THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC BROKEN HILL BREAKFAST WITH ANDREW SCHMIDT
MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2024
SUBJECTS: MUTAWINTJI CULTURAL FESTIVAL, NATURAL HERITAGE TRUST, FUNDING TO SUPPORT THREATENED SPECIES AND GREY RANGE THICK-BILLED GRASSWREN.
ANDREW SCHMIDT, HOST: Now, on the weekend, the Federal Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, spent a few days here in the far west, and on Saturday she headed out to the Mutawintji Cultural Festival, where there were hundreds of people from all over Australia for this Indigenous festival. And when she returned into Broken Hill, we sat down yesterday, she spoke about her journey out there and also the Federal Government funding for a very special sort of project. Here's Tanya Plibersek. As I said, she joined me yesterday to talk about a visit to the festival and the far west.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Wonderful to see how many people from other parts of Australia made the trip out there as well. There were people from all over that I met, including friends of mine from Sydney and the north coast of NSW and a fellow I'd met in Cape York previously. I met a lot of Aboriginal people who'd come from different parts of Australia for the dancing. And it was great, great to see so many old friends.
SCHMIDT: We often say out here that we love to see Ministers, particularly when they've got a, well, I use the old-fashioned term, a cheque book in their back pocket. And you did have some funding.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: There's $800,000 that we're spending on a project in that area of Mutawintji. There's a very rare bird there, a bird that we thought, in fact, was extinct. So, Western Local Land Services, in collaboration with local farmers, with the Mutawintji Board of Management and Land Council and National Parks and Wildlife, are doing this incredible project to revegetate so that the Grey Range Thick-billed Grasswren can have the habitat it needs to breed and to survive. And this is a species that they thought was actually extinct in that local area. But they're pretty shy birds. They found some more of them about 20 years ago. And by looking after the landscape, by looking after the saltbush in particular that they live in, we're hoping to see an improvement in the population out there.
SCHMIDT: How hard is it for groups to actually attract Federal funding for these sorts of projects?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, we spend $1.1 billion through the Natural Heritage Trust, and about half of that money is spent with farmers improving, I suppose, the way that they're doing their farming, so that it's better for the environment. And the other half is spent on tackling feral animals and weeds and rehabilitating habitats for these animals. So, it's quite a big spend over five years, and it's really making a difference. We've made a commitment as a government that we want to see no new extinctions and so we need to deal with the threats, the cats, the foxes, the goats. I've seen a hell of a lot of goats driving out here in recent times. And the sort of weeds that are really getting in the way of the natural grasses here, for example. I think the investment that we've seen is really paying dividends. What we know is if you've got a threatened species, the best thing you can do is rehabilitate the natural habitat of that species, because you're not just then helping one animal, you're helping all of the animals that live in that ecosystem.
SCHMIDT: There we go. Tanya Plibersek, Minister for the Environment and Water.
END
