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SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. J. KEATING, MP
NATIONAL LANDCARE AUSTRALIA AWARDS
29 MARCH 1994
Thank you all f or coming tonight.
The fact that some of you have come a very long way to be
a part of this event indicates how widely the Landcare
movement has spread in Australia.
This success is, on the one hand, proof of the need for
better land management in Australia; on the other, and
perhaps more importantly, it is proof of the care
Australians feel for their country.
An environmental consciousness is not new in Australia,
but what we have seen in recent years is an awareness of
the need to preserve the environment of Australia allied
to the knowledge that it is an economic, and indeed a
social imperative.
When we move to save a damaged or threatened environment,
like that of the Murray-Darling, for instance, we are
acting to save industries, families and communities.
If we move cleverly we can do more than save: we can
increase productivity, create new industries, restructure
local economies, revive regions, and give a lot of
Australians particularly young Australians new jobs
and opportunities.
In other words, when we recognise the problems of
salination or any other form of land degradation, or the
means by which an improvement to the environment can
translate into increased productivity, we recognise the
fundamental link between the environment and the quality
of our national life including that which underpins it,
our national economy.
That is precisely the new consciousness which Landcare
manifests. Everyone who joins a Landcare group has
recognised the link between self-interest and the
interest of the environment community interest, the
national interest and the interest of the environment.
And I might say that if Landcare and these awards help to
show Australians that they are all linked by their
relationship to this unique continent if they help to
unite us on this basis they will have done Australia a
great service.
I think it also should be said that one of the great
things about Landcare is that individuals and communities
are driving it.
It has not been an easy couple of years on the land, with
falling commodity prices and extended drought in at least
two States.
But, far from discouraging Landcare projects, this
hardship appears to have made the network flourish.
Landcare is one of the great movements of our time
because the energy is coming from people with an
affection for the country coupled to a belief in its
future.
And the future is most certainly there. In the-food
industry, for example. There are strong signals abroad,
identified by the Agri-food Council, that demand is
likely to increase for clean, green food products that
is, food produced by the most environmentally friendly
methods. That means potential for exports and jobs. New hope and
opportunities for people on the land. Potential to
invigorate regional Australia.
The fact that one farming family in three is involved in
Landcare goes a long way towards putting Australia in a
position to realise this potential.
I said in the Government's Environment Statement in
December 1982: " The drive for environmentally friendly
industries and for protection of the environment is. . part
of the economic drive part of the international
competitive drive in which Australia is engaged."
The success of Landcare is testament to the speed with
which that message is spreading through Australia.
The fact is Landcare's achievements are bigger and better
than were ever envisaged. So successful has Landcare
been, demand is outstripping supply.
But that goes for every successful program and it
certainly does not mean what a press report today took it
to mean.
It does not mean there is a funding crisis, or that
Landcare is about to collapse.
The Government is presently spending far more than it
committed for the decade of Landcare.
We are very much aware that our commitment to Landcare
needs to be maintained: that we need to make the
structure and administration of Landcare programs more
effective, but not weighed down with bureaucracy; that we
need to keep the long term funding up and, of course,
that we need to continue to spread the message of the
link between land conservation and improved production.
We need all Australians to understand the basic
principles of Landcare.
We-will get the best out of our country if we
understand it and care for it.
We will get the best out of ourselves if we live in
harmony with the land.
Ladies and gentlemen
Tonight you will meet the new Federal Minister for the
Environment, John Faulkner.
John Faulkner has proved himself a very capable and
popular minister for Veterans Affairs. Veterans are not
always easy to please.
But with that highly desirable mix of ideas, commitment
and wise and practical judgement John Faulkner has
pleased them.
Environmentalists also are not always easy to please.
Nor are their opponents. And it is not always easy to
bring together.
John, I am quite sure, has the qualities needed to get
the results we need not ones which will please
everybody, but ones which are good for the environment
and good for the country.
It is an irony that, because we have so many programs
already in place and so many achievements already under
our belt, the Government these days is not getting much
credit for environment policy.
In fact a great deal has been done and a great deal
continues to be done.
I know that John, like me, is very conscious of the
contribution made by the people who preceded him.
Graham Richardson's work needs no further commendation
from me. It is enough to say that he made the
environment a primary policy area for this Government.
I don't think it will hurt any of us to recall what Ros
Kelly achieved.
Among other things, she implemented the Endangered
Species Legislation, established the Feral Pest Program,
made major advances in World Heritage listing and
protection of Australia's most special places, such as
Shark Bay, Fraser Island and Stage 3 of Kakadu, and
established Ocean Rescue 2000 the Commonwealth's first
marine conservation program.
She also recognised the natural progression to the socalled
" brown agenda" the hard, dirty issues facing
Australians every day but which Australian governments
had not tackled so seriously before.
While Ros Kelly was Minister, Government policy reflected
this.
We established the Commonwealth Environment Protection
Agency, developed the first National strategy on Waste
Minimisation and Recycling, took head-on the issue of
lead pollution, established national targets for reducing
greenhouse gas emissions and undertook the massive task
of restoring the health of the Murray-Darling.
I hardly need to tell people like yourselves, who are
involved in environmental projects, that we cannot
announce new programs and new projects every day. You
know better than most that starting an environmental
project or program is one thing and seeing it through is
another. We are seeing them through.
So we have, after the contributions of these two
Ministers, measures for a great range of environmental
issues.
We have available an increasing range of assistance to
meet objectives similar to those of Landcare for
example, programs such as LEAP, which is being creatively
used to support a Greening Australia project in the
Northern Rivers district of New South Wales which I
visited recently.
Yet for all the Government's initiative, and all the
Government's financial commitment, for all the
Government's effort on scientific research and education,
we can never eliminate the legacy of environmental
problems without initiative, commitment and effort from
individuals, companies and communities like those
associated with Landcare.
Like most things in the life of a nation, there is much
that Governments can and should do, but so much more that
people can do better.
Ladies and gentlemen
Tonight, f or the third time the achievers of Landcare
Australia are being honoured.
But I would like to say that in honouring these
Australians we are paying tribute to all those involved
in Landcare for, by the fact and the nature of their
involvement, they are all achievers.
Later, I will have the task of congratulating the winners
of this year's awards.
Right now, I should acknowledge the generous
contributions made by Landcare's major sponsor, Telecom,
along with Monsanto, Combined Rural Traders, Ford,
Ansett, BHP, Alcoa and the National Landcare Program
itself. I must also congratulate Bob Collinsi the Minister for
Primary Industries and Energy, on the leadership he has
shown in the National Landcare Program.
And Jim Kirk, whose departure from Landcare I understand
is imminent.
The success of the Landcare network is by definition a
tribute to the person at the helm.
Jim will leave Landcare with the outstanding reputation
for business and community leadership he already enjoys
substantially enhanced.
Ladies and gentlemen
Our economy is now growing faster than any in the western
industrialised world. The prospects for an era of
prosperity and national growth and development have few
parallels in our history.
The issue at the heart of Landcare is at the heart of
those prospects.
In the environment statement of 15 months ago I said
this: In the next decade the pioneering spirit will be
carried on by Australians who these days work on the
frontiers of technology and seek new ways to grow,
or make or mine things. Economic growth and the
jobs which accompany it will increasingly go hand in
hand with environmental protection and renewal. The
old war with the environment will be replaced by a
partnership in the national interest.
Nowhere is that partnership stronger than in Landcare.
I congratulate and thank you all.