Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006. This bill contains 409 pages of amendments to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, our main piece of environmental legislation in this federal parliament. It provides a framework for assessing environmental impacts of proposed actions in relation to World Heritage properties, Ramsar wetlands of international importance, nationally threatened species and ecological communities, migratory species, nuclear actions, the Commonwealth marine environment and places on the National Heritage List.

The government is trying to put forward an argument that this bill reduces processing time and costs for development interests and gives priority to proposals of national importance. The reality is that this bill curtails third party appeal rights, undermines public consultation and further politicises the decision making process in relation to heritage sites. This bill is another attempt by the government to not only avoid its role as the steward of Australia’s environment and history but to actively undermine the preservation of our natural environment and our historically significant sites. It is for this reason that I support the amendment moved by the member for Grayndler.

The problems with this sloppy and potentially dangerous legislation are many, and we have heard from many of the other speakers that, despite its 409 pages of amendments, the bill has failed to address the key challenge facing Australia’s environment. In 409 pages of amendments, the term ‘climate change’ is not mentioned once. The challenge of climate change is that it has the potential to forever alter the way that we live our lives. This so-called environment legislation completely ignores what is so obvious to everybody else. The bill provides the Minister for the Environment and Heritage with additional powers to establish priority themes and determine which applications will be fast tracked.

Many of our key heritage sites will be placed under threat of development, as the minister will be the only person with authority to determine which sites are of strategic national interest. Clause 194K(3) of the bill states:

In exercising the power to make changes—

to the priority list—

the Minister may have regard to any matters that the Minister considers appropriate.

That broadens out the matters that he has to take into consideration under the current act. That is a blatant undermining of the listing process and it puts unprecedented power in the hands of the minister.

Another reason I am opposed to this bill is because of the continuing arrogance of the government in trying to ram these 409 pages of amendments through with limited consultation. My understanding is that these amendments were not presented until relatively late last week. That has given minimal time for those in the environment movement to understand the amendments—let alone to understand the implications of them. There has been minimal time to fully explore the repercussions of the bill, there has been no consultation, and there has been reliance on a report that was written about reducing red tape for business, not about creating environmental or heritage protection measures. That is yet further evidence of the government’s arrogance.

The Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills concluded yesterday, in the limited time that it had to look at this bill, that it has been poorly drafted. The words of the committee, which is dominated by members of the coalition government and chaired by a Liberal Party member, are that, ‘This bill needs to go back to the drawing board.’ I cannot think of a more damning indictment of a bill than to have the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills, chaired by one of the government’s own members, come down with a report that says that this bill needs to go back to the drawing board. It is not a particularly good look for the government to have something like that occur. What will be an even worse look for the government is if it ignores what the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills has told it.

It is no wonder that Australians feel that the government is out of touch when it comes to issues of environmental and heritage protection. The League of Historical Cities 10th world conference is taking place in my electorate of Ballarat from 29 October, with delegates from all over the world coming together to discuss issues surrounding heritage sites. In Ballarat we are fortunate to have some of the most wonderful heritage buildings that people from all over the world come to visit—not just for this four-day conference but throughout the year. Our city and the city of Launceston are, in my view, two of the most beautifully preserved built heritage cities in the country. It beggars belief how anyone who is concerned about our environment and concerned about preserving heritage, whether built or natural, could support a bill that threatens to remove fundamental legislative protections.

As I said at the start of my speech, this bill, with its 409 pages of amendments to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, ignores the simple fact that climate change and global warming are devastating our natural environment. It offers no initiatives to protect our environment from the ravages of climate change. In 409 pages of environmental legislation, it is as though climate change just does not exist. Over the past few days, it has suddenly occurred to the Prime Minister that we are in drought. He has been on the airwaves on it, and no doubt in the break he will be heading out in his rural outfit to get some media footage with farmers in devastated drought communities. Whilst I absolutely support the government’s measures to support farmers and to try and help them, I cannot believe that the government can have the audacity to talk about the drought without acknowledging that it is the long-term effects of climate change that we are experiencing.

