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Alliance to Save Hinchinbrook Inc PO Box 2457, Townsville Q 4810

Mobile 0427 724 052

hinchinbrookforever@gmail.com

07 August 2016

To

Department of Environment and Heritage Protection

by email: climatechange@ehp.qld.gov.au

Advancing climate action in Queensland: reducing greenhouse gas

pollution

ASH welcomes the release of the Queensland Government’s discussion paper on Advancing Climate Action In Queensland: Making the transition to a low carbon future. Along “our” part of the Great Barrier Reef Coast, we are already experiencing increased severity and unseasonality of weather events (cyclones, floods, wild fire, drought). Given the most recent climate and weather indications, it may be that it’s already too late to prevent dangerous climate change. It may also be too late to prevent many extinctions of Australian endemic species and major changes in ecosystems, including species in our region. Our organic coasts (mangroves, corals) are demonstrably vulnerable to sea level rise, warmer water, higher-energy storms, and increasing ocean acidification. Not only are parts of the Great Barrier Reef coral reefs experiencing catastrophic heat stress, vast areas of the mangrove forests of the Gulf of Carpentaria are reportedly dead, following a period of record high water temperatures. If these mangroves do not recover, it will be only a few years before their roots rot away, their substrate begins to erode, and the northern Australian coast line begins to disappear. Some of us remember the great northern flood of the 1970s when herds of cattle and kangaroos were swept out to sea, when that northern coast was no longer distinguishable. With no mangroves to guard the coast there will be nothing to stop another such flood carrying away the land currently protected by the mangrove forests that are now dead or dying. It may already be too late for our lower-lying coastal settlements to substantially move away from severe flood and storm localities in time to avoid some untenable impacts of severe weather. The grants to local councils may represent a good direction (hazards adaptation program—QCoast2100), but have not yet effected necessary planning changes. The Cassowary Coast is one of the most vulnerable to severe cyclones and flooding, but the only response of the CCRC seems to have been to obtain legal advice as to its liability in development approvals in respect of climate change.

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Contrary to the thrust of all the planning for the Cassowary Coast, the CCRC (CCRC Minutes 01 August 2016) is currently offering incentives (50% discount on infrastructure charges) to encourage further subdivision:

Council's development incentive scheme shows the Cassowary Coast is "open for business": Cassowary Coast Mayor John Kremastos says the Cassowary Coast is "open for business", with Council granting another developer a 50 per cent reduction in infrastructure charges under the council's development incentive scheme. The scheme was introduced to attract investment and new development, and stimulate economic growth and employment in the Cassowary Coast region. It offers up to 50 per cent off infrastructure charges for certain developments. The latest development is a 13-lot subdivision in Kurrimine on Illich St which has to be completed by April 2018. Information about the development incentive scheme is on Council's website at www.cassowarycoast.qld.gov.au

- even though the Mission Beach area already has more approved subdivision than is needed for several generations:

… We have enough vacant ready land for development in Mission Beach for the next 70 years. There is no need to cut up anymore (Mayor Bill Shannon, Minutes of the General Meeting of the Mission Beach Community Association held on Tuesday 21st February 2012)

The Greater Mission Beach Area Foreshore Management Plan 2015 to 2035 states

It is critical that coastal processes can occur naturally and the foreshore is maintained for its protective function -

Yet the natural vegetation of the foreshore of the townships of the Cassowary Coast is being incrementally replaced with concrete. The littoral rainforest and other natural vegetation of the foreshore of Mission Beach is gradually disappearing under concrete pathways. In the rebuilding after Cyclone Yasi, some of the good business people of Cardwell’s main street actually wanted to remove all the once-famous foreshore-maintaining calophyllum trees and replace them with shelter sheds. With the help of the Department of Main Roads they succeeded in ensuring that although a row of isolated adult calophyllums remain along the Cardwell foreshore (due to action by ASH), no more will be allowed to grow there; because these trees have been literally set in rocks underneath concrete and can no longer propagate. Where once they were the bastions of the foreshore and needed only to be encouraged and their young cared for, they are now merely ornamental old trees, their land-protecting function purportedly replaced by a buried rock wall. A desire to build rock walls to protect property remains the major response of communities along this coast. See the CCRC Website for the Flying Fish Point Foreshore Stabilisation Project – Preliminary Options Report for insights into the likely solutions for keeping houses built on frontal dunes. There is not one word in consideration of the GBR Coast Marine Park or of the GBRWHA. The present government has stated on its web site (Climate change mitigation):

Queensland is willing to play its part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Queensland Government is in the process of exploring options for climate change mitigation

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Given the above evidence of the impacts of rapid climate change, what is needed to be done now is more than “its part”. As long as each party will do no more than “its part”, as it perceives it, “enough” will never be done. Now that the Commonwealth Government has failed to lead Australia by taking appropriate steps to prevent dangerous climate, the states must take their own measures. ASH supports the government’s initiatives as posted on-line: Climate change mitigation _ Environment, land and water and urge the government to do more. ASH urges Queensland to do its utmost to transition rapidly to a renewables-based, low-carbon economy. Leading encourages others, to the benefit of all. ASH supports the six measures put forward by the Queensland Conservation Council, and three further measures, see COMMENTS below. signed

Alliance to Save Hinchinbrook

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ASH COMMENTS 1: Queensland must commit to specific, politically accountable targets for the reduction of greenhouse emissions.

