George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standing) Bill 2015. This bill amends the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 by repealing section 487. Section 487 has the effect of extending the definition of an aggrieved person which is outlined in the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977. The original act outlines the conditions under which someone may apply for a review of an administrative decision. These conditions specify that 'a person who is aggrieved by a decision' may apply to the Federal Court or the Federal Circuit Court for an order of review. The act specifies that a person who is aggrieved is someone 'whose interests are adversely affected by the decision'. That is the test that applies across a very wide range of administrative decisions. But section 487 of the EPBC Act opens the door for any individual to challenge a decision covered by the act as long as:

… at any time in the 2 years immediately before the decision, failure or conduct, the individual has engaged in a series of activities in Australia or an external Territory for protection or conservation of, or research into, the environment.

The same, I note, applies to organisations. Section 487 specifies that all the terms used in the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act have the same meaning in the EPBC Act except 'person aggrieved'. What the extended meaning has done, in practical terms, is open a door for the misuse of Australian law. It opens the door for people and organisations who have absolutely nothing to do with the decision being made or the project being considered, or the decision not being made on the project being considered. It opens the door for people and organisations whose interests are in no way adversely affected. It opens the door to anyone with an axe to grind—any axe—as long as they took notes on their weekly bushwalk. That is what it amounts to. It is an open invitation to extreme greens to use legal warfare, or 'lawfare', in pursuit of their own ideology that has nothing to do with the decision or the matter that is being decide upon.

What we have seen in Queensland is an organised campaign by the extreme green movement to do everything they possibly can to shut down the coal industry. The coal industry is a major driver of the Australian economy. It still is, despite there being a downturn, and it was coal—certainly not the Rudd Labor government or the member for Lilley—together with iron ore that got Australia through the global financial crisis. The state of Queensland would be an economic wreck if these activists were suddenly successful in shutting down the coal industry, but the anti-coal movement pay no attention to any impacts that the pursuit of their ideology may have.

Some years ago they produced a report and funding proposal to seek investors from the extreme green network, and that report was called Stopping the Australian coal export boom. They unashamedly named their intentions, which, to many thousands of people who rely on the coal industry for jobs, for wealth, for business and for survival, were nothing short of treason. These extremists set about implementing this plan almost word by word and letter by letter. They have targeted, amongst other things, the plans by Adani Australia to build the biggest coalmine in Australia in the Galilee Basin. The plan was for construction of the Carmichael mine, construction of a railway line linking the Carmichael mine and the Galilee Basin with the port of Abbot Point, and the expansion of the port at Abbot Point to cater for new ships coming in to export the coal.

These extreme greens have done everything they possibly can to stop that project by frustrating and delaying the approvals process. I have to say there is a long litany of actions by the green movement beyond the legal warfare that I want to update the House on. They effectively inserted activists from outside our region—people who were very well connected and well trained in professional activism—into the Mackay region and the Whitsundays region. Just as they planned in that document, Stopping the Australian coal export boom, they inserted these activists into the community to create community dissent where previously there was none. Again, this is all outlined in the strategy: the strategy of Stopping the Australian coal export boom.

They have used a campaign of lies and misinformation to try to convince the public that things are terrible—that we are going to mine the reef and stuff like that. The language from organisations like GetUp! about this is that we were going to dump 'toxic sludge' on the reef. There was never any intention to do that. Why would there be? What point is there in that? But these are the kinds of lies that we have heard. They challenged approvals for the port expansion. They tried to use lies to convince various segments of the community that offshore disposal was going to blow up the reef.

The only concern they raised about the Abbot Point expansion at that point in time was offshore disposal. Even a Greens candidate said they would be happy with the port being expanded if it was agriculture that was going out, not coal, which showed the hypocrisy in their arguments about the reef. They advocated a change at that point to onshore disposal. The government moved to address concerns out there, which probably were not based too much on science but on a fear that something was going to happen to the reef; we said we would dispose of dredge spoil onshore. Suddenly, there was another reason that the green movement was against it: the Caley Valley wetlands. Now the Caley Valley wetlands has been sorted out, it is just the fact that it is coal. They are just coming out and stating, plain and simple, that it is coal. They are still railing against the project, but they are unclear as to the reason why, apart from it being coal.

Then they went and challenged the federal government's approval of the Carmichael mine. This is but the latest in a long line of extreme green actions to delay and disrupt this job-creating project. They used the ornamental snake and the yakka skink as reasons to go about this latest delay and disruption exercise. But it was not about the snake, it was not about the skink and it was not about the environment. It is not even about climate change. It is about the coal. The extreme green movement hate the coal, even though this project has the capacity to create hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs in Queensland, particularly in regional Queensland and around the Mackay region. Hundreds of millions of Indians will be lifted out of energy poverty.

If the coal does not come out of Galilee Basin, where is it going to come from? They are just going to source it from elsewhere. They are probably going to source it from Indonesia, where there are weaker environmental regulations and lower quality coal with higher ash content, which means higher carbon dioxide emissions when it is burnt. If the green movement really cared about carbon dioxide emissions and really cared about the entire planet and environmental regulation then they would promote this mine ahead of other options because the other options are going to be worse in terms of environmental outcomes.

It is about shutting down the Australian coal industry, and that is the only aim behind these actions—an aim that is purely ideological. Is that what we really want in this country? Is that what the EPBC Act was supposed to be for? Was it designed to promote ideological activism? I would say no. I would say also that we are not willing to sacrifice so much for the sake of letting the extreme greens play out their ideological games with this legislation.

I want to say to the House that maybe this argument is going on legally and politically, but let's not forget what is at stake here. Even if there is a reapproval of this project, the extreme green movement will, for the next two years, continue to disrupt and delay this project in court and quite possibly bring this project to an end. I am very worried about that. I am worried for my region. We have workers from Central and North Queensland who are desperately looking for jobs—people who have come out of the mining industry. Adani indicated they wanted to use workers from Mackay, Bowen and regional Queensland.

Just the other day, I had a longstanding business—130 years in the Mackay community—contact me and tell me that they were forced to make some workers redundant because of the downturn in the economy. We have thousands of empty homes throughout the Mackay region and hundreds of empty homes in the Bowen region, and we have this project which could restore some hope and opportunity to the region being held up by this green movement. There is the opportunity of the railway line construction and the operation of that railway line, which could create more jobs and open up more economic opportunity in the town of Bowen, which is dying the death of a thousand cuts right now. There is also the expansion of Abbot Point, which again would facilitate jobs and investment in Bowen and also the Mackay region.

This is really about the families in North Queensland—Mackay, Bowen, Townsville, the Burdekin and the Whitsundays—who are struggling because of job insecurity, because of family stress, because of family breakdown because they cannot make ends meet and because these jobs are being held up. People are actually killing themselves because they do not see that there is any hope because the green movement are in court litigating against this job-creating project. I say enough is enough. A few North Queenslanders killing themselves in despair does not worry the green movement, but I have to tell you it worries me. We in North Queensland care. The majority of others around the country should care. The people in this chamber should care. We care about people. We should care about jobs. We should care about the revenue that these projects could bring in for the government to provide schools, hospitals, basic care and infrastructure in North Queensland so people can go about living a good life. We should be caring about the things that this project could provide—for example, getting people out of energy poverty, creating new economic opportunities, creating steel and creating windmills for the environment.

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