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committee's Report

The committee's report on its consideration of the Auditor-General Report 20: 2014-15 Managing water quality in Great Barrier Reef catchments was tabled on 12 August 2016.

View: Report - No. 22, 55th Parliament: Consideration of the Auditor General's Report 20: 2014-15 - Managing water quality in Great Barrier Reef catchments 
View: Response to the Auditor General's Report No. 20

OVERVIEW

The Auditor-General’s report, Managing water quality in Great Barrier Reef catchments was tabled on 10 June and referred to the Committee on 16 July 2015 for consideration and report. The report presents the findings of a performance audit by the Queensland Audit Office to determine whether the adverse impact of broad scale land use on the quality of water entering the Great Barrier Reef is declining. The committee's report can be found here.

The Auditor-General's Report makes five recommendations:

1. the newly formed Office of the Great Barrier Reef be provided with sufficient and appropriate management and administrative authority, so that it can be properly made responsible and held accountable for Queensland’s reef management strategies and programs
2. the design and implementation of the suite of programs attributed to the Reef Plan is reviewed to establish they are the most effective and efficient
3. catchment monitoring is expanded to aid in determining the effectiveness of practice management change and to enhance the confidence in modelled outcomes
4. a rigorous verification process is applied to data on land management practice change, and deficiencies in model inputs be addressed, to improve confidence in, and the accuracy of, inputs into catchment modelling
5. unambiguous references be included in the tier one reef report card which disclose the degree of uncertainty and levels of potential variability in the reported results.

The Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, in its response to the report dated 29 May 2015, agreed to the five recommendations and advised of significant progress being made in their implementation.

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Public briefing on the Great Barrier Reef Report Card 2014

On 28 October 2015, officers from the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection’s Office of the Great Barrier Reef briefed the committee on the findings and methodology for the Great Barrier Reef report card 2014. The report card assesses the combined results of all Reef Plan actions up to June 2014 to address water quality in the Great Barrier Reef. The briefing was open to the public.

Public Briefing: 28 October 2015 -  transcript 
Report tabled:   12 August 2016