Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standing) Bill 2015. Over two years ago we were elected, amongst mandates, to: create safer borders; fix our country's budget black hole; provide certainty to small businesses; and provide a clear direction, a strong direction in relation to our policy related to the environment. The Australian people voted the coalition in on these mandates amongst many others.

It seems timely today that I am here to speak on the environmental protection and biodiversity conservation amendment or the EPBC Act. Our nation has some of the most enduring and stringent environmental laws worldwide and these laws deserve to be respected; they deserve to be observed, not subject to legal sabotage. Let me reassure the House and the people out there that farmers, landowners and any other person whose interests are adversely affected by the decision will continue to have a right to appeal any decision. It is their right as a party who carries a vested interest. For clarity, I want to repeat that: farmers, landowners any other person whose interests are adversely affected by the decision will continue to have the right to appeal any decision. That is what we are enshrining.

However, the environmental groups, those vandals out there who seek to stop any progress, will still have ample opportunity to put forward their evidence and make their case through our rigorous environmental impact assessment process. I am concerned by some of the objectives of those green groups. I want to quote from the Greenpeace Australia report titled: Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom. It says:

Our strategy is to 'disrupt and delay' key projects and infrastructure while gradually eroding public and political support for the industry.

Further it goes on to say:

Legal challenges can stop projects outright or can delay them … to buy time to build a much stronger movement and powerful public campaigns. They can also expose the impacts, increase costs (and) raise investor uncertainty and create a powerful platform for public campaigning.

As a government, we had a clear mandate prior to the 2013 election to restore confidence to the Australian people and in particular to those that want to invest in jobs, growth and opportunity for this nation. We as a government have made a decision to protect Australian jobs by removing from the EPBC Act the provision that allows radical green activists to engage in vigilante litigation to stop important economic projects. Section 487 of the EPBC Act is a red carpet for radical activists who have a political but not a legal interest in a development to use aggressive litigation tactics to disrupt and sabotage important projects.

I was astounded to hear the member for Newcastle earlier make commentary in response to these vigilante court cases in saying:

This red carpet is hardly worn, I would suggest.

I would respectfully suggest that the member for Newcastle is incredibly misguided. Radical Greens have begun an emerging trend and are using our Australian court system to sabotage economic projects, sacrificing tens of thousands of Australian jobs in the process—people that would have been the union movement, working in many of those jobs. So she cannot even support her own union membership in the jobs that would be provided.

The government will repeal this provision to return law to the usual position, where somebody with a legitimate interest in commencing a legal action has the standing to do so but somebody who really wants to prosecute a political cause does not. This will take away the congestion from our court system, which is already under significant pressure and lengthy delays. Further pressures from radical groups trying to draw out the process is not appreciated. These ideological groups pose a great threat to our court processes, generating costly delays to our system and also posing a threat to the jobs in our nation. So on one hand we have the Labor opposition talking about the unemployment rate and how the government needs to do something about it and then on the other hand Labor is opposing this legislation which will help streamline and create jobs for those very Australians they purport to stand up for.

These green activists I speak of themselves have declared that this is their objective—to use the courts not for the proper purpose of resolving a dispute between citizens but for the political purpose of bringing developments to a standstill. Green activists, in their document Stopping the Australian coal export boom, declare a strategy to delay, to disrupt and to reduce the financial viability of key infrastructure projects, including ports, rail and mines, through litigation.

This is an area that has created significant contention in the Hunter region recently. I would like to cite the Newcastle City Council making a decision just two weeks ago to move its investments away from financial institutions who invest in the coal industry. Might I add that the predominantly Labor Newcastle City Council's decision to do this was idealistically spearheaded by Labor Councillor Declan Clausen. Declan Clausen has shown that he is not only wet behind the ears; he is also green between them. Mr Clausen acknowledged that the Port of Newcastle is the world's largest coal-exporting port and that it was 'important that the city looked at diversifying its economy'. He also said that the coal industry in New South Wales 'understands the writing is on the wall' and that 'coal is not going to be a leader long into the future' and he suggested that clean technology could in part replace coal's economic contribution. That is logical—let's draw investment away from the industry that props up the city and is the main engine room of the Hunter Valley! The actions of the Newcastle City Council and Declan Clausen are so misguided.

