Professor Tom Collins:

I take on board the Senator's point fully. The first element of building that relationship is that we start talking to each other and that there is regular interaction between senior management of the NPWS and the board and senior management team of IFI. There is enormous scope for closer engagement, synergies and-or joint actions between us on the inspection front and others. The first part would simply be that we actually begin to meet and talk. If that happens, there might be some fiddling around the edges with legislation but it is not necessary, from what I can see. We both have powers but if the NPWS team had the same powers as the IFI team and it was reciprocated in the other direction, that would suddenly create hugely enhanced resources around protection. There needs to be a debate around penalties, sanctions and punitive measures for environmental crime and how fit for purpose they are.

We probably need to have a discussion nationally on whether the punishment fits the crime. For example, what should a punitive response to the perpetrator of the deliberate pollution of a stream, with resulting fish kill, look like? There is probably an argument for a zero-tolerance approach to destruction of habitats, particularly waterways, as well as pollution episodes and poaching. I suspect that historically or culturally a view may have been taken that it was all right to do some of this. In the case of poaching from a landlord's rivers and so on, there might have been a tolerance for this kind of behaviour formerly. However, we now need to recognise it for what it is, namely, environmental crime that is cumulatively threatening the survival of various species. Going back to the Senator's question, part of the discussion with the NPWS might be about joint understandings of the effectiveness of the legislative and judicial processes in acting as a disincentive to any kind of environmental destruction or crime.