Graeme Richardson’s unheralded Australian environmental legacy

Following Graham Richardson’s passing late last week, much has been written and spoken about his role as a political powerbroker and fixer in the Hawke and Keating governments.

But more enduring than these roles is his environmental record.

Within the first week of joining Bob Hawke’s office as a 31-year-old economic adviser in June 1986, in a stroke of serendipity I was handed the additional responsibility of environmental adviser.

Seated in my cubby hole of an office in the Old Parliament House, I was within earshot when Richardson walked along the office corridor towards Hawke’s suite with leading environmental campaigner, Dr Bob Brown, to introduce Bob to Bob.

A third Bob – Bob Hogg – asked loudly: “Who’s going into the meeting with Richo and Bob Brown?”.

As an admirer of Brown’s successful campaigning against the damming of Tasmania’s pristine Gordon River, I volunteered.

Brown had had the foresight to invite Richardson, a backbencher, to view Tasmania’s tall eucalyptus trees.

The meeting of Bob, Bob and Richo set in train fights with the Tasmanian government that culminated in the World Heritage Listing of the Tasmanian Wilderness Area of more than one million hectares.

Cabinet ministers had warned Hawke that the “greenies” were insatiable and would keep coming back for more, never giving the government credit for its achievements.

Hawke asked me to settle with the conservation movement a finite environmental agenda. I did.

At a meeting involving Hawke, Richardson, primary industries minister John Kerin, Bob Brown, Phillip Toyne, Joan Staples and the late Jonathan West, we agreed that it comprise Commonwealth protection of – Tasmania’s Forests, Shelburne Bay, the Wet Tropics of North Queensland and Stage II of Kakadu National Park.

In August 1986, Hawke, a media contingent and I visited Kakadu.

We started a knock-down, drag-out fight with the Northern Territory government by announcing that the Hawke government would nominate stage two of Kakadu National Park to the World Heritage List.

In April 1987, Cabinet agreed that the government would nominate the wet tropical forests of North Queensland to the World Heritage List, announcing it on World Environment Day in early June 1987, during the election campaign.

The 1987 announcement was met with great hostility from the Bjelke-Petersen government and the federal opposition.

But the Hawke government pressed ahead, submitting the nomination just before Christmas.

Timber workers in the region were furious. At Ravenshoe, Richardson and advisers Simon Balderstone and David Tierney received a physically hostile reception, with little protection from the local police.

Of the four icons, the least well known was Shelburne Bay, but it was the one that worried us most. A Japanese company wanted to mine the area’s pure, white silica and ship it to Japan to convert it into glass.

At the time, the Australian dollar was in freefall against the Japanese yen in an unprecedented currency crisis. Bob spoke with Paul Keating to take advantage of Keating’s relationship with the Japanese minister of state for economic planning.

To Keating’s great credit, he persuaded the minister that this decision to reject a Japanese investment proposal was based purely on environmental considerations.

Almost three decades later, the Queensland Labor government handed back 1200 square kilometres of land around Shelburne Bay to the traditional owners, the Wuthathi people, who had been forcibly removed in the 1920s and 1930s to make way for pastoralists.

In March 1989, I proposed with Richardson’s adviser Simon Balderstone that we prepare a major statement on the environment.

In July 1989, the national television bulletins ran vision of Hawke, on the banks of the degraded Murray River, arm around Graham Richardson, releasing Our Country, Our Future.

Included in it was a plan to combat soil degradation, based on a joint proposal of the National Farmers’ Federation and the Australian Conservation Foundation developed by their leaders, Rick Farley and Phillip Toyne. It would become the decade of landcare.

Also included was the first-ever position statement of an Australian government on climate change.

The 1980s was truly a golden age for Australia’s splendid natural environment, thanks to Hawke’s leadership and Richardson’s dogged persistence.