There is no such thing as a free lunch
The Senate has just wrapped up its Budget Estimates hearings. The good news is that most of the ‘substance’ relates to increased activity. The recent years of inactivity on the environment are clearly over. The bad news is that it will take a long time to generate fresh momentum.
Australia’s environment department has been run down over the past decade. This month’s Estimate hearings reveals that the new Labor Government is putting extra resources towards environmental management. What does that mean? In terms of Indigenous heritage protection it’s a rare example of good news in the environment portfolio. In terms of biodiversity, the new government has made a small down payment, but on a veritable mountain of environmental debt.
The Government tinkers with the environment while inflating and conflating its efforts so as to deliberately mislead the people. The final Senate Estimates before the official election period (‘last chance quiz’) poked a few holes in the Government’s carefully contrived environment Budget narrative, but this doesn’t mean we are any wiser about what’s going on.
The underlying answer to legitimate questions was that it is never the right time to ask for politically-sensitive information, until the moment chosen by the government to release it — that’s the Australian Way!
Unfortunately, it looks to me to be politics all the way down with little priority on good policy reform.
It seems that there are 172 species and ecological communities awaiting a recovery plan and that not a single plan had been finalised in the last 16 months! How do we hold government to account about this? Maybe the Senate Estimates Committee can extract some answers.
So what does ‘practical environmental restoration’ mean? Pork barrelling, obviously.