Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am opposed to this bill. It does not take an environmental scientist to realise that Australia's natural environment is the envy of the world. We are blessed with some of the most spectacular surrounds that attract people from every nation to our shores. But there is more to places like the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru than just their good looks. Our environment is large and complex. It nurtures us, supports us and gives us a place to live, work and play; it informs our national identity and it possesses an intrinsic economic value and a greater economic value than most Australians would appreciate.

Last year, a group of international researchers from the Australian National University and the University of South Australia estimated the work of Australia's ecosystem services to be around $5 trillion per year; but it is declining in Australia, as it is over the rest of the world. The researchers found that the global area of tropical forest has declined by 642 million hectares between 1997 and 2011, while deserts had grown by 234 million hectares. Coral reefs had gradually been turned into sea grass and algae beds. The area of ocean coral has shrunk by 34 million hectares, while sea grass and algae beds had grown by the same amount between 1997 and 2011. The global area of wetlands has shrunk by more than 14 million hectares.

Unfortunately, this is where the Abbott government fits into this picture. This bill represents the latest wave of this Abbott government's attack on our environment and the people who seek to protect and represent that environment. This government has proven time and time again that not only is the environment not on their list of priorities but it is not even in their list of vocabulary. In the first year of the Abbott government, they destroyed Australia's efforts to lead the global push towards a cleaner energy future. They abolished the Climate Commission and they attempted to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Renewable Energy Agency. They have reviewed our marine national reserves and they have abolished the price of carbon in our economy. That is just in the first year of this government.

The effects of this bill are to further their anti-environmental agenda by changing the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to stop third-party interventions on developments affecting the environment. This change is unconscionable and patently unnecessary. Since the EPBC Act commenced in July 2000, approximately 5,500 projects have been through the system. That is 5,500 approvals that have been granted under this act. Of these, there have been only 33 Federal Court challenges by third parties against only 22 projects.

In terms of statistics and percentages, this represents a mere 0.4 per cent of projects referred under the EPBC Act. Of the 33 actions, four were discounted or resolved with the consent of the parties; six were legally successful in the sense that the applicant received a judgement and/or orders in its favour; and only one project was actually stopped. All others were legally unsuccessful. The EPBC Act has been the overriding national environmental protection law for last 50 years. It is our national environmental asset protection legislation. It has done this job, including through the mining boom, and has posed no problems for our economy. The approval of thousands of projects was managed perfectly well under this system by the Howard government and two terms of the Labor government.

That begs the question: why on earth is the Abbott government doing this? Why on earth are they making it more difficult and removing the right of communities and third parties to challenge environmental decisions? I think you only need to look at the timing of this particular decision, because this policy and this change was announced in a week where it was leaked from cabinet that there was nothing on the cabinet agenda—not a single thing to be debated on the cabinet agenda. That highlights the fact that this government does not have a plan. They do not have a plan to manage and govern our nation and our economy.

So in a week where there is nothing on the agenda, why not go out and attack environmental organisations? Why not go out and try to undermine the integrity of a bill that protects our environment and, by all accounts and by all statistics, has been working well in serving our economy and our environment and getting that balance right many, many years? The intention to repeal section 487 of the EPBC Act is a dramatic and dangerous overreaction by a Prime Minister who is desperate to save his job. It has been brought on by the government's complete stuff up in respect of the approval of the Adani coalmine in Queensland.

Labor believes that the rights of communities and third parties to oppose onerous developments is vital as it helps to maintain confidence in the system, prevents questionable findings and leads to all around better environmental outcomes. Basically, this provision in the EPBC Act is fundamental to our democracy. It is the opportunity for communities to challenge bad environmental decisions and this government wants to remove that right. It is important to note that standing provisions under section 487 of the current EPBC Act are already sufficiently rigorous.

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 very, very important distinction, which I think has been lost on the environment minister and the government. It limits legal challenges only to community groups who have been active on environmental issues for at least two years. If section 487(2) is repealed, then the onus falls back entirely onto individuals to prove that they are directly affected in order to challenge any mining approvals. This, of course, is an effective way to silence dissent, as individuals rarely possess the necessary resources to challenge multibillion-dollar mining conglomerates in court. The risk is simply too great for any individual to entertain.

The matter that triggered this referral and this change of the law was, of course, the Adani coalmine decision in Queensland. That challenge was made by the Environmental Defenders Office on behalf of the communities surrounding the mine. This government wants to undermine that process and that right. The result of this change would, of course, be the end of any challenges by those communities to large-scale projects that have a significant impact on the environment. One of the shameful hallmarks of this government has been its propensity to distance the Australian people from the decisions and actions that affect our community.

Labor will always support common-sense improvements to our environmental regulatory system such as the streamlining of assessment approvals and processes. But we will not support the weakening of environmental protections or the limiting of a community's right to challenge government decisions. That is exactly what this bill does. It undermines a fundamental premise of our democracy—that people have the right to challenge decisions relating to the environment in which they live when there is a good chance that those decisions will have a detrimental effect on their quality of life and the communities they inhabit. That is exactly what this reform will do. It will undermine the right and ability of those communities to challenge those decisions. On that basis, it must be voted down by the House of Representatives.

See this speech in context