Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This is one of the worst Christmas presents for the Australian environment. There has been a reshuffle overnight and the Minister for the Environment is now the minister against the environment. We have known for some time and argued in this place and elsewhere that our national environmental protection laws, and in particular the legislation under which this regulation has been made, do not allow for sufficient protection of the Australian environment. We have seen that previously. We saw it in the case of the state government moving to allow cows to graze in alpine national parks and we saw then the limitations that the environmental protection legislation, the EPBC Act, places on the adequate protection of ecosystems. We saw the minister, under pressure from many, including from the Greens, ultimately agree to a listing in that case, but not before it was brought to this place in the form of a private member's bill from us to reform the EPBC Act to allow it to give greater protection to the environment and in particular to ecosystems.

Earlier this week, we had the spectacle of a further weakening of the EPBC Act, where the astounding proposition was put before this parliament that when the minister is given conservation advice he does not need to take it into account—he or she does not need to take expert conservation advice into account. It was not just retrospective legislation or prospective; it gave the current minister at the table a free pass until the end of this year to be able to make decisions that ignore expert scientific advice about how to protect threatened species. Then, of course, late yesterday we saw one of the greatest pieces of environmental vandalism in Australian history: the approval of the Abbot Point development, which will see millions of tonnes of cubic metres of sludge dumped on or near the reef. As a result, the reef and the jobs that depend on it are now under threat.

Now, this morning, with perhaps 24 hours notice—and I am not even sure if we have had that—we have members of the government coming in this place proudly proclaiming that what they are doing is specifically at the request of the Irrigators Council and the big business lobby. Not once in any of the contributions they have made so far to this debate have they said that they have spoken to anyone about the environment or that their motivations for doing this are about protecting the environment. That is not what this is about. When we look at the Macquarie Marshes, why were they included? Why was the listing made in the first place? It is important for the parliament to know this because none of the previous members mentioned it because they do not care. For them, protection of the environment is just an optional extra.

Why were these listings included? I read from the listing:

No-one has mentioned that so far, and no-one has mentioned what the impact will be on those ecosystems and connectedness. One of the advantages of both of these listings is that they took a whole-of-system approach and acknowledged that ecosystems across this country rely on connectivity.

On the question of the Murray, the honourable member who moved this motion did not once refer to what impact this would have on the health of the system or how we would protect ecological communities in the area. As someone who when growing up spent many months of their early years down in the area of the Murray mouth, I think that anyone who does not believe that one of the most important areas of our country's environment is under threat is kidding themselves. We in this place should be doing everything we possibly can to ensure it has the highest level of environmental protection, not coming in here and stripping away some of the important protections that are left.

For people who have been observing this government in operation over the last couple of months, this should, sadly, come as no surprise, because this is not a government that listens to reason or evidence. This is an example of exactly why we need to enshrine in our national environment protection laws the requirement to have regard to expert advice on sustainability and the science. What we have here is a government and backbenchers who are essentially shills for the corporate lobby and who will ignore science in the interests of big business. The complete absence of reference to protecting the environment and protecting ecological communities in their contributions speaks volumes.

So I will not be supporting this disallowance motion. The Macquarie Marshes and the Murray-Darling Basin, and the river systems and the ecosystems that surround both of those, deserve the highest possible protection from this parliament. We should not be stripping it away a couple of days before Christmas.

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