Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to make a contribution to this debate and to indicate my strong endorsement for the amendment moved by the member for Grayndler. Just to remind everyone, in case we need reminding, the purpose of this bill is to substantially amend the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 to make it more efficient and effective, to allow for the use of more strategic approaches and to provide greater certainty in decision-making.

This act is Australia’s primary law for the protection of the environment. It provides a framework for environmental protection and for any actions that are likely to have an impact on matters of national environmental significance. Given its importance, you would have thought that the government would have embarked upon an extensive process of consultation and dialogue with the community. You would have thought, given its importance, that the government would have sought out the interest groups that have been historically involved with the environmental issues across Australia, and communities with an involvement in environmental issues, to have a discussion and dialogue with them about its proposal to amend this piece of legislation. You would have thought so.

But, of course, we know that that has not been the case. We now have 409 pages of amendments in this place but no Bills Digest, and we are told that it will not be prepared for some time, so rushed and so important is this piece of legislation. I just wonder what it is that has triggered the rush to have this legislation in place. Why is it that we are debating this piece of legislation now and not in, say, March next year? When the person who represents the minister’s interests in this place comes in here to respond to the debate we are having this afternoon, maybe he will tells us what the trigger is. Maybe we will come to some understanding of why it is so important that we rush through this hastily gathered together bill which, as the previous speaker, the member for Ballarat, indicated, was condemned by the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills as recently as yesterday. We know that the view being expressed by the members of the government in the Senate is one that is mirrored by members of the opposition in the Senate and by members of the opposition here: that this piece of legislation is very shoddy, that it has many errors, we believe, in terms of what it proposes to do and that it is indicative of a government that clearly has decided that the arrogant way to do business is the best way to do business—that you do not really care about what others might have to say, apart from your friends in the corporate world, and that you have no real interest.

I note what Senator Johnston said about the explanatory memorandum to this legislation. I quote him; it is worth listening to. He said:

This explanatory memorandum is probably one of the most appalling I have ever seen in the short time I have been in the Senate. It discloses no motivation, no reasoning and no justification for some of the most draconian powers that this parliament can conceivably and possibly enact: rights of search and seizure without warrant, rights of personal frisking without warrant.

               …            …            …

... this legislation should go back to the drawing board.

I note that when we think of these issues and of the minister who is responsible, we know that he is not someone with a great record within government. Previous speakers have spoken about the issue of wind farms and about the minister attending the opening of a $300 million wind farm in China. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? This is the same minister who prevented the establishment of wind farms in Australia. His actions portray the duplicitous way in which he administers this portfolio. He is clearly so popular that the member for Solomon, someone with whom I do not always—in fact, rarely—agree, had certain observations about the minister. In an interview on 8DDD FM, on the morning show of 28 September, the member for Solomon was asked what he thought of attempts by Minister for the Environment and Heritage to block the establishment of a crocodile safari hunting industry in the Northern Territory. I quote from what the member for Solomon said about a member of his own government, his own minister. He said:

We’ve got a federal environment minister who’s completely out of depth on this issue.

The bloke has proven himself to be a complete and utter dill on this issue.

I mean, Ian Campbell, he’s acting like a, like some sort of an itinerant drunk full of Dutch courage.

Maybe he is praising him, because I think there are people in the community who would say much harsher things about this minister for the way in which he has dealt with this portfolio and the way in which he is dealing with this piece of legislation.

But, of course, those of us who live in the Northern Territory understand how this minister really thinks about the environment, because, over the last 12 months, we in the Northern Territory, and in my seat of Lingiari in particular, have been subjected to one of the worst decisions that I have been unfortunate enough to witness in the time I have been a member of parliament, which goes back as far as 1987—that is, the decision to impose upon the Northern Territory nuclear waste facilities. Indeed, I think that is evidence enough of the government’s miserable track record on environment and heritage protection.

