Environment minister was made aware of report by Queensland’s auditor general casting doubt on progress in tackling pollution just weeks before he justified UN’s ruling not to list the reef ‘in danger’

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, was alerted to a report casting doubt on claims of progress in tackling pollution in Great Barrier Reef waters weeks before he trumpeted those claims to justify a UN draft ruling not to list the natural icon as “in danger”.

The report by Queensland’s auditor general, Andrew Greaves, has found the latest joint state and federal reef “report card” – which stated that reef water quality had improved – was misleading given “significant uncertainty” about the evidence.



Greaves’ report more broadly warned the Queensland government would fail to meet its water quality targets – critical in avoiding a future “in danger” listing – because its programs were weak and lacked “urgency and purpose”.



The release of the damning report, originally due on 1 May, was delayed until more than a week after the crucial draft ruling that will inform a final decision by Unesco’s world heritage committee this month.



Hunt was told a month ago of the auditor general report. The report found a lack of water quality-monitoring sites across catchments meant confidence was low that the quality of the water feeding the reef was actually improving.

But he then told journalists on the day of the draft ruling on 29 May that “reductions in sediment, reductions in nitrogen, reductions in pesticide” were examples of real improvements in the reef.

The report had said that “headline reporting on progress does not make this lack of confidence clear to the reader, potentially allowing them to, incorrectly, infer the reported results as unequivocal, established fact”.



It said that “the regular public reporting” on pollution levels through modelling was “lacking transparency at best, and … misleading at worst”.

Conservation groups claimed the report showed that governments had misled the Australian people and Unesco.



Australian Marine Conservation Society campaigner Felicity Wishart accused Hunt of “spinning the health of the Great Barrier Reef to members of the world heritage committee and the wider community rather than acknowledging the problems and ensuring they are addressed”.



“At home and on a recent PR mission overseas, the minister inferred everything possible was being done for the reef and its protection was in hand,” she said.



“Today’s auditor general report … calls this all into serious question. The Unesco draft decision makes it clear that the future of the world’s Great Barrier Reef still hangs in the balance, threatened by industrialisation, pollution and climate change.”

The WWF Australia chief executive, Dermot O’Gorman, said the report showed “it would be wrong to continue to quote these [improvements] as reef facts”.



“This report clearly validates Unesco’s latest decision on the reef which puts Australia on probation until real results are achieved including actual reductions in pollution levels,” he said.

Both Hunt and the Queensland minister for the environment and the Great Barrier Reef, Steven Miles, said they welcomed the report, which highlighted the need for more measuring as opposed to modelling of data.

Hunt told reporters on the Gold Coast: “What it says is very clear, there’s significant progress, there are areas where they want to move from [water quality] modelling to monitoring and I agree with that.”

Miles said the report was a reflection of former state governments of both political stripes, but particularly of the Newman government that had “probably undone the good work on land and on farm” dealing with agricultural chemical runoff by reintroducing “broadscale deforestation”.

“I certainly don’t stand here feeling obliged to defend the performance of the previous state government,” he said.

“I firmly believe it was the changes to that plan upon [our] coming to government that allowed Unesco to consider a draft decision of not listing as in danger.”

Miles said the timing of the report was “entirely” the decision of the auditor general. Miles said he had become aware of a draft of the report about a month ago and his office then immediately informed Hunt.



“I certainly alerted Mr Hunt to the fact the auditor general was doing this piece of work. The commonwealth is the state party at Unesco so it was highly appropriate for us to alert his office to this piece of work,” Miles said.



“I understand [Hunt] may have written to the auditor general to clarify some elements of the report but I never saw that letter so I can’t comment on the contents of it.”



A spokesman for Hunt later said the environment minister had not written to the auditor general and Miles’s office had acknowledged this. The spokesman did not deny his office had been made aware of the draft report and its contents.



O’Gorman said the governments’ long-term conservation plan, “Reef 2050”, needed a water pollution reporting system that was “completely independent, with all data released immediately each year, and regulations enforced to stem pollution”.



The draft UN recommendations are that Australia reports back in detail on progress on water quality and other reef health measures by December 2016.



Miles said the government would respond in detail in time to the report, which also questioned the effectiveness of $175m in spending commitments by various state government departments between 2013 and 2018.

Many initiatives departments claimed would help achieve reef targets existed long before any reef plan, while some “do not have improvement of water quality as their primary objective”.

The report also suggested programs to improve land practices by cane farmers and graziers to stop runoff into the reef may need to move from voluntary to compulsory.

It called for the new Office of the Great Barrier Reef to be the sole agency responsible for managing the reef water quality targets and enforcement.