Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise, of course, to oppose this ridiculous piece of legislation that seeks to amend the environment protection and biodiversity conservation legislation to take out section 487 of that act to remove standing in respect of third-party interventions on development affecting the environment. What a ridiculous piece of legislation. It really is just a fatuous piece of left-baiting that is going to do nothing for this country or this country's economy. At a time when last-quarter growth was 0.2 per cent, half of what was anticipated for the last quarter; at a time when disposable income per capita has been shrinking for the past five quarters in a row; at a time when there are 800,000 unemployed people in Australia for the first time in about 20 years; at a time when wages growth is the slowest it has been since the wages price index started being kept in the 1990s; at a time in which the government has between the 2014 federal budget and the 2015 federal budget doubled the deficit, it is actually ridiculous that they are spending their time on stupid left-baiting like this bill.

It is a bill that is all about trying to throw up a bit of smoke and mirrors, a bit of misdirection, saying: 'Look over here, look over here! We're doing something, we're doing something!' to try to cover up the fact that the government actually has no agenda, has no plan for this nation. They might have a pamphlet, but they certainly do not have a plan. They are a government that is such an embarrassment. Every journalist on the second-year anniversary of this government this week wrote about the utter embarrassment that this government has been in that two-year period. You saw some scathing commentary from the journalists across the different news organisations and papers about what we have seen in the first two years of this government.

We have seen an eccentric Prime Minister with his crazy let's-knight-a-prince idea on Australia Day and his very interesting approach to this parliament where he comes in and carries on like a buffoon in question time, calling the Australian Labor Party racist because we are interested in how labour market testing and skills testing might work in a free trade agreement with one of our neighbours. This is the behaviour of someone who is just not fight to govern, someone who is not fit to be the Prime Minister of Australia. If you want to be an undergraduate stunt puller in a government then perhaps don't occupy the position of Prime Minister. I know I am not the only person who has these views. I also know I am not the only person who has these views based on those sorts of antics and that it is not only people on this side of the House who think the Prime Minister ought not be in that position. We saw earlier this year the spectacle of the nation's Prime Minister being challenged to a spill without there even being another candidate. That is how bad this Prime Minister has been and how embarrassed the entire nation is at having him.

You need look no further for evidence of that embarrassment than the recent national reform summit. Here is a Prime Minister whose behaviour, conduct and track record are so poor that across civil society, business and the fourth estate you have had people saying, 'Oh my god, we don't think that politics is working anymore.' Why is politics not working? Because the nation's erstwhile leader is more interested in carrying on, picking fights, brawling, left-baiting and throwing up these sorts of smoke and mirrors and misdirections than he is in thinking about the national interest. I am not surprised that some of the people who backed him in so strongly in 2013 against the Labor Prime Minister at the time are now a bit embarrassed about the person that they helped to install as Prime Minister.

This piece of legislation that we are debating in the House today when we should be debating much more significant issues for the nation's future is utterly ridiculous, but it is also another piece of misdirection from this government. It is also a real indication of the contempt with which this government holds civil society and particularly people who are engaged in community organisations who are interested in the environment. Those are not people who are confined to one side of politics or to one particular political party. You will find people from the Left and the Right who are interested in ensuring that our environment is protected. In my own electorate I have wonderful community action groups that work to preserve biodiversity and to conserve nature, and they are not uniformly Labor people, I can tell you that—not by a long way.

As if to demonstrate to the world the degree of contempt with which this government treats those organisations, we see this fatuous piece of legislation aimed at removing third-party intervention rights under the EPBC legislation. People in the community have reacted very strongly. I have certainly got a lot of representations being made to my office about the concerns that people hold in respect of this plan to remove an opportunity for judicial scrutiny of these projects.

Being for standing for third-party groups is not an indicator that you are against development or that you are against, for example, resources projects. I myself am strongly in favour of seeing more investment in resources projects, in seeing more opportunities for our resources sector to grow. I know that coal is our No. 1 export commodity and our No. 1 export product. I also appreciate the other resources work that is done in this country and I am, as I say, strongly for resources development—provided that it is safe, provided that it is consistent with Australia's strict environmental standards, provided that there are good Australian jobs and opportunities that come out of those projects, and provided that those projects contribute to the overall national interest and are to the benefit of all people in our community, including through paying their fair share of taxation.

Being someone who is for resources projects does not necessitate the conclusion that I would therefore be in favour of this ridiculous piece of legislation that seeks to remove people's rights to raise concerns through the courts in the event that the environmental protection and biodiversity conservation legislation is breached. This is being framed as a situation where you are either for resources, and therefore for this bill, or you are against this bill and therefore some sort of person who does not really care about resources development. It is just wrong and it is nonsensical.

