In response to The Age (20 July 2018) 'Australian governments concede GBR headed for 'collapse':
This official recognition of the impending death of the Great Barrier Reef coral ecosystem hides an unpublicised and deadly multiplier.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) and its political masters, the Commonwealth and Queensland Governments, are actively facilitating maritime constructions along the coast of Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBRWHA), in defiance of UNESCO’s clear warnings that the GBRMPA should stop ignoring cumulative, combined and consequential impacts – “death by a thousand cuts” (UNESCO Mission Report 2012).
This official recognition of the impending death of the Great Barrier Reef coral ecosystem hides an unpublicised and deadly multiplier.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) and its political masters, the Commonwealth and Queensland Governments, are actively facilitating maritime constructions along the coast of Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBRWHA), in defiance of UNESCO’s clear warnings that the GBRMPA should stop ignoring cumulative, combined and consequential impacts – “death by a thousand cuts” (UNESCO Mission Report 2012).
 | .Case study: Clump Point Mission Beach – a new island marina development (a 30-year aspiration of Senator Bob Katter and a handful of development speculators) in and affecting the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, and the Queensland Great Barrier Reef Coastal Marine Park. This development has now been approved (and partial funding provided) by the Queensland and Commonwealth governments. The project began as a Queensland “major project of state significance” but was re-invented as “code-assessable” for automated intra-departmental tick-and- flick approval so that no public consultation was “required”. |
Funding: In the Application Public Information Package the Queensland government made clear that it had not committed funds for the whole project – an obvious invitation to the developers (in line with Queensland government policy) who have been seeking an island marina at Mission Beach for 33 years.
| "This official recognition of the impending death of the Great Barrier Reef coral ecosystem hides an unpublicised and deadly multiplier." |  |
 | The GBRMPA approval was more tricky: how to get past the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act and Regulations. This was explained to Bob Katter and Queensland officials by the GBRMPA Assessment Officer (audio record 2016) – the same officer who ultimately approved the Application. The GBRMPA could not, however, avoid “public notification”. Hiding behind their minimalist and outmoded regulations (email correspondence GBRMPA-ASH), they chose to bury their unpredictably timed and appealable Approval notification deep in their website, failing to notify either submitters or the government-appointed, local, Project Reference Group members. This meant that anyone seeking a Reconsideration missed out or found out with little time to make the formal Request. This is how the GBRMPA “protects” the GBRWHA from harm. |
| Similarly, the Queensland government failed to notify the public or the Project Reference Group, when referring the development proposal to the Commonwealth Environment Department as required under the EPBC Ac). The Department noted “no submissions” and happily approved it; perhaps unaware the public had not been notified., Nor did they know that the contents of the Application were misleading – an obvious reason for the Queensland government to keep the Referral from the knowledgeable non-government members of the Project Reference Group. By the time someone in the public found out, it was legally too late to make the appropriate submission. | "Coastal fringing coral reefs of the GBRWHA are succumbing not to climate change but to coastal development" |
 | The project also avoided the Commonwealth Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act, purportedly because the environmental impacts could be ignored legally, depending on what descriptor was given to the rock structure (in fact a fully constructed artificial island is proposed, but described differently). Meanwhile, on the coastal verge of the GBRWHA: it was easy to blame the farmers for coastal pollution reaching the outer reefs, and propose they abide by voluntary measures, after Queensland’s Bligh government abolished the only legislation that had used statutory zoning to protect the GBRWHA coast from “adverse impacts” (2012); followed by the Newman government abolishing riverine protection (2013). Local councils followed with glee. Under Queensland government policy of not interfering in local council business, the Cassowary Coast Regional Council (CCRC) (covering the narrow coastal strip between the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and the Wet Tropics of Queensland |
World Heritage Area) is formally subsidising new development contrary to state planning and local zoning New developers are offered fee-free application, two years rate-free, and a waiver of the standard requirement to contribute to the public infrastructure costs their development will cause (CCRC website). Pity the 10,000 or so mum-and-dad ratepayers. And pity the conservation zones now approved for development.
In sum: under cover of the destruction of the greatest reefal coral ecosystem on earth by climate change inaction, all levels of government are compromising what’s left of the GBRWHA - in the name of business and votes, unnoticed in far-away Victoria. I know Victorians love the idea of the “the Reef”; but few know that it is doomed, even without climate change, by government development decisions. Not just for Adani and ports and mines, but for dredging, reclamation, seadumping and bed-levelling inside the GBRWHA; by multiple coastal development approvals that are inaccessible to public consultation; by decisions made by the Queensland Government, the GBRMPA and the Commonwealth Environment Minister.
Coastal fringing coral reefs of the GBRWHA are succumbing not to climate change but to coastal development, whether by direct destruction or by pollution (eg Magnetic Island, Cleveland Bay, Clump Point Mission Beach).
Coastal fringing coral reefs of the GBRWHA are succumbing not to climate change but to coastal development, whether by direct destruction or by pollution (eg Magnetic Island, Cleveland Bay, Clump Point Mission Beach).
| One further act of propaganda: while the Commonwealth cannot change the boundaries of the GBR World Heritage Area (low water mark along the mainland coast), they repeatedly change the boundaries of the GBR Marine Park (also low water mark along the mainland coast but with deviations) specifically to exclude new areas of dredging, seadumping and reclamation; or dismiss them from consideration as “de minimis” - a legal principle directly in conflict with Australia’s obligations under world heritage listing (Conservation, Rehabilitation, Presentation – “to the utmost”) and the direct statements of UNESCO that the GBRMPA must take into account cumulative, combined and consequential impacts precisely to avoid “death by a thousand cuts” (UNESCO Mission Report 2012). Today, August 2018, GBRMPA has not even drafted such a policy. |  |
Australians are to be applauded for their in-principle support for the life of the GBRWHA - the interdependent life of reef and coastal corals, seagrass and benthic communities, marine mammals and turtles and a multitude of fish species. Now Australians can ask the governments to stop hastening its demise through approvals of additional and preventable coastal development impacts
Margaret J Moorhouse
Alliance to Save Hinchinbrook Inc
PO Box 2457
Townsville Q 4810
hinchinbrookforever@gmail.com
0427 724 052
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