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

and he has absolutely no commitment to the environment. I am constantly being contacted by constituents who tell me how disappointed they are in the Minister for the Environment. They thought he had a bit of backbone, thought he would get in there and fight to preserve the environment. But unfortunately he does not seem to have that commitment to the environment that we as Australians expect from our Minister for the Environment. Instead, he is happy to abrogate his responsibility, hand the decision making over to the states, hand the decision making over to local government—in many cases the very bodies, the very organisations that are putting forward the proposal for development. It is not good enough. As an Australian government, as a federal government, we should be ensuring that we protect our assets. We should not be handing over World Heritage listings to governments like the Newman government in Queensland, and we should not be allowing World Heritage listing to be wound back in Tasmania.

This Minister for the Environment should be standing up for the environment. Instead, he is abrogating his responsibility. And the bill goes beyond pro-development state governments; it provides the ability for the same governments to accredit local governments to undertake critical assessment and approval processes. I hang my head. I am ashamed to be part of a parliament that is prepared to allow this to happen to our environment by allowing the states to approve anything, anywhere, without limitations. That is worrying enough without diluting further accountability by putting local government in charge of Australia's major national resources.

I would be quite happy for Lake Macquarie council to make decisions about my local environment area—at the moment. But there have been times when that council has made decisions that were not in the best interests of the environment, and there is nothing to say that into the future that will not continue to happen. This legislation creates a definite degree of uncertainty. This legislation, far from streamlining the approvals process, actually dilutes it, fragments it, makes it very convoluted. Giving each state the right to approve projects means that throughout the nation we are going to have different approval processes in different states. This is very worrying indeed. I am concerned with the whole process and the lack of quality and consistency of processes between the states. And it will not get any better. This bill is going to make things worse than they already are.

Going back to the Great Barrier Reef, increased attention is needed to complete the required work on reviewing governance of the property and the transfer of decision-making powers from the federal to the state level. It appears premature, until the governance requirements to implement their LTPSD have been considered. It is crucial that the mission recommendations regarding institutional management arrangements in R11 are completed and the eventual governance of the property carries the confidence of the stakeholders.

Given the range of significant threats affecting property and conflicting information about the effectiveness of recent decisions and draft policies, the inscription of the Great Barrier Reef onto the list of world heritage endangered sites at the 39th session in 2015 seems imminent.

This government and this Minister for the Environment will go down in history as environmental vandals. They are abrogating any responsibility they have to preserve threatened species and they are abrogating any responsibilities that they have to our environment. They stand condemned and future generations of Australians will judge them accordingly.

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