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

I rise to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Bilateral Agreement Implementation) Bill 2014. Most people in this country want our precious environment protected. People look at icons such as the forests in Tasmania, the Great Barrier Reef and our waterways and they want them protected, not only for future generations but also for the livelihoods of the many people who depend on them. People also know that the federal government, with strong federal protections, is very often the best place to protect the environment, because you do not need to look very far to see that state governments can be very quickly captured by developers, by mining interests or by logging interests, with the environment coming a poor second. For example, if we did not have the federal government able to step in and protect the environment, then the Franklin would have been dammed. You do not have to look much further than the New South Wales state government and what is going on at the moment in ICAC with the current and previous governments to understand at a state level just how closely interconnected ministers and decision makers are with the interests of those who would threaten the environment. It is for that reason that most people would support the idea of there being strong national protections for the and would support decisions about enforcing those protections being made at a national level. Unfortunately, what we have seen under the previous Labor government and under this government is an attack on that principle. Towards the end of the last government, as the shadow minister suggested, the possibility was floated that some of the decisions about protecting iconic places should be shifted to state governments. The Greens stood side by side with the community to fight that proposal off, but it is now coming back again on steroids from this government. This government is perhaps the most hostile government towards the environment, and this Prime Minister is the most hostile prime minister towards the environment, that this country has ever seen.

This bill would allow not just state governments but also, in some instances, even local governments to determine the level of protection afforded to some of the most precious places in this country, including places that are World Heritage listed. This bill puts the fox in charge of the hen house. It gives away the administration of, for example, federal protection for water from significant impacts of coal or coal seam gas—the water trigger. It gives away that protection to state governments who, as we have seen, cannot make coal seam gas roll out quickly enough. It allows state processes to be accredited to take the place of federal approvals, but also allows those processes to be in guidelines, plans or policies—that is, not even enshrined in laws. So the protections now will not just be devolved from the federal to the state governments, but the state governments will not even have to put those protections in legislation. In short, this bill makes former Prime Minister John Howard's environmental legislation even weaker and takes away the Minister for the Environment's main job, which is supposedly to protect the environment—not that we have seen a lot of evidence of that.

This government has launched itself down the environmentally reckless path of handing responsibility for these places to state and territory governments. They have already embarked on it, even before this bill, by signing draft approval bilateral agreements with the New South Wales and Queensland governments to see these critical national responsibilities palmed off to Premiers Newman and O'Farrell—and they are well known for their staunch protection of the environment. They hope to have agreements finalised with all states and territories by September 2014. If this plan proceeds, the federal government could not protect World Heritage areas from big mines nor threatened species from being sent to extinction by state governments approving major developments in key habitats. It would mean that the federal government could not have stopped the Franklin River being dammed; nor could it have stopped oil rigs in the Great Barrier Reef. This so-called one-stop shop for business sells out our environment and overturns 30 years of gradually increasing and greatly needed Commonwealth involvement in environmental protection. If it proceeds, it will put in my home state of Victoria Premier Denis Napthine in sole control of whether to put cattle in the Alpine National Park. It will put Premier Campbell Newman in Queensland in sole control of the world heritage great Barrier Reef; and it will put Premier Mike Baird in New South Wales in sole control of whether to send koalas to extinction.

The draft bilateral agreements say there will be a reserve call-in power for the federal government to step back in, but this test is higher than the current protections the act gives and, with staff being slashed from the department—and from assessment in particular—the likelihood of call-ins is remote. The EPBC Act, the main legislation that is being amended, already only applies to the worst proposals which have the biggest impact on the environment and already affects only a sliver of projects, and this bill proposes to lessen it further.

