities and it creates new opportunities for education, tourism and recreation. Most of all, it ensures that the beauty and diversity of our public land will endure. These places are enormously special. They belong to all of us, but with that comes a responsibility to care for them. I just want to say that there is probably more that I could say about my love of Victoria’s beautiful public land estate, but I will leave it there and commend this bill to the house.

 John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (21:09): I rise to speak on the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025. This is a bill which those of us who love nature, love the great outdoors and believe in protecting our natural assets will find very exciting. In short, we are creating three new national parks, two new conservation parks, seven new or expanded regional parks and a number of new nature reserves. This is fantastic news for the conservation community and all Victorians who care about preserving our natural environment for the benefit of future generations. This is the first substantial addition to the national parks in Victoria in 14 years, and communities in the central west such as Bendigo, Gisborne, Hepburn and others have good reason to celebrate this achievement. In particular I would like to applaud the Victorian National Parks Association, who I know have worked extremely hard in their advocacy on this important issue and who have welcomed the introduction of this bill into the Parliament.

Through this bill the Allan Labor government is demonstrating our steadfast commitment to boosting the Victorian tourism industry, supporting regional communities and businesses and helping to protect the many threatened species who live in the affected areas. The Wombat-Lerderderg National Park, the Mount Buangor National Park and the Pyrenees National Park will together protect approximately 65,265 hectares of land. We know that regional communities value these parts of their state for their environmental value, as well as for the opportunities they provide for outdoor recreation. It is not just for people out in the regions who care about protecting our beautiful natural landscapes. However, I know that constituents in Southern Metro Region care deeply about protecting the environment and also enjoy getting out of the city and into nature on weekends. These natural assets belong to all Victorians, and it is important that we continue to ensure that all Victorians have access to them, for the purposes of both access to nature and access to outdoor recreation. Whether you are keen on hiking, camping, fishing, horseriding or mountain bike riding, we in the Allan Labor government understand how important these activities are to our constituents, whether they be from the city or from the regions. We also understand how important protecting our environment’s biodiversity is to Victorians, and this is a priority for the community across the state, not just in some particular areas.

The path towards creating these new national parks has been a long one. In fact this bill is implementing the recommendations of the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council’s Central West Investigation: Final Report back in 2021. We took these recommendations seriously and on their merits. That is why we listened and are now establishing these new national parks. The process of creating new national parks cannot happen overnight. The process is not easy, and the issue is too important not to have an extensive and thorough process of community and expert consultation. It requires strenuous analysis and surveying of the land itself, as well as a consultation process which does not leave anybody behind.

To now have a bill before the chamber ready to go to create these new national parks is something that all of us in this chamber can be proud of, and it is worth noting that this government’s environmental agenda does not start or end with this bill. This is only one item in a long list of achievements and successes. We have invested a record $800 million in protecting and promoting biodiversity since coming into office, ensuring that our beautiful natural landscapes can continue to thrive for years and decades to come. We also ended native forest logging in this state, protecting an area of native forest across the state which is larger than the entire landmass of that little island to the south of us known as the state of Tasmania.

As always in the conservation agenda, we know that there are multiple legitimate land uses for some of our most treasured natural assets. We also know that with the right regulation, the right planning and a consultation process that seeks to understand the competing interests of different groups we have been able to produce a bill which gets the right balance. With that I commend the bill to the house.

 Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (21:13): I stand to support the Parks and Public Land Legislation Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill 2025, which is going to see new national parks at Mount Buangor, Pyrenees, Wombat-Lerderderg, Cobaw, Hepburn, Bendigo and the Wimmera Heritage River and is going to enable seasonal recreational deer hunting in the Errinundra and Snowy River national parks. One that I am quite close to is the new conservation park at Mirboo North, and I want to acknowledge the work of, in particular, Marg, Ian, Julie, Wendy and others who have done a lot of work on that. The community is going to really appreciate that they are close to town in having that area conserved and looked after, particularly after the events in recent years. I am very proud to be part of a party that is taking actions that need to be taken and protecting areas of high ecological value whilst ensuring that we have big areas of our state that people from all over Victoria, whether they are rural, regional or metropolitan, can get out and enjoy.

Of course if you listen to the Liberals and the Nationals and the bandwagon they have been on for the last 15 months whipping up fear and telling people there are going to be padlocks on everything, you would think you would not be able to do anything in this state. But of course the Labor Party sits in the centre making rational, grown-up decisions, while we have the Greens of the Nationals and the Greens of the inner city fighting their way to the fringes and the populist elements. It was interesting. I will not repeat the unparliamentary words of the Nationals member opposite, who said that there was no-one on this side wanting to speak. Well, our benches were full, and the coalition benches are empty, with no-one other than their lead speaker here to speak on this bill.

I am going to keep it a short contribution, but I am a big believer that it is difficult to appreciate what you cannot enjoy. We want Victorians right across our incredible, beautiful state, no matter where people live, to get out and appreciate our natural spaces. When you appreciate it, you will support it. When you get to see how stunning it is, how beautiful it is, you will support investing in caring for it, in managing it. That is why I support this bill, and I will leave my comments there.

 Lee TARLAMIS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (21:16): I move:

That debate on this bill be adjourned until the next day of meeting.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned until next day of meeting.