Announce medium term and short term (2020) targets.

Enact a Climate Change Act

Review and remove all fossil fuel industry subsidies, including those for power stations.

The Australian Government’s 2030 target cannot achieve even the old 2°C limit, so Queensland must enact its own legislation. The urgency of action to prevent and mitigate dangerous climate change requires targets adequate to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, and planned reviews. Whole of Government decision-making should of course imply that Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) is central to all planning and development decisions. We recognise that this requires a decision to be made by the Queensland government (see below). 2: Queensland to stop all new coal mine and all existing coal mine expansions.

Announce a moratorium on new coal projects and expansions

Cease funding coal operations.

Divert ex-coal funding to renewable energy production, for regional and local investment

Implement a plan for just transitions The Queensland government must stop aiding and abetting those coal companies intent on expanding in western Queensland (Galilee Basin, Kingaroy, Maryborough, Acland Stage 3 expansion west of Toowoomba). The serious impacts of atmospheric, air and sea pollution from coal mining and coal dust - on humans, the GBRWHA, and the natural world generally - must be stopped. The high level of funding provided to the mining sector ($700 m over 5 years) makes a mockery of any economic gain that Queenslanders supposedly receive from allowing their land to be mined for coal, given the atmospheric, ocean, landscape and biodiversity impacts left for the public to clean up and fund, and the high level of irreparable harm to the public good. Subsidies of exploration permits given this year by the Queensland Government is another retrograde step. These grants and subsidies must stop. 3: Queensland to retire all coal-fired power stations

Phase out coal-fired power stations, starting with the oldest and dirtiest.

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4: Queensland to take the lead in renewable energy

Implement and fund Queensland’s 50% renewable energy target

Take the lead in the export of renewable energy technology

Support community solar throughout Queensland

Support renewable energy in remote communities We support the Queensland Government’s 50% renewable energy target by 2030; and urge a review to act on new information about the technical and economic feasibility for the target to be 100% renewables. We urge the Queensland government to act promptly to subsidise community initiatives, including cooperatives, for renewable energy generation, particularly in remote and regional communities. 5: Queensland to stop all Coal Seam Gas operations

Stop all coal seam gas projects

Do not approve expansions

Implement ambient air and groundwater monitoring to enable strict stop-work triggers to be applied until these mining operations are ceased and safely closed

Apart from their other irremediable impacts, these operations require very large electricity usage and inflate the energy demand they are supposed to be satisfying. 6: Queensland to initiate measures to improve energy efficiency and air quality

Invest in energy efficiency programs for low-income and disadvantaged households, eg insulation and internal dividers/walls in houses in cold climates

Improve vehicle fuel efficiency standards

Make vehicle emissions testing mandatory

Invest in hybrid or electric or other low-fossil-fuel vehicles for the Government fleet

Introduce incentives for more efficient cars; introduce just transition measures for the disadvantaged who cannot afford to transition from older vehicles.

Expand air pollution monitoring: coalfields, sugarcane areas, urban hotspots; immediately implement the new compliance standards for PM2.5 and PM10, in line with the agreed outcome at the Environment Minister’s meeting in December 2015.

The generation of greenhouse emissions must be decoupled from economic growth. Other countries have already led the way, without losing their economic health. This necessitates stopping the mining and burning of coal to generate electricity. The worst impacts of global warming can only be prevented if coal remains unmined, which is not yet recognized in

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the Queensland Government plans for 100% renewable energy (Queensland Government’s Greenhouse Reduction Strategy). 7. Queensland to apply ESD and the PP combined with WOG, to ensure that development approvals no longer excuse environmental impacts or pretend they are insignificant. ESD, PP, WOG, “machinery of government”

Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) The Precautionary Principle (PP) Whole of Government (WoG); and the “machinery of government/(administrative arrangements”:

