Rudd should focus on environment: Abbott

Tony Abbott will make the environment a key battleground for the next election, with
a plan to take control of the Murray-Darling Basin and develop a 15,000-strong
"green" army.
While climate change was the issue that helped him wrest control of the Liberal
leadership last month, Mr Abbott believes debate about the environment is a much
broader issue.
In his first major speech as leader, he outlined a strategy to deal with the
nation's "biggest environmental problem", the Murray-Darling Basin.
It is part of his strategy of direct action to deal with environmental problems
after he rejected the centrepiece of the Rudd government's climate change policy, an
emissions trading scheme.
As a local MP, Mr Abbott says he's always resolved to be a "practical
environmentalist", disputing that the political left should be seen as owning the
issue.
"I'm determined to challenge any assumption that it does," he told the Sydney
Institute on Thursday evening.
The Liberal leader is proposing a commonwealth takeover of the management of the
Murray-Darling river system, a solution first flagged by the Howard government.
"As John Howard frequently observed, rivers don't acknowledge state borders," Mr
Abbott said.
"If there is one environmental planning issue crying out for a national rather than
a state-by-state approach, it's management of a catchment extending across
Queensland, NSW and Victoria on which South Australia is critically dependant."
If the states are unwilling to hand control of the river system to the commonwealth,
Mr Abbott, as prime minister, would put it to the people at a referendum in 2013,
around the time of the next election.
"It should not have taken more than 100 years to sort out the management of
Australia's largest river system," Mr Abbott said.
"Another term of parliament should not pass without this matter being substantially
resolved."
He also has plans to develop a green conservation army to help fight the battle
against environmental degradation.
"Properly restoring only the most obviously degraded land would require a labour
force that just isn't there," Mr Abbott said.
His plan isn't a mirror of the Rudd government idea outlined at Labor's national
conference last year, which Mr Abbott says isn't suited to serious environmental
restoration.
"I have in mind a standing environmental workforce, perhaps 15,000-strong, comprised
of short-term trainees plus regular workers and supervisors capable of supplying the
skilled, motivated and sustained attention that large-scale environmental
remediation needs," Mr Abbott said.
He admits the plan would be expensive - potentially up to $750 million a year.
But he said the coalition would announce savings and revenue measures to fund it
over the course of the election year.