Environmental movement in Australia
[4][5] In Australia, the movement has seen a growth in popularity through prominent Australian environmentalists such as Bob Brown, Peter Garrett, Steve Irwin, Tim Flannery, and David Fleay.
The largest and most influential and active environmental organizations in Australia are World Wildlife Fund, The Wilderness Society, Greenpeace, and the Australian Conservation Foundation.
Many groups are involved in active acquisition for conservation as non-profit trusts or covenants to protect of environmentally sensitive land against inappropriate use.
Despite the existence of a strong Victorian era zoological movement, there was little emphasis on conservation or management of the environment and in the early days these naturalists were primarily concerned with cataloguing and academia.
In 1908, the Victorian Naturalists Society and the Wilsons Promontory management committee were involved in advocating for the preservation of the thylacine, a species being hunted to extinction in Tasmania.
Native fauna advisory committees began to be established to address the concern of rapidly dwindling populations of a number of mammal species.
In 1928, the Tasmanian Advisory Committee for Native Fauna had recommended a reserve to protect any remaining thylacines, with potential sites of suitable habitat including the Arthur-Pieman area of western Tasmania.
Many of these projects were funded by community groups such as the Returned Services Leagues and Rotary International, or official government programs, such as Land for Wildlife in Victoria or protection of remnant native vegetation through trusts and covenants.
Keep Australia Beautiful, founder Dame Phyllis Frost saw the litter (cups, plastic bags, cans and bottles) strewn along the landscapes of Victoria and then sought the support of the National Council of Women, with a group of voluntary organisations and local government groups who were invited to join Australia's first anti-litter campaign.
The movement escalated with the Franklin Dam project and Bob Brown was made a martyr for the cause when he was jailed for environmental activism.
[citation needed] Blockades disrupting logging, mining, dredging, clearing and other environmentally destructive activities were increasingly undertaken throughout the 1980s and have become regularly used by campaigners.
[citation needed] In July 1989, Bob Hawke made a famous "Our Country, Our Future" speech that the Australian Labor Party would plant a billion trees to combat soil erosion and declared the 1990s the "Decade of Landcare".
The widening hole in the ozone layer was of high concern due to Australia's growing rate of skin cancer incidence.
[14] A Newspoll released prior to the 2007 federal election found that the environment was the fourth most important issue to voters behind Medicare, education and the economy.
[16] The governments of John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard all prioritised climate change policies such as carbon pricing and emissions trading schemes.
His replacement, Scott Morrison, and his government were criticised for their response to the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season, which brought climate change to further popular attention.
[23] However, by the late 1980s, the price of uranium had fallen, and the costs of nuclear power had risen, and the anti-nuclear movement seemed to have won its case.
The Howard government stirred the environmental movement by refusing to acknowledge the Kyoto Protocol and pushing a strongly pro-nuclear power stance.
In contrast, opposition leader Kevin Rudd proclaimed climate change as "the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time" and called for a cut to greenhouse gas emissions by 60% before 2050.
[26] Rudd stated that: Australia's official declaration today that we will become a member of the Kyoto Protocol is a significant step forward in our country's efforts to fight climate change domestically – and with the international community.However, the Rudd government's environmental credentials suffered some negative perception from environmental groups when post-Kyoto cuts to emissions were subsequently scaled back[27] and the fallout of the public embarrassing Energy Efficient Homes Package scheme which included the much criticized insulation and Green Loans programs.
