Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Contrary to what has mostly been said through this debate from the other side, Australia continues to have some of the most stringent and effective environmental laws in the world. Once projects have met these tough requirements, they should be able to proceed without being subjected to legal sabotage. The proposed amendments that we are discussing this afternoon do not change environmental standards.

Tasmanians have borne the brunt of the decades-long battle between the extreme Greens and left governments and the business community. While much of the focus in the media has been on a recent case in Queensland, Tasmania has been fighting this battle for years. It is a battle that has cost jobs, hurt communities, made people move away from the state of Tasmania to the mainland states—the bottom line is it has hit the Tasmanian economy very hard.

This legislation will remove the right of politico-environmentalists to ignore the needs and wishes of the local community and challenge projects approved under one of the world's most stringent environmental approvals regimes. Importantly, local agricultural producers, farmers, local residents and communities with legitimate proprietary, economic, financial or other direct interests will not be affected by this amendment. They can be assured that their voices under these amendments will continue to be heard and the courts will still be available for the protection of their rights. Furthermore, this amendment will maintain the stringent environmental laws and regulations that Australia is known for. It does not weaken environmental law but protects jobs and gives businesses, workers and communities the assurance that, if a development stacks up environmentally and has the support of the community, ratbag environmental political organisations from around the country will not be able to pull it out from under them.

The government has decided to protect Tasmanian and Australian jobs by removing from the EPBC Act 1999 the provision that allows radical green activists to engage in vigilante litigation to stop important economic projects. You only have to refer to the recent report Stopping the Australian coal export boom to understand what is at play here. You only have to turn to the first few pages, where it says:

The Need:

Australia is on the verge of a coal boom that is unprecedented in both scale and speed

and so on. It goes on to say we need to stop tens of billions of dollars of investment being locked in.

This country needs to grow up. We need to move to a balanced position. We need jobs. Australian families need incomes. They need jobs to be able to feed their families, stop living off the benefits provided by government and have a fulfilling life as a part of a working community. We need to have balance. We cannot simply, as the Greens and those opposite that are of the left would like, have us hanging from trees and drinking mung bean soup. We have to find the balance. Jobs are important and the environment is important, but we can have both. But I fear that we have groups within our community across this great country that cannot see the wood for the trees. They are more than happy to drive people out of their jobs and into the hands of the welfare mentality that this country is becoming known for.

While mainland Australians old enough may recall the infamous Franklin River protests and environmental fights, it did not stop there for Tasmanians. Over the decades since, green groups and even Tasmania's own government in coalition with the Greens party constantly attacked our industries. They shut down forestry and made it difficult to open new mines. Ultimately that cost 10,000 Tasmanian jobs. In recent years extreme green groups have latched onto this provision in the EPBC Act to launch their campaigns against development, against jobs, against business and against our communities. Some of these groups pride themselves on destroying businesses, skiting about how low they have been able to drive the share price on the back of legal action. They delay and oppose mines and any other development, they destroy jobs in my state and they have hurt our communities—often in the most remote parts of Tasmania and Australia. Call it 'lawfare', call it 'economic terrorism by judiciary'—whatever it is, it has got to stop. Tasmania cannot afford it, and Australia certainly cannot afford it.

Save the Tarkine is a group in my electorate that is notorious for this very action. It tries to bludgeon projects out of existence, and it does not care what damage it causes along the way. Last year I revealed in this very spot that Save the Tarkine's membership was a mere 20 members. They make a noise and they market themselves as a group of thousands of people when in fact there are only 20, half of which are directors. I revealed in this place that this group scarcely spent a cent for hands-on environmental projects, with all of its money basically funding wages, legal bills and travel. I also accused Save the Tarkine of running up legal bills with the full knowledge that it was not in any position to pay the costs if it lost. Only a matter of weeks ago Save the Tarkine lost yet another appeal, this time to the full bench of the Federal Court against a mining project on the west coast of Tasmania, which would have created 60 full-time ongoing jobs in a small venture and many more in the construction phase. People opposite who live in the big cities must say, 'Oh, 60 jobs—what's that?' But 60 families benefiting from this job in this particular company makes a huge difference in my electorate and in my state. Costs, of course, will be eventually awarded against Save the Tarkine, as they were last time and the time before that. But today the question remains: will they be in existence to pay back the taxpayers, to pay back the mining company? And will they provide compensation to the communities that have forgone much-needed employment?

This is not the only action this group has on the go, and this gets to the heart of this amendment. Save the Tarkine has taken it upon itself to challenge another two projects—this time the granting of a mining lease over Mount Lindsay and Mount Livingstone. These mines have the potential to create hundreds of jobs for the west coast and north-west. The west coast region of Tasmania is historically a mining region—it is not beachfront property; it is not the place where you would think anyone would have a genuine need to protest. This is a mining region that is dependent on mining projects for people to live and to have their lives and their families' lives intact. Save the Tarkine is nothing but a professional litigant that exists only to stop projects regardless of what environmental standard they meet. It is ideological for Save the Tarkine, and this legislation will stop them in their tracks.

