4CA AM Cairns interview with Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek

MURRAY JONES, HOST: Well, wonderful to have her in studio as my special guest this morning, the Federal Minister for the Environment, Tanya Plibersek. Good morning.

TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Always great to be with you, Murray.

JONES: It's been a little while, but I know you've been a busy girl, what a big portfolio. And as we know the juggle for you, you know, the industries in Australia which are so important economically, but equally, you know, our environment is just so, so important, so I guess that juggle, we'll talk about that through our discussions this morning.

Let's talk a little bit more about I believe you were at Machans Beach yesterday, but a big announcement for today. Quickly tell me about what happened at Machans yesterday.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, we had a great day yesterday at Machans with Tangaroa Blue and a whole lot of volunteers launching their ReefClean Program which will go for the next month. It's a great opportunity for anyone to get involved. Tangaroa will send you out the bag, the gloves, the gear.

JONES: Yeah, yeah.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: And you, with a couple of people in your family or 200 of your closest friends can go out and clean up the catchments and the beach that lead on to the reef, particularly, you know, getting all that plastic out of our waterways and off our sand before it really hits the reef and does all that damage.

We know that a lot of animals like turtles and dugongs and dolphins get tangled up in plastic, they swallow plastic, they choke on it. We've seen water birds with their guts so full of plastic that they can't swallow any fish, so they end up starving to death.

So these clean ups are an incredible opportunity that everyone can get involved in to look after their beautiful backyard.

JONES: And particularly after the flooding that we had just before Christmas last year, obviously that area was inundated there was, you know, things that were basically brought down the river. So, you know, particularly at the moment it's there on the surface so good to do that.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, and just in an hour, the volunteers there had seven big hessian bags full of stuff that they'd picked up off the beach, only about 50 metres of beach.

JONES: My partner's a school teacher and I tell you what she makes me do emu parades too, so I'm regularly cleaning up even around our place at Redlynch there. But let's talk a little bit more about what's happening today, and as we know the water quality on the Great Barrier Reef is one of those key things, and while we're talking about that balance between the industries along our coast and of course the use of some of the riparian areas, some of the rivers, getting the balance between, you know, the outflows but also looking after and protecting the health of the Great Barrier Reef is something that you're focussing on today as well.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yes, absolutely. I'm going to be with our fantastic candidate for Leichhardt, Matt Smith, and with Senator Nita Green who's the Special Envoy for the Great Barrier Reef. We're launching a new $200 million water quality program. We're working across catchments right, you know, right up to the Cape and down the coast as well, $200 million to do projects like stream bank stabilisation, gully bank stabilisation, dealing with weeds and feral animals.

Basically, what we're trying to do is stop sediment and rubbish getting into the waterways and on to the Reef. So, we're working with Landcare groups across six really large projects, and what we anticipate is 130,000 tonnes of sediment prevented from going on to the Reef. I know it's a bit hard to imagine, 130,000 tonnes of sediment.

JONES: Sure.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: It's the equivalent of about 870 blue whales. So biggest creature on earth times 870, that's the amount of dirt and sediment we're going to stop going on to the Great Barrier Reef.

We know that that sediment is really catastrophic. It obviously affects the look of the water.

JONES: Yep.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: That beautiful blue water that the Reef is so famous for all round the world that attracts tourists from all round the world, but it's also really bad, for example, the sediment can coat the sea grass meadows, the sea grass dies and then the dugongs have nowhere to eat, the fish have nowhere to breed. So, the sediment is, you know, it's visually unappealing but it's much, much worse than that for the environment.

JONES: And look, you do see it when you fly sometimes, particularly during the wet season, those outflows, sure, you're going to get a percentage that's natural but not the 130,000 tonnes that you're talking about.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: No, and we know that a lot of it's caused by stock going down in an unfenced sort of irregular way to drink from the water. We can work with farmers to help them get the water up on to the land, stock feeding out of troughs rather than trampling the mud down to the water.

And a big problem, of course, a really big problem, pigs and goats.

JONES: Yep, sure.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Those pigs and goats trampling gully banks and stream banks, sending the mud into the water, causing erosion so that whole banks are falling into river systems. We need to tackle that; we need to do it with landholders and that's what these projects are about.

JONES: And look, you know, the economic benefits, you know, for the farmers, you know, for the greater region, the tourism, in every way. This work is actually really important.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Do you know, Murray, this is one of the really interesting things I learnt about fencing dams. Fencing dams is terrific for the environment because you can see sedges and grasses grow up around a dam, it gives you bird habitat, frogs, you know, turtles, all the rest of it. What it also does is give you fatter cows with better yields because the cows aren't walking into a muddy dam, pooing in the dam. Drinking the water. Giving themselves bugs and gastro problems. So you get fatter, healthier cows and you benefit the environment. And that's what we're looking to do with these stream and gully and river restoration projects as well.

JONES: And look, you know, hats off to a lot of the farmers that see these benefits and realise economically for them and for what they're trying to achieve, actually following some of these practices means they're not losing soil to erosion.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Absolutely, no one wants to see the back paddock washed away.

