Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The purpose of the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 is to amend the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 to make it a more efficient and effective act, to allow for the use of more strategic approaches and to provide greater certainty in decision making. I have serious concerns about the legislation that we are debating here tonight. The government has argued that it is designed to create a balance between the environment and development, and I would argue very strongly that I am very concerned about this aspect of the legislation. My fears are that it actually moves the balance between protecting and caring for our environment in favour of development. If that happens then we as a nation will be the losers.

I would like to share with the House an experience I had last week. I attended the Wyong Shire Council school environment competition award ceremony, and I was extremely impressed with the depth of knowledge the students had, the diversity of their contributions to the competition and their overall commitment to protecting and conserving our environment. These students recognise the importance of protecting endangered species, conserving water, preserving our natural environment and reversing the effects of global warming. It never ceases to amaze me that students between the ages of five and 12, as they were last week, can understand how important protecting our natural environment is, yet the Howard government does not seem to get it. These students at the presentation really demonstrated their knowledge and understanding, and I have to say this is something the government does not appear to do. These students really brought home to me the message that if we care for our environment then our environment will care for us.

Whilst I have referred to students in the Wyong shire in this particular competition, which is run each and every year and which develops the understanding of students in that area, there are many other worthwhile projects in schools within the Shortland electorate, and the Floraville Public School immediately comes to my mind. It has won the Sydney Morning Herald environmental competition on a number of occasions. What is happening with our young students is that they recognise that protection of and care for our environment is the way of the future.

The Howard government needs to understand that it is not a competition between the environment and the economy, with the environment being sacrificed because it is secondary to the economy. Rather, we must protect and preserve our environment in order to ensure the survival of our planet. Without its survival, everything else is secondary. I say those words and hope that the government thinks about their meaning. It is about achieving a balance between our environment and development and ensuring that our economy is built upon that balance, rather than sacrificing our environment at the expense of economic pursuits.

As I have already mentioned, this bill is supposed to develop a balance between the environment and development. I am concerned that it is has moved more towards promoting and looking after the interests of development. The bill reduces the processing time and cost for development interests. To my way of thinking, and from the research I have done into this legislation, this demonstrates that development is the priority. When development becomes the priority, the needs and interests of the environment come into conflict; that is a problem.

Within my own electorate of Shortland—it is a coastal electorate and a very beautiful area with a pristine environment—there is a little hamlet, Catherine Hill Bay, which is a very strong link with our history in the Hunter Valley and in Australia. It has beautiful surf and a beautiful natural environment and is currently heritage listed. It has three settlements: Mine Camp, Middle Camp and the town of Catherine Hill proper. There is enormous pressure to develop all of the land around there and to change the face of this settlement which is really a link to that area’s mining heritage. The heritage and the natural beauty of the area are two things that I think this bill should be looking at protecting, but I think the interests of development will be paramount when we come to looking at issues of environmental protection and development. That not only creates fears as to the future of our coastal communities but also worries me about the direction we are going in as a society.

This bill also provides enhancement ability to deal with large-scale projects, gives priority attention to projects of national importance through the use of strategic assessment and approval approaches and puts in place measures to enable developers to avoid impacts on the matters of national environmental significance protected by the act. It enables a better focus on protecting threatened species and ecological communities in heritage places that are of real national importance. The issue is determining what ‘real national importance’ is and it fails, I think, to bring that out clearly. The bill is also supposed to clarify and strengthen enforcement provisions of the act, and I think it probably does.

The EPBC Act is Australia’s primary environmental law. It provides a framework for environmental protection and any actions that are likely to have an impact on matters of national environmental significance. The development I just referred to at Catherine Hill Bay near Lake Macquarie is one such development that I think is in an area of national environmental significance—an area that should be protected.

The greatest weakness of this bill is its failure to address climate change. I will speak at some length about that in a moment. The bill has the ability to fast-track environmental assessments and approvals of major projects. This is very dangerous; when approvals and assessments are fast-tracked, it can lead to issues of great importance being left out. It is terribly important that the community has the ability to have proper input into these major projects and assessments and that the approval process is not truncated in any way. Also of concern are bioregional plans, which will not be legislative instruments, thus reducing parliamentary oversight; I think that speaks for itself.

