Mr WETTENHALL (26 November 2008) (6.20 pm): The Great Barrier Reef is an international icon.
At 34 million hectares, it is the world's largest World Heritage area. It is also the world's largest coral reef and it offers the most spectacular marine scenery on earth. It is also the world's premier tourist destination.

About 63,000 jobs depend on reef tourism and fishing worth an estimated $6 billion a year. Our Great
Barrier Reef marine system is made up of some 3,200 reefs stretching across 2,000 kilometres of our
coastline, and the majority is still in good condition.

However, the reef is under threat from water pollution and emerging threats from the effects of global warming. With temperatures rising between two and three degrees, coral bleaching may affect 80 per cent of the reef.

The ecological value of the reef is absolutely outstanding. It is a place of megadiversity-with more
than 1,500 species of fish, 400 corals, 242 birds and it is critical habitat of course for dugong, whales,
dolphins and turtles. The reef is also of immense economic value. In a recent report it was estimated that the total direct and indirect contribution of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park to the areas in its catchment is estimated to be just under $3.6 billion in 2006-07.

The figure is larger for Queensland at $4 billion and for Australia the contribution is just over $5½ billion. These figures correspond with estimated employment contributions, direct and indirect, of 39,700 full-time equivalents in the Great Barrier Reef catchment area-that is, in the local government areas that have rivers that flow into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

The figures for Queensland and Australia were 43,750 and 3,800 respectively. Those are immense figures and demonstrate the critical importance of a healthy Great Barrier Reef not only to the local and regional economies but to our state economy and to the economy of our country.

Why is it necessary to undertake regulation? Because the water quality in our Great Barrier Reef
lagoon is being heavily impacted in the following ways: 6.6 million tonnes of sediment was discharged into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon due to soil loss from the catchments combined, four times greater than the estimated pre-European level. Some 16,600 tonnes of nitrogen, which is five times the estimated pre-European level, and 4,180 tonnes of phosphorus, which is four times the estimated pre-European levels, reached the waters of the Great Barrier Reef lagoon due to nutrient loss from the priority catchments.

What have we been doing to try to stem those flows and why is it necessary to hasten what we are doing? The elevated levels of nutrients and suspended sediments were detected in the inshore areas of the lagoon. They had higher chlorophyll A measurements at inshore locations than further offshore and trace concentrations of pesticides were recorded in all water quality samples.

The management responses that we have used to date have not gone far enough and have not been effective enough quickly enough. The results show that over that same period-and I am quoting
from the 2007 water quality report that has been referred to in the debate tonight-land management
projects for improved ground cover and grazing areas in the Fitzroy catchment area were less than
one per cent of grazing land; land management projects for improved soil protection and crop lands was limited in the Daintree-Mossman area to four per cent of crop lands; new wetland management projects in line with reef plan objectives were undertaken in the Fitzroy and Burdekin regions but only with less than one per cent of total freshwater wetland area; new projects in line with the reef plan objectives for improved management of riparian areas were undertaken on only 26,024 hectares; in the Fitzroy catchment, improved management was undertaken along 508 kilometres or 0.6 per cent of the riparian areas-
Time expired.