Dr Andrew Refshauge's speech at the CANRI launch

Thanks very much, Richard, ministerial colleague Eddie Obeid, ladies and gentlemen. I’ll just set Richard right, and yourselves. They don’t trust us with the technology at all. Only people with trained fingers are allowed to press buttons.

CANRI is a really exciting project that is now coming to fruition. It’s based on information that Government has been collecting for its own purposes, for the purposes of serving the community better. But it has been collected in a whole range of different government departments. What CANRI does is not only bring it together, without taking it away from departments but, more importantly, makes it accessible to the community. That’s how modern government should be.

There’s no doubt we have lots of things we need to do. In Richard’s portfolio, my portfolio, my colleagues’ portfolios, there are a lot of previous problems that we still need to be fixing up, particularly when we are looking at protecting our environment, fixing up our air quality, our water quality. These are issues that constantly are being faced; we are looking at new and better ways of doing it. But we’ve found regularly that by involving those outside the government agencies we often get a better and more comprehensive result.

If we look at the process of the forest agreements, the RACAC process, we have, through that process, done two things that I think have been pretty amazing. One is, we have stopped the disputes that have been continuing between those who wanted only trees and those who wanted no trees—in caricature—to now having an agreement where everybody believes that we have the right result coming through. But as important as solving that, and getting the science to work, has been that information has been shared with anybody who had an interest. It was information that was directly available to those who would otherwise be seen as people who would lobby against government, and then information would be in fact our bullets for them to fire back at us.

But governments have had to change, and realise that the information isn’t owned by government. We might be the custodians of it, we might have the responsibility for making sure it’s right. But it’s the community’s information, their information that we need to be able to give back to them. And by bringing it through CANRI together it has meant, or will mean, that I think we’ll have much better decisions, and much better intelligence about how to make decisions.

Because the things that we face at the moment are: how to get a dynamic and exciting New South Wales, but without losing the environmental values we have and, in fact, building up some of those environmental values that have been lost on the way; how to make sure we have an economic future that is prosperous and exciting, creating jobs; and how we make sure we have a social bottom line, that strengthens communities, and builds community cohesion. We need to make sure all that works with community, rather than government trying to pretend we know it all.

And I think there’s a classic example, as I say, of modern government, how to do it right, using the expertise that we have in government, but using it very clearly in a partnership relationship with the community. I’m told some of the information that we’ve got on this has been recently used for those who are suffering from the floods, to actually find what the flood levels were, on the gauges that were there, and we had the information and they could get it much faster than they ever got it before. So again we’re seeing some practical results of the information and the way in which it can be used. So can I thank all those who have been involved.

Another thing that is worthwhile highlighting. Usually, in governments, you might be surprised to learn that occasional patch problems between government agencies, [laughter]—rarely occurs in New South Wales—this could easily have been stopped, blocked by our government agencies, saying "No, well, really, this information is only understood by us, and if you got it you really would misinterpret it and it wouldn’t be able to be effectively used, and it would undermine the integrity of our processes." Government agencies may have felt that occasionally, but the team, working together, made sure that that wouldn’t be holding it back. So to everybody who has been involved, your leadership has been important. Can I thank you very much for doing that, and say the people who pay our wages, the taxpayers are actually getting value for money, out of you turning up for work, for the process of getting this done. That’s very important. And certainly the government realises this is modern government, this is the way to go.

Can I also recognise we’ve got a few speakers coming: John Cobb, from the New South Wales Farmers; Kathy Ridge, from the Nature Conservation Council; and I’m to introduce John Dengate who, apart from being a star of radio and television, has also got a full-time job with the government in the Environment Protection Authority. So, John, can I ask you to come and explain further.