‘Who took conservatives out
of conservation?’ is a headline in the latest issue of Habitat Australia, the magazine published by the Australian
Conservation Foundation (ACF).
It’s a question that’s close
to the ACF’s heart. This organisation was established in the mid-1960s at the
behest of the Duke of Edinburgh with a grant from the Menzies Government and with
Sir Garfield Barwick (Chief Justice of the High Court and previously a minister
under Menzies) as president — it was conservative to the core.
The Abbott-Truss Government’s
hostility to the environment has been surprising in its breadth. Their targets
haven’t just been the carbon tax, renewable energy and curbing Australia’s greenhouse
gas emissions, but also the Tasmanian Wilderness and Great Barrier Reef World
Heritage areas, the network of Commonwealth marine reserves, the National Water
Commission and the ‘green tape’ of the Environment
Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).
It wasn’t always so with
Coalition governments.
The EPBC Act was drafted and
passed by the Howard Government. Howard proposed the national representative
system of marine protected areas in 1998 and set up the National Water
Commission in 2004.
The Tasmanian Wilderness and
Great Barrier Reef were nominated for World Heritage listing by the Fraser
Government, which also ended sand mining on Fraser Island and whale hunting in
Australian waters.
At the state level, the
original and current National Parks and Wildlife Acts were passed by the Askin
Government in NSW which, in 1970, also brought in the Clean Waters Act and the Pollution
Control Act.
Nick Greiner brought in the Protection of the Environment Administration
Act 1991 which set up the legislative framework for ecologically
sustainable development (including the precautionary principle) and replaced Askin’s
State Pollution Control Commission with the Environmental Protection Authority.
Care for the environment —
and willingness to introduce laws and regulations to protect it — has never
been the exclusive territory of left-leaning governments. It is puzzling why
the current crop of Liberal-National governments is now disowning and
dismantling the legacy of their conservative forebears.
-
J Cavanaugh