Prime Minister, after almost a decade of drought conditions in Australia it is time to wake up to the fact that this is about climate change. Complex environmental problems such as drought, increased bushfire risk and loss of biodiversity will certainly continue if this government does not pay attention to dealing with the issue of climate change seriously. It needs decent environmental legislation that does everything it can to protect our fragile environment—not this bill with its 409 pages of amendments, which do not even mention the words ‘climate change’ once.

In regional areas we know climate change is dramatically affecting us. Today’s front page of the Ballarat Courier runs with the headline ‘Lake runs dry’. This lake is the sporting, social and cultural heart of our city. It is the site of the 1956 Olympics rowing events—the anniversary of which is to be commemorated this year on a dry lake bed. As someone who did row on that lake, I find it is absolutely devastating that this lake, right at the heart of our community, has run completely dry.

This bill, the government’s major piece of environmental legislation, does not mention climate change even once. The member for Grayndler introduced a private member’s bill back in 2005 to introduce a climate change trigger into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The government have never allowed that bill to be debated, despite having that proposal to introduce a climate change trigger before them since 2001. This legislation effectively means that is now being formally rejected by the Howard government. This bill, rather than protecting our heritage sites, will place further pressure on our already fragile environment. The Humane Society International and the World Wildlife Fund have criticised this legislation for removing environmental protections, such as mandatory recovery plans for threatened species, and for wiping 500 threatened ecological communities from the waiting list for protection.

So when the member for Flinders bangs on about having added X number of animals and Y number of birds to the protected list, perhaps he would be good enough to mention the fact that during its 10 years in power the Howard government has presided over a 41 per cent increase in species becoming extinct, endangered or vulnerable. Perhaps he could point out that Australia has the dishonour of leading the world in mammal extinctions. The government’s response to such horrifying facts is to remove the few legislative requirements that exist to ensure the protection of critical habitat. Despite the government’s impressive rhetoric about the success of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the simple fact is that it has failed to protect our environment and it has failed to protect and conserve our biodiversity. None of this government’s failed initiatives have come close to halting the devastation of our natural environment.

Across the country, water levels are dropping and the government is producing bills that ease the way for developers instead of protecting our water supplies. A quarter of all Australia’s surface water management areas have reached limits that make them unsustainable. This means that we stand on the brink of losing a quarter of our surface water supply. The Murray River, for so long a key component of the water supply and environmental health of the eastern states of Australia, is at its lowest level on record. The water from the Murray River system feeds into the important agricultural lands of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. The government’s promises on the Murray River have been absolutely false ones. They have not resulted in one extra drop of water for the Murray—not one single drop of extra water going into the Murray system. As Kim Beazley, the Leader of the Opposition, said in Sydney: if words could be turned into water then, with all the words coming from the parliamentary secretary for water, South Australia would be awash by now.

Being from Ballarat, a heritage city, I find the notion of giving the minister additional power over heritage listings an appalling abuse of government power. The minister will determine themes on an annual basis for the assessment of heritage sites and threatened species. So again this government places direct, unaccountable control of potentially controversial programs in the hands of a minister who has already shown that he will take political factors into account in his decision making process rather than environmental or scientific considerations—a minister who is now faced with a serious decision over the Burrup Peninsula. I think with this legislation and this minister’s unprecedented new powers we can kiss the rock art at the peninsula goodbye.

Of course, in the past the rights of a third party to appeal have helped to keep these processes open and transparent. This bill removes the rights of third parties and in doing so closes the door on much of the public scrutiny that previous ministers have had to face in making their decisions. This minister has demonstrated a willingness, time and time again, to interfere in the process to try and expedite a political victory. In the Bald Hills wind farm debacle and the Victorian Alpine National Park, the minister ignored independent scientific advice and environmental best practice to push his political agenda.

What arrogance from the government to increase the minister’s power and at the same time remove the right of public appeal and scrutiny! It is important to be clear about just how much power the minister is being given in this new bill. The minister’s grab for power is so far-reaching that he can now refuse to even consider the protection of a species if it has been rejected before. There is no clause that takes into account the potential worsening of the species’ status due to a loss of habitat or for any other reason. When you consider that 17 million hectares of currently productive soil could be rendered unproductive through salinity by 2050, it is highly likely that many species will require a reassessment.

