Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I want to make some remarks about these listings, some of them about the context in which these listings were made, and I will respond to a couple of the perhaps less measured remarks particularly from the member for Barker. I want to thank the member for Barker and the member for Parkes for their contributions. I recognise that at least a substantial part of the member for Barker's contribution and the vast bulk of the member for Parkes's contribution reflect some significant misgivings that I know their communities have about those listings. They were reflected in conversations I had with irrigator communities and their leaders in the South Australian Riverland when I was there during the election campaign. To some degree those misgivings were based on what I would accept is fact, but they are also, to some degree, misgivings based on misunderstandings about the impact of these listings.

The first thing I would say to frame this debate for the House is that this was not a listing I made at the behest, as the member for Barker suggests, of a foreign lobby group. This was a listing I made based on the advice from the Threatened Species Scientific Committee, a committee set up by former Minister Hill as part of the EPBC Act reforms—the very substantial, far-sighted reforms by the Howard government—and it is a committee I thought had very strong bipartisan support. Its advice was taken very seriously by governments of both political persuasions. I think I am right in saying that the only occasion on which the advice of the Threatened Species Scientific Committee has previously been rejected by a minister is that of the famed case of the orange-bellied parrot.

This is a motion moved by the government in the House effectively to reject the advice of the Threatened Species Scientific Committee—not some foreign lobby group, as the member for Barker would have people think—for the second time in the history of this environmental protection framework. A theme is emerging with this government: shut down strong, independent sources of advice around environmental protection. We know what the minister did to the Climate Commission. His first act in the area of climate change was to shut down the Climate Commission. Thankfully, they have been able to sustain themselves on the back of public donations to continue to provide digestible advice around climate change to the parliament and the broader community. In the other place they are debating another proposal of the Minister for the Environment to shut down the Climate Change Authority. Time and time again we are seeing this minister and ministers in other policy areas trying to shut down all sources of strong, independent advice to make sure that the parliament, the government and, most importantly, the broader community gets advice only once it has been filtered through the Prime Minister's office or at the very least the minister's office.

It is very important that people watching this debate understand that what the government is proposing here is to overturn advice from the Threatened Species Scientific Committee. This is not advice that was dreamt up by that committee overnight; it is a process that started in 2008. It is a process that involved consultation with 60 organisations, including local councils, NRM bodies, irrigation regions and farmers federations and it involved technical workshops over a couple of years. The advice was very deeply considered by the committee. Reasonable people can disagree about the impact of this decision, but it should not be suggested that this was a decision taken overnight and that it was not based on strong evidence. It was based on evidence that was channelled through an environmental protection framework put in place by the former Howard government and supported throughout the six years of the Rudd and Gillard governments.

I will respond to the suggestion from the member for Barker that this is going to tie up Riverland communities in so-called green tape. The member for Barker was at least right—I am sure the member for Parkes made this comment to—in that a range of species that are vulnerable or endangered, in some cases perhaps critically endangered, because of the running down of our river system over many decades are already protected under the EPBC Act. That self-evidently is true. What we are also seeing as the environmental flows—the environmental returns—to the Murray-Darling Basin start to take effect is that many of those flora and fauna species, happily, are starting to recover at the end of the drought and with environmental flows returning to the river. But at issue in this debate is the fundamental question: does this government want to continue with a process of environmental protection that simply goes species by species, whether it is flora or fauna, or does this government recognise the benefit to everyone, whether they are advocates in environmental protection or potential developers in those regional communities, of having a more strategic approach that deals with communities in their broader sense rather than the communities as a collection of individual species that go through their own listing process? Again, reasonable people can disagree. I am sure that the member for Barker has thought long and hard about that philosophical question. But what has completely escaped this debate is the benefit that Riverland communities would have—we are doing this process in the Hunter Valley as well to have broad regional strategic assessments—in knowing that there is essentially one process of listing that covers that community, that takes account of all factors in that community, and, if anything, has the potential to cut down green tape rather than increase it.

The last thing I would say before closing and allowing others to contribute to this debate is to respond to the suggestion that this listing was somehow going to close Riverland communities. To some degree that impression was based on an understandable misunderstanding, if you like, by people who had not had the opportunity to read through the listing and the legislative context in which it was made. But, to some extent, it was based on suggestions that were given by others who should have known better because the impact of this listing is quite clear: it is only in new developments that it would have a significant impact on the ecological community under question. If you read the EPBC Act, there is no suggestion that this listing would have any impact on existing arrangements, whether they are farm arrangements or other industrial arrangements in those relevant communities. Again, reasonable people can disagree about the benefits of this listing, but it does not help the confidence of the communities that the member for Barker and the member for Parkes, understandably, are seeking to protect and advocate for to have misunderstandings put in their minds about the impact of this list.

See this speech in context