The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is Working to Help the Environment

Greening Australia Presentation, 28 July 2005:

Speech by Mark Butz, President of Greening Australia (ACT and SE NSW)

MARK BUTZ: Michael L'Estrange, Secretary of Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Skye Palmer of Café Brindabella, and assembled staff and friends of both the department and the café.

As the Chair of Greening Australia ACT and South East New South Wales, it gives me great pleasure to be here representing Greening Australia at such an auspicious occasion. The purpose of the event is the formal presentation of the Panorama to mark the outstanding support provided by departmental staff and Café Brindabella to Greening Australia and its work in landscape recovery following the 2003 bushfires.

Greening Australia is a not-for-profit organisation with national extent, firmly grounded in local membership and supporter base in local communities. It's been around for 23 years with the purpose of engaging the community in vegetation management, to protect and restore the health, diversity and productivity of our unique Australian landscapes.

The organisation has always relied heavily on volunteer effort and community goodwill. This has required at times some creative approaches to productive partnerships to transcend the boundaries we tend to perceive or to erect between sectors such as government, business and community. Some of these partnerships stand out for the magnitude of their achievement or for the combination of partners, and it's just such a partnership which we mark here today.

But first a bit of brief context on the level of activity we've been engaged in since January 2003 when our local and regional landscapes were so dramatically changed. In partnership with land management agencies of the ACT in ACT Forests and Environment ACT we've managed to plant 26,460 trees, shrubs, grasses and ground covers. We've managed to propagate a further 53,000 plants with the support of 8,824 hours of volunteer effort, including maintenance, watering - especially important in the drought - planting and propagating. We have supported nearly 2,500 people volunteering, although some of these people may have been counted more than once because they're keen enough to turn up again and again and again.

Very notable in this collective effort has been the effort expended by staff and friends of this department and Café Brindabella. Greening Australia thanks you sincerely for that active on-ground support and also for the financial support provided to the organisation through the café's disposable cup levy. This commitment will be of benefit to both the environment and the community of the ACT and region.

We also realise there's an issue set within the context of broader commitment to environmental responsibility and that will be of benefit to the broader population and future generations as well. We congratulate you collectively on the leadership that you've shown and we thank you for the opportunity to work with such committed partners.

I'll take the opportunity to also thank the land managers in Environment ACT and in particular ACT Forests who were quick to respond to the effects of the fires and engaged actively with the community in the restoration effort.

On behalf of the Greening Australia Board I'd also like to thank publicly our wonderful local staff for their unfailing dedication and professionalism, and a number of you have already mentioned how much fun you had being out there working in those environments, partly because of the efforts of our staff. We are very grateful for that.

The Panorama we're pleased to present today is one of a series commissioned by Greening Australia from photographer Julian Robinson to record the post-fire state of non-urban lands which we've worked to restore. These are not only spectacular images, they're sobering reminders of the immensity of the task facing our land managers and the extent of support that they will need from the community and from business partners. They bring home also that although the work is urgent, there will be no quick fixes. Effective recovery of some of these places will take a very long time indeed.

We're confident that these images will come to be highly prized as a visual tool for monitoring the progress of landscape recovery and so we sometimes fondly refer to them as "Jenny Craigs".

This presentation is in recognition of your particular component of the vast recovery effort; a fitting reminder of the effort already expended and an inspiration, we hope, to join us in continuing that effort.

Greening Australia are proud of our association with the department and Café Brindabella and we look forward to a long and rewarding partnership. Thank you and congratulations to you all. On behalf of Greening Australia, it gives me great pleasure to present the Secretary with this commemorative plaque to accompany the Panorama.