But I guess perpetual optimism is one of the necessary attitudes that the conservation movement brings to its participation in civic life, along with resolute determination to advance a conservation agenda we believe to be in the public interest.

Despite the waxing and waning of "the environment" as a topic of front page/newsworthiness, the Australian Conservation Foundation maintains the conviction that the issues we address are of real and fundamental importance to the health of the nation.

And despite the clear failure of leadership by politicians of the major parties to come to grips with the environment - to bring it to centre stage and keep it there - and the conspicuous absence in current reportage of analysis and comment on this obvious failure, we can take a rear view look at the extraordinary increase in environmental awareness over the past decade - a factor the ACF and other environment groups can take some credit for. And realise it's an awareness that is not going away - caring for our country, our planet, has become one of the defining issues of our time.

If this sounds overblown even in a place where heated rhetoric is common, then perhaps we ought to simply let any number of things, our senses, our parents' and grandparents' stories, the statistics and the pleadings of our scientists, the poetry of the astronauts and the transfixing beauty of their photographs - maybe just good old commonsense - inform us that we exist in an uncomfortable place; an unsustainable situation of diminishing biodiversity, of overheated atmosphere. We desperately need the political and cultural will to reorder our priorities, to repair a mighty yet fragile continent and get our house in order for the next century.

And yet in order to successfully take on this great task we also need leadership. Whilst it is true that citizen's organisations or NGO's if you like, have come to play a greater role in politics in recent years, it remains a fact that those in power are vested with the larger responsibility.

And it is on the rock of visionless leadership that we currently founder. That lack doubtless plays a role in permitting the rise of extreme political parties, who against the backdrop of a cynical and disbelieving electorate promise to listen and not tell lies. Ironically this same vision, the one famously described by Mr Howard as "relaxed and comfortable" is content to marginalise those, like the ACF, who are committed to protecting more of the environment - hardly a challenging position - but who often times are at odds with the philosophy of many in the Federal Government.

Well I'm here to tell you that the ACF won't be marginalised, and along with the broad and diverse environment movement, whose membership exceeds those of the major political parties, we intend to participate fully in the debates, the elections and in the community with the many Australians who are our constituency and who expect us to work in all the dimensions of public life - all on one-hundredth of the budget of the smallest of Government departments.

Whilst I believe that the achievements of the ACF have been considerable - involvement in the safeguarding of many of our great natural treasures, initiating Landcare with the National Farmers Federation, and encouraging fresh approaches to conservation - it is increasingly frustrating to witness the inability of our Governments to take the necessary steps to ensure that our environment is protected for the long term. Indeed this Government often seems to be heading in the opposite direction, and I certainly felt an urgent need to take up a public role in one of the areas of policy that I feel passionate about, hence my return to the presidency of the ACF.

I am very pleased to be able to work with someone of the calibre of Don Henry, recently appointed as Executive Director of ACF, whose experience here and abroad is extensive, and already we have been able to make some significant inroads.

It is the view of the ACF that at this time neither of the major parties can count on the support of the broad conservation movement. We further believe that on its current track record the Howard Government does not deserve the votes of Australians who care about the environment in the event that an election is called soon.

I want to highlight and review four key initiatives of the Government which are indicative of their approach. It is appropriate at a time when all eyes are on the Government and Opposition touting their "major reforms" of the tax system, to begin a scrutiny of the record of the Government thus far by addressing this issue.

In fact, there is nothing in Prime Minister Howard's tax package to indicate that the environment, or the goal of ecological sustainability, has been given any consideration at all. In fairness to the current government, such neglect has a long history when it comes to using the budget, one of the main arms of national policy setting, to protect and enhance the environment. And it is unlikely that tomorrow's tax policy release by the Labor Perty will remedy that neglect either.

As the ACF's budget submission this year pointed out - again - the current tax system is riddled with measures that have an adverse impact on the environment. One of the worst and most obvious examples are the tax deductions available for land clearing. In Australia something like 300,000 hectares of native vegetation is cleared each year. It is the highest rate in the developed world and yet there is a financial incentive for land owners to continue the practice.

But this - and other examples, such as the existing diesel fuel rebate, tariff and tax advantages for four wheel drives, fringe benefit concessions which encourage the provision of company cars - are only the tip of a dangerous fiscal iceberg. A 1996 report by the Department of Environment, Sport and Territories, "Subsidies to the use of Natural Resources" looked at financial and environmental subsidies to industry sectors such as energy production, water and waste water, fisheries, agricultural chemicals and forestry in native forests. The report concluded that government payments, pricing and financial subsidies to these industries totalled, and I quote, "at least $5.7 billion in 1993-94, equal to 4.4 percent of total revenues of Australian governments."

It is difficult to predict the likely effect of the central component of the tax package, the GST, other than to note that it may impact on community organisations such as ACF, depending on the definition of commercial activities. But the package itself will have a negative affect if only because it does nothing to redress the current situation. And at least one of its measures, the net reduction in fuel excises to the tune of $3.4 billion in 2001-2002 is clearly a contradiction of the principles of ecological tax reform.

