Bob Debus
Robert Debus AM is a former Australian politician, has been a member of the Australian House of Representatives and the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, representing the Labor Party. Robert Debus has been a minister in both the Australian and New South Wales governments.
Bob Debus is the chairperson of the environment NGO, Wilderness Australia. He served for long periods as Minister for Environment and Minister for Emergency Services in New South Wales
Bob's recent articles
20 May 2024
Australia’s greenhouse targets cannot be met without the conservation of native forest
When Labour Governments moved to protect native forest in the past – Hawke, Wran, Gallop, Kirner, Beattie, Carr – they knew that they were protecting irreplaceable natural values and resources. Even as late as the early 2000s however, the role of forests in climate change mitigation was little known. It was certainly not a matter of any significance in public debate.
6 September 2023
A good start to urgent climate change abatement: end native forest logging now
The native forest logging industry is a fundamental danger to Australia's natural environment and an utter disaster for climate change policy.
20 July 2020
We have to fix environmental policy while we can
Two months ago, the budget of the New Zealand Government set aside an amount of $1.5 billion to create 11,000 regional jobs in the protection and restoration of the environment. If Australia were to match this COVID stimulus initiative per capita it would budget $7.5 billion for 55,000 jobs in the regions.
18 April 2020
BOB DEBUS supports Pearls and Irritations.
Pearls & Irritations is unique. Its contributors and readers are a growing community of people with an exceptionally wide-ranging and open-minded commitment to effective, progressive and rational public policy.
8 April 2020
BOB DEBUS. Its no excuse to trash the planet.
As nearly everybody now understands, the changes that have occurred in public policy in the last few weeks are without precedent, at least since the Second World War. They tell us in the most straightforward possible way that only government finance and organisation can support the people in a national emergency.
7 January 2020
BOB DEBUS: OUR LAND AND OUR WAY OF LIFE
Between late 2001 and early 2003, during the so-called Millennium Drought, eastern Australia experienced unprecedented periods of bushfire.
27 August 2019
BOB DEBUS. Must Prisoner Numbers Grow Forever? (an edited version of a lecture given to the Law Society of New South Wales, 22 August)
We can all accept imprisonment as the appropriate response for serious and violent crimes. Nevertheless there is a plethora of studies confirming the common sense conclusion that prison is damaging for individuals at a psychological level, especially in the absence of rehabilitative services; that rates of recidivism, however measured, remain persistently over 50 per cent and up to 75 per cent for Indigenous prisoners; that somewhere around half of prisoners have a mental illness or cognitive impairment; that a high proportion the prison population is received from a very small number of socially disadvantaged postcodes; that the over-imprisonment of Indigenous...
17 February 2019
BOB DEBUS. How close to Armageddon do we have to get?
The 2019 OECD Environmental Performance Review for Australia, launched recently and reported in The Guardian if hardly anywhere else, makes horrible reading. Australia is home to a 10th of global species and is seen by many as synonymous with pristine coastal areas and an outback brimming with nature. However the country is increasingly exposed to rising sea levels, floods, heat waves, bushfires and drought wildlife is in a poor state and its condition is worsening Australias Strategy for Nature 2018-2030 appears unlikely to catalyse progress. With the exception of the Reef 2050 Plan funding for conservation and research is falling....
8 February 2018
Restoring integrity in nature conservation. Part 2 of 2
There is a limit to what laws can achieve, but they are an essential part of any robust system of environmental governance. Environmental laws should effectively enable the protection, conservation, management and, where needed, restoration of our national heritage. The effectiveness of our environmental laws must be founded on the values of integrity, transparency and accountability, in both their formulation and enforcement. These laws must also be kept up to date, so that they continue to reflect our ever-changing environmental, social and political conditions. Our current laws fall short of these standards.
28 January 2018
BOB DEBUS. Restoring integrity in nature conservation Part 1 of 2
The Australian Governments short and pointless document, published just before Xmas and entitled Strategy For Nature 2018-2030, has been accurately described as a global embarrassment. It is useful only insofar as it reminds us that Australian government policies for nature conservation have, in the last five years, easily matched the destructive irrationality of polices directed toward climate change.
18 February 2016
The things that must be done...
Some Genuine Decision-Making Power: Dealing with the over-representation of Aboriginal people in the prison system This is an extract from the 2016 Frank Walker Memorial Lecture delivered by the Hon. Bob Debus AM on 16 February 2016. The Hon. Frank Walker QC was NSW Attorney General from 1976 to 1983. He later became a Federal Government Minister and a District Court judge. As a former Attorney General himself Bob Debus believes that Walker's approach to the affairs of Aboriginal people remains the correct one. See link for full speech:http://www.nswlaborlawyers.com/fwl2016. When Frank Walker was in office...
22 January 2016
Bob Debus to deliver Frank Walker Memorial Lecture.
Invitation to attend Frank Walker Memorial Lecture. Join us as we celebrate the life times of former NSW Attorney-General the Hon. Frank Walker QC, with guest speaker the Hon. Bob Debus AM. This event isfreeto attend. Post-lecture drinks will be held at Penny Lane (the bar above the lecture theatre). Over-representation of Aboriginal people in prison: The need for some genuine decision-making Frank Walker grew up among tribal people in New Guinea and from a young age stood up for the rights of Aboriginal people in Australia. On the one hand concern for justice for Aboriginal people drove...
13 July 2015
Bob Debus. A breach of faith on renewable energy.
Well, this is just getting stupid. We are entitled, after events last week, to ask if the Federal Government has the capacity any longer to act in good faith when the interest of the coal industry is at stake. Tony Windsor and Barnaby Joyce, whatever their manifest differences, reflected the opinion of local people, the normal application of the precautionary principle and everyday common sense when they protested last weeks approval of the giant Watermark coal mine immediately adjacent to the aquifers and rich farmland of the Liverpool Plains in northwest New South Wales. In any event, no conditions...