The bill fails to address the concerns that we on this side of the House have expressed about World Heritage sites and the National Heritage list. Only one of Australia’s World Heritage sites is currently on the National Heritage list. That is a concern. The government has failed to ensure that our Natural Heritage sites overseas have been properly listed and taken care of. A prime example of that is Anzac Cove. I do not think there would be an Australian that would disagree with Anzac Cove being listed—and it has been.

When the list was launched in 2003, Anzac Cove was to be the first site to be placed on the list—and, as I said, no-one would disagree with that—but it has not happened. Instead, the government has requested roadworks which, as we all know from the many questions and the lengthy debate in this House, have damaged the site that is so important to us here in Australia. Ten years of the Howard government’s rule and reign in this country has put Australia’s natural heritage under great pressure.

This legislation has 409 pages of amendments which will really change the way our environment is protected. I think that that is of real concern. I do not believe that the Australian community will have the opportunity to scrutinise and discuss the application of this bill properly before it is rushed through this parliament. Another real concern I have about the legislation is that it reduces transparency and accountability, as so much of the legislation that comes through this House does. I think that there has been a degree of arrogance by the government and it has shown an extraordinary lack of commitment to process and to ensuring that we have proper debate on this issue.

I think one of the issues that is of great concern to all Australians these days is that of climate change. I know that people in the electorate of Shortland are very concerned about climate change. There is not a day that goes by when I am not contacted by email, telephone or letter by a constituent raising this issue. Back in September I held a climate change forum in the electorate. I did so because of the enormous interest and concern within the community. It was held on a Sunday at Swansea RSL and there were in excess of 150 people there. I do not think there were many vacant spaces at all within the room. There was an in-depth discussion on that day. I can unreservedly say that everybody who attended that forum expressed their concern about the direction of the government on climate change.

Each day as I sit here in this House and hear the Prime Minister push us further and further down the nuclear path, I become more and more worried—because nuclear power is not the solution. Nuclear creates more problems than it solves. Nuclear confronts us as a nation with a whole set of new challenges. There is no way that we can get away from the fact that the waste from nuclear power is very harmful. There is no way that we can guarantee the safety of that waste forever. It is waste that lasts over generations and it will create a situation where we in Australia will be a lot less safe than we are both from a security point of view and from an environmental point of view. There have been some notable examples in the past where there have been environmental problems associated with nuclear power. I implore the Howard government to think very carefully about this.

Last week in the Main Committee the member for Ryan said in a very gung-ho way that the government planned to put a nuclear power station in the Shortland electorate. I have news for the member for Ryan: I will not stand back and let the government build a power station in the Shortland electorate. I also have the news for the member for Ryan that the people of the Shortland electorate are totally opposed to a nuclear power station being built there. The people of Shortland would like the government to make a real commitment to addressing the issue of climate change—not enlisting the help of Ziggy Switkowski, who is a person who is committed to nuclear power and a nuclear industry, and not commissioning him to do an inquiry into establishing a nuclear power industry in Australia but looking at addressing the real issues that will work towards solving global warming.

The first thing that the Howard government needs to do is to sign the Kyoto protocol. I know that the government has been opposed to signing up to Kyoto, but the reasons it gives do not hold up. The government has said that we should not be involved in Kyoto because the developing world is not involved. There are 158 countries throughout the world that have signed up to Kyoto and the notable exceptions are Australia and the US. I do not think that we can in all conscience refuse to sign up to Kyoto. It is an absolute disgrace that the government has refused to embrace Kyoto and sign on the dotted line. How can we expect to be taken seriously when we talk about climate change when we will not make the most basic commitment to solving the problem of climate change? The first thing the government needs to do is to sign up to the Kyoto protocol.

There are many other initiatives that the government could immediately undertake to improve the situation in relation to global warming. One of the first things is to support the renewable energy industry. The government looks at it as a competition between economic growth and ensuring that we solve the issue of climate change. As I said in my opening comments, if we do not solve the issues around climate change, the issues of whether to have economic growth or whether to thrive as a country are irrelevant because they will no longer be issues. So we must immediately sign up to the Kyoto protocol, cut Australia’s greenhouse gas pollution by 60 per cent by 2050, establish a national greenhouse emissions trading scheme, substantially increase the mandatory renewable energy targets and establish a climate change trigger under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. We have the ability to make a real change in relation to climate change, and I urge the government to do so. (Time expired)

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