The minister is not even required to permit a reassessment. It would be possible for the minister to turn around and say, ‘I know that there are only two orange-bellied parrots left, but I’m afraid they’ve already been assessed and I’ll not permit a reassessment.’ That is just a hypothetical example. Of course, we know that the minister is somewhat attached to the orange-bellied parrot and that it is already on the list, so that would not happen, but it is an example. This creates a political situation where previously none existed. The minister may pick and choose which species to save and which species will become extinct according to his own decision. The government promotes this bill as cutting red tape when in fact it is making the minister a tin-pot Noah, picking and choosing which animals to save and which to leave to the ravages of his approved developments.

The fact that this bill is being rushed through without sufficient time for public comment shows that the government knows that the Australian people are concerned about it. The speech to the House by the member for Flinders, with his list of the government’s so-called achievements, is deserving of further scrutiny. Surely a government that claims to have such a strong environmental record would want time to consult with the conservation movement over such a far-reaching environmental bill. Surely a government that prides itself on having a strong environmental record would wish to take that record out to the community and have scrutiny of this bill and the provisions in it by the conservation movement.

We know that this government’s record on environmental protection is not good. In fact, it is poor. The way in which it is rushing this legislation through the parliament is evidence that it does not want scrutiny of its environmental record. It is trying to rush through a bill with major amendments that include the politicising of heritage listing processes and the assessment of threatened species without proper public consultation or investigation. Key stakeholders in environmental protection have not been consulted, nor has the government listened to their concerns. The government’s lack of consultation on the bill reflects the lack of consultative processes within the bill itself. By removing the review of matters of national significance which are currently the triggers under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the government is getting rid of a major source of public input into environmental issues.

There has been no serious study accompanying this bill that looks at the impact of climate change on the Australian environment. The government has continually refused to ratify and implement the Kyoto protocols on climate change, despite the overwhelming evidence that climate change will continue to adversely affect our lives unless real action is taken. Instead of creating a bill that would have a real impact on reversing climate change, the government has hurriedly slapped together 409 pages of amendments to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act that completely ignore the No. 1 issue facing our environment. It now tries to ram them through this place with no regard for due diligence or public consultation, which is to be expected from an arrogant government that is systematically stripping consultation out of the processes of government. Again, the absolute danger in doing that was highlighted by the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills yesterday when it said specifically to the government, ‘This bill needs to go back to the drawing board.’ If the government ignores that advice from its committee, dominated by Liberal Party and coalition members, then it is absolutely failing the Australian community in establishing good protections for the Australian environment and its heritage.

One of the other things that is worth noting about this bill is that it contains a major backdown by the government on the National Heritage List. The National Heritage List is to no longer apply to places outside of Australia. The government went on with much chest-beating and fanfare that they were going to put Anzac Cove on the National Heritage List. This never happened. When I visited the site last year, the erosion from the government-agreed roadworks was devastating and there was much remedial action needed to restore the site. Anzac Cove has, in fact, been changed irrevocably by the roadworks at the site. The government made the promise to place it on the National Heritage List only to discover later that it was not possible for them to do so. What they have done with this bill is to basically say, ‘What we told the Australian community—that we would place it on the National Heritage List—is something that we will never ever actually do.’

To conclude, we face a worsening climate change problem. Water shortages, destroyed soil and mass extinctions of species are all part of the government’s environmental management legacy. This bill does nothing to address the problems facing our environment. Instead of taking in a wide consultation process and developing an effective strategy for dealing with environmental degradation, the government has slapped together 409 pages amendments to a bill that is failing to deliver any substantial outcomes. The bill gives the minister new, unscrutinised powers to approve developments. The minister will also be able to dismiss applications to protect species that have applied previously. The bill is unacceptable in its current form. It fails to protect the Australian environment; it fails to protect Australia’s heritage. I support the amendment moved by the member for Grayndler and ask the government to go back to the drawing board and introduce legislation that seeks to protect our natural environment against the ravages of climate change and preserves our heritage sites rather than subjecting them to greater pressure from developers and arbitrary decision-making from this minister.

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