These tactics have been replicated nationally and on a grand scale, not only bringing together large environmental groups but also movements like GetUp, individuals such as Graeme Wood, and even the unions. The very people who say they stick up for Australian jobs are the ones funding campaigns to destroy those jobs. These groups have come together to produce the document I referred to earlier, called Stopping the Australian coal export boomthat is, stopping all mining and stopping jobs. This document—this document right here—calls for the creation of a million-dollar fighting fund to shut down any potential mine before it even starts or goes through the process, and a further $180,000 to create investor uncertainty. This is straight out of the Save the Tarkine playbook. Knowing these projects stack up environmentally, the strategy is now to simply 'disrupt and delay'. What a low act. What an un-Australian act to dispose of projects before they have even got a chance to go through the development process and spoil it for hundreds, if not tens of thousands, of Australians who could do with a job and could come off the welfare benefits the country needs to provide to them at the moment.

This group that I am referring to in this document, just like Save the Tarkine, knows that Australia has the most stringent environmental laws in the world and that, to operate here, those laws need to be met. They know that these companies are hit with heavy regulation to ensure the environment is not unreasonably impacted by a project, but that is not enough for them. For these groups it is simply ideological.

It is astonishing that United Voice has joined up to this campaign. Perhaps delegates from United Voice even voted for Bill Shorten as Labor leader; maybe they did not. My guess is that they do not know who they voted for, if you believe what you read in the papers. But no doubt they turned up to Labor's conference while the Leader of the Opposition spoke about jobs; yet here is United Voice throwing money at a scheme to destroy investor confidence in the very companies that employ its members. What a disgrace! What a low act—but it is not surprising. Those in the opposition like to talk about jobs; they like to get their mates into the unions to shout about jobs. But when it comes to voting in the parliament to protect jobs, to create jobs and to give life to struggling remote communities, they always oppose.

Since coming to office, the federal Liberal and National government has established one-stop-shop environmental assessment agreements with all states and territories. We have managed to cut approval times by 50 per cent, and we could do even better if these guys on the other side were to get out of the way and allow the full implementation of this policy. We have before the Senate legislation to remove duplication in the environmental approvals process, but those opposite are opposing it. When we get it approved it will get projects off the ground sooner and get more people in jobs sooner, and Labor is opposing it. Labor members in Tasmania—senators who represent the electorate of Braddon and all the other electorates—are standing in the way of it. This is unbelievable at a time when we need many, many more job opportunities.

I know that many in my electorate are weary of the battle. They are weary of this battle of having a vision for jobs through a mine or any other development cast before them and then cast aside by the litigants of green activists and left-wing members of parliament. But I am resolute in my passion to see Tasmania working again, doing what it does well. I am resolute in my willingness to stand up to those who oppose legislation like this and like the one-stop-shop legislation, and against those who think we should go soft on organisations that take pride in destroying our jobs.

In summary, let me make very clear what these amendments do. This legislation, once amended, will maintain property rights. It will maintain the community's rights. Anyone with legitimate proprietary, economic, financial or other direct interests will not be affected in any way, shape or form by this amendment bill. Those who will be affected are the radical green groups that have established a fighting fund to disrupt and delay projects, with the full knowledge that they meet the world's most stringent environmental laws.

I can stand before this parliament tonight and say with absolute confidence that the overwhelming number of people in my electorate and in Tasmania have an environmental sensitivity. They are not in the business of wanting to trash our environment. We have 52 per cent of our state's landmass locked up. But we need jobs. We need to find a balance and a sustainable future that provide the opportunity for companies and businesses to invest in mining, forestry developments or other developments—whatever it is—to provide jobs.

Some might be happy for many in our community who depend on these sorts of jobs to eventually just hang from trees like something out of prehistory and eat nothing but mung bean soup. But, at the end of the day, we cannot continue to live on the teat of the Australian government welfare program. We need jobs. We need people with good jobs in environmentally sensitive and sustainable projects, and they are available.

As I said, these litigants are only interested in finding the loopholes. They are not interested in anything else but stopping, disrupting and delaying. Even the most radical of green groups still have the opportunity to contribute through the developmental process. They can make their case. They can put in their submissions. They can go and speak at hearings. They can do all that. But what this amendment seeks to do is take away the capacity of anyone without a direct proprietary, economic, financial or community interest to just see it as some sort of game, when at the end of the day the only losers in the game are normal Tasmanians, ordinary Australians, who end up losing their jobs.

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