You can see that this bill is really much more of a political campaign for the government than it is a real, measured and deliberate piece of law reform. There are a few clues to that proposition. One of those clues is that this is not a new provision; this is a provision that was introduced under the Howard coalition government and it has been an uncontroversial provision ever since it was passed 15 years ago. It is not the case that this is some sort of radical left-wing conspiracy to choke development and to choke national resources in this country, no matter what members opposite might claim—and it is pretty funny when they do.

Another clue that this is really much more of a political campaign than a serious attempt at law reform is the language that is being used by the coalition, such as this nonsensical idea of 'lawfare'—what a ridiculous word! If you are going to use the language of 'lawfare', you might actually think about what sorts of parallels you are drawing. This comes in a week in which this parliament has been considering the assistance that should be given to people who are fleeing actual warfare—the serious matter of the disintegration of Syria and the fighting that has been going on there, now in its fifth year. That is the seriousness with which the language of 'warfare' should be used. To adopt the language of 'lawfare' is as silly as it is insulting to those people who are facing genuine conflict.

Another clue to the fact that this is a solution in search of a problem is the track record of the use of these standing provisions under the EPBC Act. Only about 0.4 per cent of EPBC Act referrals—that is 0.4 per cent, not four per cent—have ever been challenged in court, so these suggestions of some sort of avalanche of litigation, of 'lawfare', are frankly ridiculous. We are talking here about judicial review rights. We are not talking here about full merits reviews of decisions for approvals under this legislation; we are talking about looking to see whether the decision has been lawfully made. The court does not put itself in the shoes of the person making the decision and say, 'That is all fine and well, but I would have made this other decision.' The court just looks to make sure that the decision has been made in accordance with the proper processes.

If you want an example of that, have a look at the Carmichael litigation that seems to have prompted the government to move this legislation. This was a case in which the government incompetently managed to get the decision making wrong. That is what happened—it was government incompetence. The decision-making process was not correctly followed and, as a consequence, the government agreed to the court orders that were made in the case. We are not talking about a situation where the government made a flawless decision and the court overturned it at all. We are talking about a situation where there was a mea culpa on the part of the government in respect of its own incompetence, and that is what led to the consent orders being made—and I stress the word 'consent'. That is a really good example, and it also goes to my point about the obviousness, the transparency, of the fact that this is really just about politics, not about the law.

The standing provisions under section 487, which is the provision to be repealed if this legislation passes, are already sufficiently rigorous. The standing provision limits legal challenges only to community groups that have been active on environmental issues for at least two years. Not just any person can wander up to the court and bring proceedings. We are also talking about Federal Court proceedings. These are expensive to launch. This is a matter that you only do if you have some serious basis and, if you do not, under the Federal Court rules the court is in a position to consider whether or not the proceeding ought to be continued where there is an abuse of process or if it is a trivial matter.

On the substance of the issue, it is also, I think, relevant to remember that there is actually a public interest in having appropriate scrutiny of decisions made under the environmental protection and biodiversity conservation legislation. Let us remember that we are dealing here with possibly significant impacts on the environment and biodiversity. To think that it is somehow a good idea to lessen the scrutiny as part of this sort of silly political campaign, this smoke and mirrors, this misdirection that the government is deploying to take away scrutiny from its own incompetence and also to deflect attention away from the fact that it really has no agenda and no plan, is just irresponsible. And I say 'irresponsible' advisedly. For a party that supposedly stands for personal responsibility, in a situation where its own government has been incompetent, to look around for someone else to shift the blame to really exposes the hypocrisy of this government and the flimsy foundation—I think probably 'flimsy' is too kind a description—or utter lack of a foundation for this ridiculous legislation that we are in here debating today.

In short, if this legislation is passed, it is really going to put an end to any effective legal challenges against federal approvals of major industrial developments with high environmental impacts, and no-one would want that. I think, frankly, that it would be a higher priority for the resources sector to have a government that is actually competent and to get these things right than it would be to remove a provision in circumstances in which, as I say, only 0.4 per cent of EPBC Act referrals have ever been challenged in court. This sort of idea that there is some sort of avalanche of litigation out there, that there are gangs of people waiting to bring proceedings under section 487 of the legislation, seems to me to be a bit of an overstatement, to put it nicely.

I make the point that this bill has come about in an utter policy vacuum from this government. It is looking for things to do. It is wandering around saying, 'Oh my goodness, what can we do?' and everyone knows it. It is an embarrassment of a government. It is a government that should be dealing with the major economic challenges facing our nation. It is a government that ought to be dealing with improving the living standards of all Australians, improving our prosperity and improving the ability for everyone to share in that prosperity. This bill is a distraction, and it ought to be defeated.

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