Does Cripps care about Reef?

ANDREW Cripps does our farmers no favours with his misguided attempts to pit them against the Great Barrier Reef.

I understand he needs to defend his legacy as a Newman LNP government minister – a government that sacked the entire Reef Protection Team and stopped reef protection laws from being enforced.

But the fact is, our farmers are the heroes of Labor’s reef protection story – not the villains.

It is Queensland’s farmers, with the support of Canegrowers, Queensland Farmers’ Federation, Sugar Research Australia, AgForce, natural resource management groups, productivity services, research organisations and many others who have partnered with the Palaszczuk Government to improve farm management practices.

This delivers more profitable farms and a healthier Great Barrier Reef.

But their efforts are being undermined by Andrew Cripps and the LNP defending the few underperformers against all of those producers who have already acted to adopt best man- agement practices through a variety of support programs and projects that this government offers.

The LNP proved in government that they did not care about the future of the Great Barrier Reef or the 69,000 jobs that rely on it.

For Andrew Cripps to suggest there should be no minimum standards for farm runoff shows they still don’t.

STEVEN MILES, Minister for Environment and Heritage Protection and Minister for National Parks and the Great Barrier Reef.