Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise also to speak on the private member’s motion put by the member for Cook. I acknowledge what the honourable member has said about the national environmental and heritage significance of the Kurnell Peninsula and Botany Bay. However, the federal environment minister’s powers under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 relate only to projects which are likely to impact on matters of national environmental significance. In respect of the New South Wales government’s proposed desalination project, this did mean the Kurnell Peninsula national heritage place, the Towra Point Ramsar wetlands site and the listed threatened and migratory species. The New South Wales government referred the proposed desalination plant to the federal government for consideration under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 in September 2005. The referral was made available for public comment and almost 1,500 submissions were received. The question for consideration at that time was whether the proposal should be a controlled action, as defined under the act, because of the potential impacts on the Kurnell Peninsula national heritage place, the Towra Point Ramsar wetlands site and listed threatened and migratory species.

The then Minister for Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Senator Ian Campbell, determined on 8 November 2005 that the proposed action was not a controlled action and therefore did not require further assessment or approval under the terms of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. He and his department were required to consider each component of the proposed project, the proposed action and the proposed mitigation measures. After examining the assessment material presented by New South Wales, the former minister for the environment, Minister Campbell—one of your own party—decided that this was not a matter within the federal jurisdiction.

I can sympathise with the member for Cook where there is perhaps some community concern about the project, but I have to tell him that Senator Ian Campbell had form. In my own electorate of Hasluck in Perth, Senator Ian Campbell was intimately involved in the decision to approve a brickworks development on Perth airport land. That is Commonwealth land, and under the Airports Act the jurisdiction of developments on the site is exclusively in the hands of the federal government. Indeed, part of the problem with the project proposal was that there was no ability for state or local government authorities, let alone ordinary members of the community, to have any impact or any influence on the decision that Senator Ian Campbell had the power to recommend and be involved in. Of course, as history transpires, in August 2006 the then Howard government’s ministers, including Senator Ian Campbell, approved the development of a brickworks on Perth airport land, right in the centre of a residential area with clear environmental and health consequences for residents within the electorate of Hasluck. Many conjecture that it may well have been one of the decisions that did not assist the former member for Hasluck in his campaign to hold his seat at the 2007 federal election.

If there have been changes in the proposed project by the New South Wales government that result in potentially significant impacts on those matters of national environmental significance, a new referral to the federal department will be required and could possibly lead to a new assessment process. If existing works, despite assurances from New South Wales to the contrary, do impact on matters of national environmental significance then the department of the environment’s compliance and enforcement branch will investigate. I am absolutely certain that the minister for the environment will not hesitate to rigorously apply the law. As I say, some opposition to this project may not be based on environmental grounds but rather on the question of desalination. I can speak from Western Australia’s own experience on the success of the Kwinana desalination plant—so much so that we are now building a second one—and that plant has received significant approval and provides 17 per cent of Perth’s water supply. We are, of course, the only capital city in Australia that has not been required to go to water restrictions on sprinklers and the like. It is about planning for the future.

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