JONES: Yeah, just disappearing down the stream. Let's talk a little bit more about I guess the Great Barrier Reef and some of the bigger picture issues. You've been under fire just in the last week or so as the result of basically the extension of some coal mines here in Queensland. As we've seen just in the last couple of days the UK is about to shut their last coal fired power station. The G7 nations; France, Germany, there's a range of them, Italy as well, all basically phasing out coal. You know, what's your position about these recent approvals or at least the extensions of the coal mines, when obviously, you know, we're in a situation where, you know, the world is walking right away from coal?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, absolutely, and so are we in Australia. I mean the three projects are extensions of existing coal mines, two are in the Hunter actually. This compares with more than 60 renewable energy projects that I've approved. I've approved 10 times more renewable energy projects than I've approved coal projects. That compares with the previous government that was approving twice as many coal projects as renewables. So, we've got 10 times more renewables than coal. They had double coal compared with renewables.

We're in a massive transformation in Australia. We are actually moving to much more renewable energy in the grid. We're at 40 per cent now. We're heading towards 82 per cent but that can't happen overnight. We are in the middle of this massive transformation. The 60 renewable energy projects I've already approved, actually more than 60, is enough to power 7 million Australian homes. That's a huge change in our energy mix.

The biggest risk to this is we've basically got extremists on both sides. We've got the Liberals and the Nationals saying, "We're not going to build anything. Trust us, there'll be nuclear in 20 years. We've got no plan for the next 20 years but some time in, you know, the next two decades we'll build you a few nuclear power stations".  That's the most expensive form of new energy on the planet. So, in 20 years' time you'll get the most expensive form of new energy on the planet.

On the other hand, we've got the Greens that are in complete denial about the fact that a transition this size in an economy like Australia takes time. We've got to make sure we've got enough energy to keep the lights on and we've got whole communities that are mining communities. We need to make sure those people have jobs. We're working with them so that we can, for example, build up our green hydrogen industry. We can be mining critical minerals. Critical minerals are absolutely vital to this transformation of our economy as well. But it's a big job and we're getting on with it.

JONES: And it does need to be done incrementally. Sure, there's a lot of nations around the world that are leading, but I guess, you know, we're in a situation we're very unique in Australia, there's no doubt about that.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: We are, and we are determined to do our fair share. We've got a trajectory to net zero. We've got our safeguard mechanism. We've legislated net zero emissions by 2050. We've legislated a 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030. We are getting pollution down, but we've got to do it in a way that, you know, means we can keep the lights on, and people employed at the same time.

JONES: Yeah. And look, you know, even what we're seeing with a lot of conservative governments around the world, you know, informed by science and driven by the electorate, it's the way that we're going. We've got to wrap up, I've got to let you.

But look, mum would shoot me if I didn't talk about   she gave me this love for salmon, and I do love salmon. I know it's been a very controversial one in Tasmania and of course near, you know, some of the most sensitive parts of Tasmania. Macquarie Harbour about 10, 15 years ago there was an increase in the farming there on Macquarie Harbour. The Maugean skate, I believe it's a type of ray, I think I've said it correctly.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, yeah, it's   look, it's actually a really interesting fish, Murray. It's a 65 million year old dinosaur fish, you know. This fish only exists in Macquarie Harbour, it's the only place that it lives. It's not very pretty. It's very shy, it's very slow breeding, but it's a very interesting remnant from a different period, and of course we need to protect it. The numbers have dropped very quickly in recent years and we're doing everything we can to protect it. We've got a captive breeding population, we're reoxygenating the water in Macquarie Harbour.

But as Environment Minister I've been asked to reconsider whether the original approval for salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour was properly done. There was an assumption at the time that there wouldn't be environmental impacts from the salmon farming. It looks as though there may be and so I've got to consider any new scientific evidence about that.

JONES: And look, you know, it's a difficult one I know politically because certainly the Labor Party and the Liberals in Tasmania support the salmon farming, but at the end of the day there's got to be the balance. And of course, that pollution, the amount of pollution and of course the deoxygenation of the Macquarie Harbour is a real impact and it's a real concern.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, that's always the challenge. The great challenge of this job is we want nature to be better for our kids and grandkids, you know. Like you've got listeners today who want to be able to take their grandchildren fishing on the Reef and to see dugongs and dolphins and whales.

JONES: Sure.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: And all of those special things. They want to be able to go into the wet tropics and see the cassowaries and all the special plants and animals there. If we want it to be there for our grandkids we have to look after it now because nature is in decline around Australia. The statistics don't lie. You know, the land clearing, the Black Summer Bushfires, climate change, all of this is having an impact. We have to protect what we've got, and we have to restore some of our damaged landscapes as well.

But as you say, we've got, you know, communities, including very small communities, dotted around Australia that, you know, also are counting on some of these industries for their livelihood, so getting that balance right.

JONES: That balance, and that's what we started with.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: That's a challenge.

JONES: That is certainly the case. Great to see you. I think we've generally turned on the weather, it's going to be a beautiful day, certainly a bit warmer than what you're probably used to I should imagine.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Nicer than Canberra I can tell you that.

JONES: Federal Minister for the Environment, great to talk to you. Tanya Plibersek, have a wonderful day. Cheers.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Always a pleasure, Murray, thank you.

END