Paris Jackson isn't just here for the Melbourne Cup. She has a more important mission.

Paris Jackson isn’t finished with Australia.

Her trip down under – her first, ever – isn’t just about horse races and champagne and blown-out-of-proportion frock controversy.

No, she’s here on a greater mission and it’s to help save the Great Barrier Reef.

Speaking to Elle Australia, the 19-year-old said she’s planning on heading north and assisting efforts to save the reef that is struggling under the effects global warming and the government’s inability to meet the World Heritage Fund’s preservation measures.

“Now that I’m here I’m really hoping I get involved with the Great Barrier Reef and the protection of it,” Jackson, the daughter of ‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson, told the publication. “It’s a very sacred vortex that 100 per cent needs to be protected. It breaks my heart to see what’s happening there.”

Holly, Mia and Jessie on why Paris Jackson was at the Melbourne Cup… Post continues below.

“This is my first time in Australia and I’m hoping to get up there this trip and then, after having the blessing of seeing it with my own eyes, find the right organisations to get involved with.”

According to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, global coral bleaching over the last two years has led to “widespread coral decline and habitat loss on the Great Barrier Reef”.

In short, when corals are stressed by changes in conditions – in the Great Barrier Reef’s case, warmer temperatures thanks to climate change – they expel the symbiotic algae living in their tissues. This causes the coral to bleach, turning them completely white.

These conditions led to an estimated 29 per cent loss of shallow water coral Reef-wide in the summer of 2016, according to findings by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

For Jackson, it’s this knowledge that spurs her on, and compels her to raise awareness and take action for a land far from her own.

“I consider the Great Barrier Reef one of the many very sacred and magical points on earth that very much needs to be protected and it breaks my heart to see the state that it is in right now,” Jackson told News Corp this week.

However, it’s just one part of Jackon’s greater pledge to activism, telling Stellar last weekend it’s this work that tops her “priorities”.

“My activism and my work, such as missions like [Puerto Rico], are on the top of my list of priorities,” she told the magazine. “Almost everything I do comes back full circle towards this kind of work, including my job.”

And you thought the much-welcome shake-up to our spring racing season was her only objective…