Campbell Newman says his government is trying to combat ‘dishonest’ campaign being waged by environmentalists

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The Queensland government is furiously lobbying Unesco representatives behind the scenes of the G20 to stop the Great Barrier Reef from being listed as “in danger” by the UN’s cultural and heritage body.



The state premier, Campbell Newman, told Guardian Australia on Saturday that his environment minister, Andrew Powell, was talking to G20 countries who were members of the Unesco world heritage committee to combat the “dishonest” campaign being waged by environmentalists about threats to the reef.

“He’s talking to political leaders and officials and arranging visits to the reef so people can see what the Queensland government is really doing,” Newman said.

Powell is travelling to the reef on Saturday – with Unesco officials in tow – to show them the reef and to discuss plans to dump dredged sediment from the Abbot Point port expansion on land rather than at sea.

The soft sell is also in full swing at the G20 in Brisbane. The Queensland government has distributed hundreds of glossy brochures to journalists, extolling the reef’s beauty and protection measures in place to preserve it.

Powell and the federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, flew to Europe in September to lobby world heritage committee members to prevent the reef being labelled as “in danger” on the committee’s official list of heritage sites.

A decision will be taken next year, but Australian authorities fear that an “in danger” listing could damage the $5.2bn tourism industry that exists around the reef.

Speaking at the G20, Powell said he would lead a delegation that included the director general of Unesco, Irina Bokova, her technical advisers, as well as reef park representatives and environment department officials.

“We are getting them out on the reef so they can see first-hand that it’s in good shape.”

But he conceded there were “challenges” to the reef’s future. “We all know that Unesco has identified that. The world heritage committee and the International Union for Conservation of Nature have identified that.”

Bokova told Guardian Australia this week the world heritage committee was “very worried by the damage to the universal value of the Great Barrier Reef, but now the government is listening, the government is starting to take serious measures”.

An assessment by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority cited climate change as the leading threat to the coral ecosystem, with pollution, extreme weather events, and a plague of coral-eating starfish also contributing to its malaise.

The reef, along with Kakadu and Queensland’s wet tropics, was listed as one of the world heritage sites whose health gave rise to “significant concern” in an International Union for the Conservation of Nature analysis released on Thursday.

Additional reporting by Oliver Milman