We seek a tax system that by taxing pollution and waste whilst removing taxation from labour has the potential to provide a double-dividend. But the Government's proposals are the complete opposite.

As some commentators have already noted the fuel excise reductions probably breach the spirit and possibility the treaty obligations of the Kyoto Agreement. This particular reduction is the only example of a tax reform, albeit proposed, in an OECD country in recent years, that actually cuts a fuel or road transport tax or charge.

The tax package, we are told, represents the Government's vision for this country for the new millennium, "a new tax system for a new century". But what sort of vision is it when the environment, the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink, the beaches we love and the wilderness we cherish, have not even been considered in its formulation.

A large number of European countries that have introduced a GST have included new or increased resource based taxes as part of their overall tax reforms, in line with a recommendation from the OECD Group on Environmental Performance which said governments should "develop the use of economic and fiscal instruments to promote more cost-effective pollution prevention and land management".

In that context, the case for a carbon tax on the production of fossil fuels for consumption in Australia is overwhelming as are company tax incentives for clean production. Future investment and job opportunities lie in the field of clean energy sources and clean production technologies, yet Australia remains wedded to an economy based on the energy sources of the last century. If this situation is not addressed, we will leave our children and the generations that follow them an appalling legacy, both economically and environmentally.

As I said earlier, the failure to integrate environmental and economic factors has characterised successive governments of both political persuasions in this country. Given the high levels of concern and interest in the environment that Australians have shown over many years, this amounts to a failure of the political process in this country, and more particularly points to a lack of political leadership and vision on the environment.

When climate data became available showing that July was the hottest month ever recorded on planet Earth, the figures were released by Vice-president Al Gore who used them to press the point about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By contrast, our political leaders, and too many of our leading media commentators, appear to be hoping that if they ignore it, this problem will go away. In some instances media have become apologists and advocates for climate sceptics, usually funded by the very commercial entities that stand to lose should climate change be taken seriously by Government.

The second initiative that deserves scrutiny and which provides evidence aplenty of this lack of political leadership is the new Commonwealth environment laws currently before a Senate committee - the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Bill. The ACF acknowledges the need to review and reform the current laws which have been on the books, largely unchanged, since they first began to appear under the Whitlam Government in 1975. However, we would prefer to go forward, not backwards.

The rewrite of the laws is based on a Council Of Australian Governments (COAG) agreement which, in short, commits the Federal Government to abrogating its national responsibilities for the environment. Power that might ordinarily be considered within the realm of the national Government is being placed in a framework of de-evolution to the States. Incredibly, while the rest of the world is going global, Australia is going parochial.

We believe the new laws don't provide national leadership, are a recipe for chaos as different states will evolve different standards, contain far too many exemptions and are simply not best practise. The list of "national significance matters" is very narrow, and amazingly, whilst the Commonwealth is required to take all social and economic impacts into account when assessing a project, the Bill specifies that all environmental factors can not be taken into account. Extraordinarily, climate change does not rate a mention in the new legislation. Nor do vegetation clearance, land degradation, nor the allocation of water rights."

The changes will make it more difficult to invoke a national response on major environmental issues, make it more difficult for the national government to over-ride a State government intent on development at all and any cost, determined to sand mine a Fraser Island for example . No longer will a Malcolm Fraser be able to restrain a Queensland Premier, a Joh Bjelke-Petersen, as he did in that instance. And the proposed new laws will make it more difficult for an Australian government to ensure this country meets its international treaty obligations under the Biodiversity Convention and the Climate Change Convention.

While there are elements of the new legislation that are an improvement, it remains so fundamentally flawed, the ACF has no option other than to oppose it outright. Yesterday in WA, ACF Executive Director Don Henry launched a national campaign against the laws on behalf of all environment groups, a campaign that has the support of, and will see involvement from every conservation council and regional environment group around the country.

Under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Bill, forestry operations in all Regional Forest Agreement areas, whether agreements are in place or not, are exempt from the Bill's environmental impact assessment provisions. This is just one of many forms of exemption in the Bill, which in tandem with another bill currently before the Parliament, the Regional Forest Agreement Bill, provides potential outcomes that are even more insidious. Under that Bill, States and the particular logging company involved, would be able to sue the Commonwealth Government if a future national Parliament tried to intervene to protect a forest area at any time in the next 20 years. With the Howard Government rushing to lock the Australian public out of the future of our forests, it is little wonder that the States are rushing to lock in unsustainable levels of logging of Australias ancient forests.

If a future generation of Australian politicians wanted to support a demand from the Australian public to save a Tasmanian old growth forest from the wood chippers, they could be saddled with having to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. Australians are, in effect, writing a blank cheque under this legislation, a blank cheque made out to a logging company should Australians ever decide they want to protect a part of their national heritage, an Australian ancient forest.

The major environmental initiative of the current Government has been the National Heritage Trust, established with some of the proceeds from the partial sale of Telstra. It was a centre piece of then Opposition Leader John Howard's 1996 election campaign and it won for the Coalition parties an unprecedented level of support from environmentally concerned Australians, and qualified support from environment groups - support largely based on the promise, from Mr Howard, that the $1.25 billion to be made available over 5 years would be additional funding for the environment. His promise was clear and unambiguous - "all the funding commitments are additional to Labor's budgeted funding for the environment." At the 1996 election campaign policy launch the PM said "Don't anybody imagine that this is a device to sort of not fund things out of the budget. Let me be very very clear that this policy, the commitments in this policy are over and above current Government expenditure."

