Rebuilding Our Coastal Communities

I believe that the conservation and rehabilitation of our environment has a central role to play in Australia’s plan for jobs and the COVID-19 recovery.

When Labor Leader Anthony Albanese set out Labor’s vision for Australia beyond the coronavirus in his fifth vision statement, he called for a conservation program to boost employment and protect the environment.

A well designed conservation program would boost regional employment, target weeds and pests, revitalise our rivers, reduce emissions and restore and build resilience in bushfire affected areas.

Australia was already confronting an extinction crisis prior to the national bushfire crisis. The fires over summer killed at least one billion animals and burned through more than 12 million hectares of land.

The Labor Party has called for a national ecological audit for some time now, which would mobilise an army of scientists and on-the-ground land management specialists across state borders, in a national effort to tackle the environmental destruction we have seen. This has not happened.

Instead, the Liberal Government continues to ignore the constructive ideas of the land management and conservation sectors, instead opting for “snap-back” policies that would see a longer and deeper recession, turning to their old ways of environmental mismanagement and destruction.

The Labor Party wants to see laws, programs and institutional arrangements effectively conserve biodiversity and protect the environment, to address the extinction crisis and preserve nature for future generations.

I will continue to hold the Liberal Government to account for this inaction.