Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You can always tell when members opposite are feeling vulnerable on any given issue, because the temptation to lunge into the ideological overreach is always there and on open display. The amount of ideological rhetoric that was trotted out in that last contribution to this debate was truly astonishing. I am very pleased to be here tonight to speak in the debate on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standing) Bill 2015 and to join with my Labor colleagues in opposing the proposed changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

To outline the situation before us today, I would like to start by quoting the words of a man who is renowned for not mincing his swords—indeed, quite often with direct barbs aimed at those of us on this side of the House. This man said about this bill that is before the House today:

I may live nowhere near the Liverpool Plains or the Great Barrier Reef, but I sure as hell am concerned that they are protected.

The latest move by the Abbott Government puts at risk not just our environment but our very democracy and is quite simply unbelievable.

The move I'm talking about is an attempt to remove a section of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

He continued:

So what does this change mean? Well if pushed through, only people who are directly affected by development will be allowed to challenge the approval. So what about the Great Barrier Reef? Well, unless the Great Barrier Reef happens to be in your backyard, you won't have any legal grounds to oppose irresponsible action of others.

This legislative restriction is divisive, it isolates us and it means we're not allowed to care.

They are not my words. They are not Labor's words, and they are not the words of some green activist. They are the words of well-known conservative broadcaster Alan Jones—the former speechwriter for Malcolm Fraser and serial Liberal Party candidate.

The Prime Minister's intention to change the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to stop third-party interventions on developments affecting the environment is unconscionable. It does not make sense. It is not in the best interests of business or the environment. It is just another attack in the Prime Minister's relentless war on the environment and the groups and individuals who take it upon themselves to protect it. The intention to repeal section 487 of the EPBC Act, as outlined in this bill, is nothing but a rash reaction to this government's complete incompetence and its failures that were borne out in the courts for all to see. The government's claim that the act is costing jobs is outrageous. The only thing costing jobs is this government's incompetence and the Prime Minister's determination to fight for his own job but no one else's. The EPBC Act is not the reason that unemployment has risen to its highest level in 20 years. It is this government and their poor economic management that sees more than 800,000 Australians unable to get a job.

The EPBC Act has been the overriding national environmental protection law for the past 15 years, including through the mining boom, and has posed absolutely no problem for our economy. Indeed, as members before me have noted—for example, the member for Perth—there have been some $280 billion of investment made in a range of projects under this act. The approval of thousands of projects was managed perfectly well under this system by the Howard government and during the two terms of Labor government that followed. Let us be very clear: the act is not the problem; the problem is this government.

In the context of this debate, I think it is very important that we reflect on the intentions of the act and recognise the important role it has played in the sustainable development of our nation. As the Department of the Environment sets out very clearly, the objectives of the EPBC Act are to provide for the protection of the environment, especially matters of national environmental significance; conserve Australian biodiversity; provide a streamlined national environmental assessment and approvals process; enhance the protection and management of important natural and cultural places; control the international movement of plants and animals, wildlife specimens and products made or derived from wildlife; promote ecologically sustainable development through the conservation and ecologically sustainable use of natural resources; recognise the role of Indigenous people in the conservation and ecologically sustainable use of Australia's biodiversity; and promote the use of Indigenous peoples' knowledge of biodiversity with the involvement of, and in cooperation with, the owners of the knowledge.

Protecting matters of national environmental significance is the very legitimate work of the federal government, and the EPBC Act is a vital part of this work—it is an act of collaboration and an act of sustainability. Legislation that is designed to protect matters of national environmental significance cannot be applied to just those in the immediate vicinity. Concerns are no less genuine because their point of origin may be further from development than others. Landholders have rights to appeal decisions where a project impacts on their land as they should. But where the legislation is intended to protect the environment for, say, a threatened species, you cannot have a threatened species, like the green and golden bell frog in my electorate of Newcastle, lob up to the court and take legal action, because a proposed development is threatening their habitat.

That is why there is a representative standing for environmental organisations. I am sure the green and golden bell frog did not appreciate the industrial development on Kooragang Island in Newcastle but, because of the EPBC Act, they have been protected. There was a great compromise worked out between the developer and the people acting on behalf of the conservation interests in that region as is often the case in my part of the world.

I am part of the Newcastle-Hunter region, home to the world's largest port exporting coal. We have mining activity up and down throughout the Hunter Valley, but do we try to overreach and silence any dissenting voices in that activity? No. That is not the way we do things or should be doing things in Australia. We are more than capable of being able to work collaboratively to get the best outcomes for not only resource development and the employment options that come with that but also the protection of vital tracts of our environmental land and the flora and fauna that is associated with that land.

The propensity in this debate to pit the environment against jobs is really disappointing—and it is a point I will come back to later in the debate. The point that I am trying to make is that community objection rights are vital to the process of not just environmental protection but the sustainable development of our communities and indeed our nation. They help build community confidence in the planning system. Community objection rights also guard against corruption—a very important role—and they result in better environmental assessments and outcomes.

The threat of third-party appeals creates a stronger incentive for proponents and the government to adhere to the law improving the quality of environmental assessments of major projects. It is not the actual exercise of the power to enforce public rights that matters most but the possibility that they may be exercised already brings improved accountability to an approval system that we know can be plagued by vested interests. It has been mentioned here before that some of these contests are real David and Goliath issues where you have small local community groups pitted against massive multinational corporations at times. Let's not kid ourselves that everybody is operating on a level playing field here.

When announcing their plans, however, to amend the EPBC Act, the Attorney-General asserted that the act 'provides a red carpet for radical activists' who engaged in 'sabotage' and 'vigilante litigation'. This supposed red carpet is hardly worn, I would suggest, and any actions that have been undertaken have been rare in number and success.

Since the EPBC Act commenced in July 2000, there have been approximately 5,500 projects referred to the minister under the environmental impact assessment provisions. Of the 5,500 referred, around 1,500 have been assessed as requiring formal assessment and approval. There have been just 33 actions commenced in the Federal Court by third parties in relation to 22 of these projects.

Third-party appeals to the Federal Court have only affected 0.4 per cent of all projects referred under the legislation. Of the 33 actions, just six were legally successful and, of these six, in only two cases did the third-party applicant achieve their apparent desired substantive environmental outcome. Already one of these projects has gone back for reconsideration of approval.

This is not an act that kills jobs or savagely wounds our economy as the government would have you believe; it is an act that is doing what it is meant to do and is already targeted. The scope of appeal rights with the act is already restricted only to judicial review rights—that is, only reviewing whether or not a legal error has been made. No other consideration is taken into account here; it is just a matter of reviewing whether a legal error has been made.

As it currently stands, communities do not have the right to challenge the merits of a project approval under the EPBC Act—only the legal validity of it. This is a major limitation in the current system; Standing provisions under section 487 that the government is attempting to repeal are already sufficiently rigorous.

As interesting as this debate is and deserving as it is of more time given to it, I will move on because I am going to run out of time. Really what we have before us is a set of proposed changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act that are nothing more than a pathetic attempt by the Abbott government to distract from its existing political woes. When these proposed changes were announced, the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General could not even agree on what the announcement actually was. The Prime Minister said the government will repeal parts of section 487, and the Attorney-General said the whole section would go. It is a rash reaction to the government's incompetence and failures being borne out in the courts and, true to form, this government respond in the only way it knows: it goes on the attack and executes massive ideological overreach rather than deal with any of the substantive issues at hand.

The government has been caught out for not properly managing the approval process for the Adani mine under the act. This is a massive overreach of a response. Rather than deal with their own incompetence, they want the whole nation to have to pay the price. (Time expired)

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