I have spoken in detail in the past in this place about the widespread opposition to the proposal by the government to choose one of three sites as possible sites for nuclear waste dumps. They are: Fishers Ridge, 47 kilometres from Katherine; Harts Range, 165 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs; and Mount Everard, 40 kilometres from Alice Springs up the Stuart Highway. This was done without any discussion or dialogue with the Northern Territory, let alone any agreement. The Commonwealth government decided that they needed a site because they had presumed they would have an outcome with Woomera in South Australia, but they were prevented from doing so by the South Australian government. They needed an alternative site, so what did they do? They got the Department of Defence to do a desktop survey of available land in the Northern Territory—that is, land that was available for use by Defence, or Commonwealth land—and they chose these three sites. There was no assessment as to their appropriateness or otherwise; they just chose them. There was no discussion with the local community, no discussion with the Northern Territory government and no discussion with anyone with an interest in the environment. They just chose the sites and said, ‘We’re going to do this because we can.’

That is why this minister and the government are dealing with this legislation in the way they are: because the government are so arrogant—they know they can, because they have the numbers in the Senate. They can put anything through in this place—that is, the parliament, this House and the other chamber—knowing full well that in 99.9 per cent of cases they will be successful in getting the legislation through. They are so arrogant that they do not want to involve the Australian community in any consideration of what they are proposing to do.

Prior to these announcements being made about nuclear waste facilities in the Northern Territory, Territorians might have expected some protection of their environment from actions such as this by the Howard government under the Commonwealth legislation, which we are amending today. What we know is that protection is no longer available for those people who are concerned about the proposed sites. The Commonwealth government can go ahead and build a waste dump that Territorians do not want—and that will be a significant blight on the environment and heritage of the Territory—because the government has blocked the operation of the EPBC Act and other legislation in relation to these dump sites.

How arrogant can you be? It is not a problem for this government, though—no problem at all. They do not mind jumping over the rights of the people of the Northern Territory for their own base political purposes. They do not mind doing that. They cannot do it anywhere else in Australia but they can do it there and, I might say, in the ACTwith not so much as a by-your-leave. The government have said: ‘If you think we are going to assess the sites against any reasonable environmental standards, forget it. The EPBC Act will not apply.’

I am getting sick and tired of this. I know that the people of the Northern Territory are fed up to the back teeth at the way they have been taken for granted by the government in relation to this issue. Let me just remind the House of section 6(1) of the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005 which provides that:

The following laws have no effect to the extent that they would, apart from this section, regulate, hinder or prevent the doing of a thing authorised by section 4:

(a)

the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984;

(b)

the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

The ‘doing of a thing authorised by section 4’, of course, covers a range of activities in preparation for the establishment of a nuclear waste dump. These activities include: gaining access to land to drive vehicles or fly aircraft to and from it; constructing roads on, or grading, land; constructing bores; operating drilling equipment; extracting water; collecting samples of flora and fauna; building structures to protect bores, monitoring equipment or other things; moving or extracting sand, gravel, soil, mineral and rock samples; and clearing vegetation.

These are activities that will obviously have a significant impact upon the environment of whichever site is finally chosen by the government for a nuclear waste dump. If the government really is committed to the EPBC Act and the protection of our environment, why did it choose to block its operation in relation to these sites? What validity can the EPBC Act be held to have in the future when, with a simple ministerial decision, its operation can be voided? Where the government sees the processes under this vital instrument for environmental protection as things that will either ‘hinder’ or ‘prevent’ some environmentally destructive policy it wants to foist on a certain community, it will simply, as it has done in this case, sidestep the act.

How can the minister introduce these proposed amendments and claim to support the EPBC Act and its objectives with any credibility? We know this government is prepared to trash this act whenever it feels so inclined, whenever it feels it needs to get its way. Of course, this has greater magnitude now. As we would be aware, we have seen clear signs from the government that it intends to embrace nuclear power. After his recalcitrant attitude on climate change—something which is not referred to in this legislation—and the refusal to sign up to Kyoto—

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