The federal government must increase its investment in the environment

If we're serious about addressing salinity and the poor health of our rivers, we need to introduce a national land and water repair levy. That's the view of the Australian Conservation Foundation and the National Farmers Federation.

We also need to encourage greater private-sector investment. A recent report for business leaders showed that federal government funding can "leverage" or stimulate major private sector investment in natural resource management. It's estimated that for every dollar of federal government funding, $3.50 in private-sector funding can be leveraged.

It's also time we committed ourselves to trying to prevent some of these problems from occurring in the first place. It is far cheaper to prevent land degradation and the loss of plants and animals than it is to try to bring a species back from the brink of extinction or to restore a degraded river system.

The Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council has advised him that every dollar spent now on controlling land clearing will return twenty in the long term. So putting money into prevention makes good sense.

What can we get for this investment? Apart from preventing the loss of good land, so needed for rural communities to live productively, the degradation of our greatest river system and climate changing greenhouse gases, we can save our songbirds and gum trees, our unique animals and special natural places. And we can feel better knowing we didn't let a mass extinction happen with the full knowledge of how to stop it.

If the environment is really one of the federal government's third-term priorities, then there must be a substantial increase in environment spending in this year's Budget. If the Opposition is really serious about addressing environmental problems, then they must identify how they will fix these problems. This budget is the true test.