In other words, every cent of NHT money was, we were told, an extra cent for the environment. Sadly, it comes as no surprise in the era of the Great Political Disenchantment to learn that in fact, core environment funding has been cut in every Federal Budget since the Coalition took office, cuts that have been topped up with NHT money. Cuts to the core, cost shifting of a high order - the Government's Telstra claims were clearly not a core promise.

Our other concern about the NHT is with its effectiveness, and again this touches on the issues of leadership and vision. It must be acknowledged that trust money has gone to worthwhile projects and that it has allowed many Australians to make a practical, personal contribution to protecting the environment, the trust has failed to address the big issues of environmental concern that need to be addressed now. Issue like land clearing, which is responsible for the continuing loss of our unique biodiversity. Issues like the appalling state of many of our rivers and waterways.

Three weeks ago I stood with representatives from the commercial fishing industry at the mouth of the Murray in South Australia as it threatens to close over for only the second time since white settlement. We were highlighting the plight of the river, its extraordinary poor health. The Murray was in crisis when the NHT was set up and it looks like it will still be in crisis when all of the trust money, the public's money, is gone.

Too much NHT money has gone to too many projects with little or no environmental merit. Australians, especially those who have contributed their time and energy to NHT projects, have every reason to feel, duped, by an initiative I am sure we will hear much about in the coming election campaign as the Government seeks to ensure voters it has delivered on the environment. In fact we are already hearing about it through a series of ads, for which, to add insult to injury, the taxpayer is also paying.

As I said at the outset, we do not believe that the Howard Government, on its track record deserves the support of voters who care about the environment. And even if the other problems and concerns I have touched on did not exist, the issue of Jabiluka alone would be a major hurdle for environmentally aware voters to get over.

A second uranium mine within our premier National Park, Kakadu - a mine which should be unthinkable, yet a mine which this Government is fast tracking.

The campaign to halt Jabiluka, led by the Mirrar traditional owners of that part of Kakadu, in partnership with local and national environment organisations, continues to build momentum. The PM said before the last election that he didn't consider the mine would go ahead - in fact, the approvals process began within days of the Coalition taking government. That process has been based on lowest common denominator processes. Despite the Environment Minister's own department noting that the Environmental Impact Statement had serious deficiencies, it was given the go ahead. Public participation was curtailed and the most recent process to explore the milling option at Jabiluka was subject to a minimal analysis via a Public Environment Report (not an EIS as the Minister was advised). We can expect the next phase of the approvals process any day despite overwhelming opposition from the Australian public, despite the imminent visit of the World Heritage Bureau Group to investigate whether Kakadu should be placed on the "World Heritage In Danger" list. Despite all this the Government is wedded to this mine and all that will follow in its wake.

It is worth observing that there exists a number of highly motivated groups who are preparing to campaign specifically on the issue of the Jabiluka uranium mine in the forthcoming election. The election is likely to be close, given the uncertainty surrounding the One Nation involvement and the passive reception that tax policy launch has had, and likely will have.

It is also worth noting that the Labor Opposition has committed itself to no new uranium mines - a policy we welcome, but has restricted its position on Jabiluka to stating that it will not allow the mine to proceed provided the mine is not a "mine". At the same time the company, put on notice that there is a chance the mine may not proceed, presumably are frantically seeking final approvals before a change of government and the Labor party are at one remove from making completely clear that this mine should not proceed.

The conservation movement and many Australians would view favourably any categorical ruling out of the Jabiluka mine, but that does not mean automatic support for Labor. It does though provide one meaningful differentiation between the two major parties on an issue of real concern to the majority of Australians. And in a close election differentiations of this kind will count.

The conservation goal of a sustainable nation implies more than fixing rivers and saving forests (although even that seems a challenge at times). It means changing our attitudes to how we treat the land, and by extrapolation our heirs and successors.

Yet in the place where so much could be achieved it remains one of the prime dysfunctions of adversarial politics that my opponent's friend automatically becomes my enemy and when perceptions replace reality as is often the case here, and become folklore over time, then for those organisations seeking to advance their agenda through the auspices of the government of the day every step becomes akin to a tap dance down side show alley, through the hall of mirrors onto the big dipper and beyond.

This is a fertile wicket for the spinners both in and out of government. It is already clear that the expensive and expansive campaigns to reposition Governments and corporations as caring and green whilst banishing the actual organisations that research/work/campaign on green issues to the margins has been a key feature of the politics of the 90's. But this ultimately cannot prevail. The truth that the earth needs friends eventually surfaces, the will of the people ultimately must prevail and the great charge toward a better future, of which the ACF's participation is small and modest but which constitutes the fuel of the human spirit, and the hope any person can have in his or her circumstance will continue.

From Australian Conservation Foundation, by Peter Garrett

(Note: this article has not been approved for reproduction.)