We are well aware, from statements delivered by Premier’s Department staff at Ministerial Environment Round Table meetings, that the Bligh Government and the Newman Government overtly disavowed ESD and the PP. We are also aware that the present government has excluded ESD from certain sections of important legislation, such as parts of the Water Act. The Queensland Government’s actions to prevent and mitigate dangerous climate change will be undermined to the extent ESD and the PP continue to be excluded from legislation and consideration. “Whole of Government” (WOG) considerations should not be an excuse for the government to override fundamental matters of environmental protection, based on the spurious belief that economic gain can only achieved at the expense of the natural environment. We have been told by high-level Queensland officials that “machinery of government” considerations can determine the exclusion of the Environment Minister from jurisdiction over some sections of relevant legislation. Such hidden agreements can only undermine efforts to prevent and mitigate dangerous climate change. We urge the government to ensure that the goal of preventing and mitigating dangerous climate change is supported by the entire Queensland government, no matter what other pressures may be brought to bear. The atmosphere is not in the same category as a football stadium. Nor should the government’s ministerial pecking order be the determinant of how much weight is given to environmental matters having such far-reaching and potentially catastrophic consequences. 8. Queensland to make no more land use decisions that prioritise development over rehabilitation of the earth’s atmosphere. No part of the earth, and no part of Queensland, is miraculously exempt from the impacts of dangerous climate change. The people of Queensland depend on this government to act with integrity in making an unreserved commitment to take urgent action. 9. ASH urges the Queensland Government to support the goal for average global temperatures to stay well below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Alliance to Save Hinchinbrook Inc PO Box 2457, Townsville Q 4810

Mobile 0427 724 052

hinchinbrookforever@gmail.com

01 September 2016

Hon Dr Steven Miles MP

Minister for Environment and Heritage Protection and the Great Barrier Reef

via Office of Climate Change

Department of Environment and Heritage Protection

Sent via email only: climatechange@ehp.qld.gov.au

Dear Minister Miles

Please find below our submission on Advancing climate action in Queensland, in two parts.

Please note that in addition to our remarks below, ASH supports the detailed submissions made by the Queensland Conservation Council and the Environment Defender’s Office of Queensland.

Margaret Moorhouse

Alliance to Save Hinchinbrook Inc.

What used to be: Shining starlings in the now cleared fringing mangroves of Oyster Point, once the nesting place of a pair of beach stone curlews, once the safe roosting place of Pied Imperial Pigeons … photo 1994, Margaret Thorsborne AO, Patron of ASH.

Submission on discussion paper:

Advancing Climate Action in Queensland

PART ONE ASH congratulates this government for taking steps towards implementing a climate change policy for Queensland. We were pleased to read the opening statements of the “Message from the Premier and the Minister” in which your government speaks clearly about the fact of climate change and its connection with carbon pollution and land clearing. In Far North Queensland, small shifts in local climate and increasing severity of weather events is already evidencing climate change, but too often denied as symptomatic of climate change or that it could be human-caused.

Strong government leadership is essential to address community confusion.

The Queensland government must be consistent and address ALL the obvious sources of carbon pollution, including from exported coal and gas. These are far too important to be overlooked. The public is less likely to believe climate change is real, and less likely to understand or cooperate with carbon pollution reducing measures, while the huge contributions of fossil fuel burning continue with government support.

The World Heritage principle of transmission to future generations is aligned with our approach to ecosystem conservation. This goes beyond mere species preservation as part of a representative living museum. For this reason, ASH rejects the Queensland Offsets Act. In our view, the Offsets Act misrepresents the significance of dynamically stable interlocking ecosystems for sustaining “life” on earth within which humans can live in relative comfort. A fragmented mosaic of isolated, “representative” but thinned-out, localised ecosystems can only result in a kind of minimalist living museum in between cleared and developed areas, accompanied by micro-climate changes. If this is not the desired policy outcome, the government needs to decide what Queensland should look like vegetation/ecosystem-wise in (say) 2025 – when, surely, at the present rate, there could be no more clearing to do – and ensure the implementation of legislation and policy and regulation to achieve an appropriate end-goal.

Here in FNQ we have to deal with a politician-led popular campaign which posits that land holders have sovereign rights to do as they please on their land. Our members are not unsympathetic to farmers and farming problems; some of our members are current farmers and some of us are past farmers (I was a dairy farmer in NSW); but there’s no reason to suppose that every farmer is a wise, forward-thinking farmer.

Again, Strong government leadership is essential to address community confusion.

We need government to set out clearly why land holders are as accountable as every other citizen for their contribution to the public good – in this case, the health or ecological sustainability of the land they hold and its contribution to the long term health of the planet. Otherwise the landholder is merely mining the land and robbing everyone’s future.

The government must clarify how much carbon pollution will result from the present confusing and open-ended regulations relating to vegetation clearing.