As I have alluded to, this bill rolls back crucial federal water protections from coal and coal seam gas that were established in the last parliament, where the Greens worked together with rural Independents and the government to make sure that state and territory governments did not have the final say over the proposals which are potentially damaging to our water resources. This bill hands off that water trigger, which was designed to create federal protection for our water resources in response to legitimate and strong community concern, to state or territory governments to administer. But the federal government stepped in because the states had done such an atrocious job of letting coal seam gas run rampant. This now allows those very same state and territory governments to have the final say. As I have said, we are putting the fox in charge of the hen house, but we are now adding water to the long list of other nationally significant matters that the states will be in charge of—matters such as the World Heritage Tasmanian forests and the Great Barrier Reef and, crucially, nationally listed threatened species. In my home state of Victoria, we are on the verge of making our faunal emblem—the Leadbeater's Possum—extinct, because state governments of various stripes over many years have seen it as a greater priority to destroy forests in which these species live for short-term gain and for very little economic return—in fact it has to be subsidised—and in return we will wipe out our faunal emblem. The federal protections are the one last hope; we are going to see threatened species handed holus-bolus over to state governments. This will also apply to our Ramsar wetlands; we sign up to an international convention to protect our wetlands and then we allow not only state governments but also potentially even local governments to have the final say over them.

Crucially, nuclear actions are also covered by this legislation. I cannot believe that this government proposes that we should allow a local council to have the final say over whether protections enshrined in federal law relating to nuclear activity are going to be met! But when this government says the country is open for business, they mean it. You can have any kind of business, anywhere you like, and if there are any federal protections—just go and have a chat with the local council and you can sign yourself out of them. Deputy Speaker, these environmental protections that you see in our legislation—and people would think, 'well, good; we have got some protections there, protecting our World Heritage listed places'—will not be worth the paper they are written on—because all a developer has to do is go and sign up a local government or a state government, and they can contract out of those protections: everything from threatened species to nuclear actions.

In addition, we have seen the gutting of the national water project—on top of what is an environmental disaster of a budget. The water trigger question is crucial; there is a reason that so much some time was spent in the last parliament debating it. People are, rightly, worried that we do not yet know what the impact of coal seam gas mining, or coalmining, or fracking, is on our water tables. But we are proceeding as if everything is going to be fine. What you are seeing, Deputy Speaker, is that right around the country, people—and not just those in the inner city who might have voted for me but also people in rural areas who might otherwise have voted for another party—saying, 'well, hang on: something is fundamentally wrong if we are allowing coal seam gas mining and fracking right next to, or in, our water tables, and we don't know the effect of it'. In the last parliament, we spent a lot of time working out how to deal with that, and we put in place the water trigger that I have referred to. That gives a minimum of protection to those communities, and to everyone who relies on our water tables and on our aquifers. It gives a minimum of protection before coal seam gas mining and coalmining can take place. The Greens would like to see it go a lot further; but we do not want to see it go backwards—and the community does not want the protections to go backwards. I think the community is increasingly horrified at the attacks that this government is perpetrating not just on people but also on the environment.

It is not just state and local governments; the bill allows the minister to accredit any agency to make a decision under this act. So decisions on impacts could be made by bodies which are wholly unqualified and under-resourced. It is very clear from this bill that the government does not care which agency makes the decision—state, local, or any other. The government is washing their hands of their responsibility to protect internationally significant environmental icons.

These accredited processes can be enshrined in policy or in guidelines, rather than in legislation, which, potentially, makes them even unenforceable. If this bill passes and these processes are not even required to be in state laws, we can have absolutely no confidence that federal environmental standards will be maintained. It is no surprise when you think about who backs and who bankrolls the party sitting in government, but the government seemingly do not understand the concept of conflict of interest. They are ignoring 30 years of environmental reform, and the vast track records of states as environmental vandals—and all the while claiming that environmental standards will be maintained. Amazingly—and because they do not understand the concept of conflict of interest—the government is proposing to hand off powers to approve development where the state government itself is the proponent. So, despite the statement by the minister, Greg Hunt, in an interview on 13 September 2013 on ABC Radio in which he reiterated that the government would keep powers where states were 'likely to have a significant conflict of interest', they have now gone back on that as well: another backflip from the Minister for the Environment, and from this government. The state government will say, 'we want to build this project'—and the state government will be in charge of determining whether that project does or does not meet the environmental protections in federal legislation. The state government will be able to write its own ticket to proceed. And there is nothing the federal government can do about it, because the state will be the only one determining whether or not that project is able to go ahead. Anyone who has watched what state governments do in their approach to development will shirk from this bill in horror.

We will not be supporting this bill. I am pleased it is going to be defeated, at least in this Senate, and I hope it will be defeated in the next Senate.

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