PART TWO We would like to relate some inevitable consequences of climate change of which our members are particularly aware:

Species and ecosystems of two World Heritage Areas (Great Barrier Reef and Wet Tropics) are at risk from climate change for a number of reasons. Apart from the well-known “top of the mountain” effect and the shifts in ecosystem balance due to changes in temperature, rainfall, humidity and atmospheric carbon, there are lowland species such as the Mahogany Glider which are already squeezed between the sea and the slopes of the Wet Tropics ranges, their habitat at risk from further constriction and loss due to sea level rise and increased storm severity. Over- the last twenty years, Mahogany Gliders were robbed of most of their habitat by clearing for sugar cane, plantation timber (despite the frequency of cyclones making this coast unsuitable for tree crops) and coastal development such as the “Port Hinchinbrook” canal estate. The latter site was officially described as “unsuitable” yet this proposal, repeatedly bankrupt in concept and outcomes, was pushed through the Coordinator-General’s Office, effecting the immediate blocking of three freshwater creeks and the later death of the northern part of the future Girramay National Park, then listed “critical habitat” for the Mahogany Glider.

It was today’s ASH members who were largely responsible for the declaration of Girramay National Park (some 240 hectares), when Rod Welford was Minister for the EPA and DNR (late 90s). This national park is wetland and lowland immediately adjacent to the fringing mangroves that protect the mainland coast of Hinchinbrook Channel. This, and all the wetland/lowland national park along this coast, is important for Mahogany Gliders, the Southern Cassowary, the Ant-Plant, and the Livistona Drudei Palm (which occurs nowhere else). These melaleuca woodlands, the buffer between the mangroves and the cleared land, will not survive sealevel rise; and the mangroves, the buffer between the sea and the melaleuca woodlands and Livistona Drudei palm forests, although they are capable of spreading landwards, will most likely not survive sustained higher temperatures and lower pH levels.

The recent death of thousands of hectares of mangrove forests along the Gulf of Carpentaria is an unmitigated disaster. Our mangrove coasts, so amazingly resilient during cyclones, are beloved of traditional yachties and until recent years were recommended by insurance companies as the most secure cyclone haven. Hinchinbrook mangroves were my own haven during several cyclones. Thirty boats on anchor in Hinchinbrook Channel survived Cyclone Yasi while hundreds in “Port Hinchinbrook” marina were trashed.

Hinchinbrook mangrove wilderness – photo Steven Nowakowski - 2014

1994. Oyster Point (Hinchinbrook mainland) 13 metre-high Fringing Mangroves being cleared. Police removing protestor. Tough as mangroves are, climate change may prove a fatal challenge; and if the mangroves die, their substrates will unravel as the roots rot, within five years or so, exposing the coastal land behind. How do we know? We have seen this happen already north of Oyster Point, along and just north of the right-line boundary of “Port Hinchinbrook” (about a kilometre length of the mainland coast). I well remember Commonwealth Environment Minister Senator Robert Hill, after visiting the site, saying “I know sheet erosion when I see it”. After it was all over, our members did a successful Rhizophora replant of the upper foreshore, some 12,000 or more trees grew to 1.5 – 2 metres high before the state and commonwealth governments allowed the developer to cut them down.

Oyster Point foreshore 1994 (above) and 2006 (above right). No world heritage values here, ecological or aesthetic. An ugly blot on the landscape and seascape for miles around.

Attempts at replacing the functional role of Oyster Point’s fringing mangrove forest with rock

walls has produced the usual outcomes – further erosion, more rock walls; not to mention

complete loss of habitat and cessation of successful breeding for one pair of beach stone

curlews (IUCN near-threatened; in Australia, no approved Conservation Advice, no Listing

Advice, no Adopted/Made Recovery Plans), rarely found in NSW now though still listed there

as critically endangered), safe roosting for hundreds of Pied Imperial Pigeons and thousands

of shining starlings, habitat for many other birds including the mangrove robin and for a

myriad of benthic and shore line organisms such as mud skippers and crabs.

Oyster Point late 2011: seafront houses of “Port Hinchinbrook”. No lofty, stilt-rooted rhizophora mangrove forest, no upper-foreshore avicennias, no 100-year-old sonneratias surrounded by pneumatophores, no shore birds, no singing robins, no visiting PIPs; ever-continuing erosion, ever-continuing replenishment of rock walls and replacement of built structures – climate change didn’t cause this but the result will be the same if we lose our mangroves due to rises in sea temperature.

The consequences of sea temperature rise and eroded acid mangrove sediments for seagrass and the already-near-extinct dugong population of the southern GBR, which depend on the seagrass meadows of Hinchinbrook Channel and Missionary Bay, will most likely be terminal. The GBRWHA is so much more than coral reefs.

Rather than setting out our own detailed responses on the Discussion Paper, which would be substantially the same as comments made by many other Environment NGOs, we conclude by stating:

ASH supports the detailed submissions made by the Queensland Conservation Council and the Environment Defender’s Office of Queensland.

February 1997 – Oyster Point rally Hinchinbrook Channel: PLEASE HELP - THIS IS WORLD HERITAGE!