To provide a level of context to the House: the Port of Newcastle has 216 years of history in shipping. The port operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and, in 2014 alone, it exported 159 million tonnes of coal. The New South Wales Minerals Council found—in research that was independently peer reviewed by the Centre for Small Business and Regional Research at the University of Wollongong—that mining in the Hunter region accounts for $5.9 billion of direct expenditure, employing 11,078 employees, many of them union members. The direct contribution to the local economies included paying $1.5 billion in salaries for the most recent published year, 2013-14. Mining in the Hunter directly supports 4,328 businesses, many of them small businesses. In 2013-14—the latest available data—mining in the Hunter contributed $21.1 million to local councils, including Newcastle City Council. In a 2011 report, the number of persons employed at the Port of Newcastle was listed at 6,927 in the direct port precinct. A further 597 were listed as in direct port related jobs. Transport and warehousing jobs associated with the port had 1,293 workers, and jobs listed in the 'buffer zone' totalled 30,744. These are jobs that reflect on the activities connected to the port. This port is so integral and coal is so integral to our economy. The Prime Minister recently made commentary on the decision of Newcastle City Council, asking: 'Why is a coal city moving away from coal investment?' I echo the Prime Minister's thoughts.

The Labor Party are trying to undermine Australia's coal industry at its core, and the Labor politicians in the Hunter region, at local, state and federal level, are no different. I refer to the comments of the Labor shadow environment minister, Mark Butler, in November 2014 in relation to the question of phasing out the coal industry. He said, on ABC's Adelaide Breakfast:

Yes. I think everyone agrees that over a period of time—it will be a fairly extended period of time—we'll move to more renewable energy sources.

It is one thing for the economically reckless Greens to advocate the end of one of our most significant industries, with little thought for the economic costs to Australian jobs, but it is quite another thing for the Labor Party to do the same. The Hunter Labor members have an agenda to support the demise of an industry that has upheld the standards of living in the Hunter for decades. I recently called on the Labor member for Hunter, Joel Fitzgibbon, to clarify comments he made on 27 August in support of Newcastle City Council's decision to move its investments away from the coal industry. I find it interesting that the member for Hunter felt confident enough to write to the Newcastle Herald on 29 August that 'we should insist that the council rescind its decision'. It would appear that the member for Hunter has had a drastic change of heart. On 27 August, in an interview with ABC 1233's Paul Bevan, Newcastle City Council Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes said that the council's decision 'is not directly related to our coal industry', to which Mr Fitzgibbon, the member for Hunter, replied, 'Well, I've listened to the Lord Mayor, and she makes a lot of sense of course and Nuatali has done much to sort of clarify what the council did last night.'

The member for Hunter needs to clarify, in the light of his comments, what makes sense to him in relation to Newcastle council moving its investments away from our coal industry. I call on the member for Hunter to outline what prior contact he had with council, a large majority of whom are his Labor colleagues. Did the member for Hunter make any attempt to persuade his colleagues to stop this from happening? I would also like the Newcastle Lord Mayor to answer in detail how isolating major banks due to their investment in fossil fuel is 'not at all related to the coal industry'. In relation to Lord Mayor's comments that 'lots of companies around the world are doing it', on 27 August 2015 on ABC Newcastle, I am quite certain that most companies and councils around the world would think twice before isolating the largest revenue-making industry within their local government area.

The Labor Party are not serious about jobs in the Hunter, both indirect and direct mining jobs. The ALP are not serious about the small businesses in the Hunter, many of whom rely on the coal industry to survive. Where do the member for Newcastle, the member for Charlton and the member for Shortland stand on this issue? Mining and mining support industries are big employers in their respective electorates. How would Newcastle City Council itself feel if the banks diverted their lending and investment portfolio away from Newcastle? With a record export month for coal out of the Port of Newcastle last financial year, this industry has proven that it can have a long and enduring future in our region. Without doubt, it is backbone of the local economy. In times of investment uncertainty, it does not need its political leaders at local government, state and federal levels undermining that confidence. The member for Hunter and the Labor politicians are doing their best to try to distance themselves from this debate, but I know the undue amount of influence the Labor Greens coalition have over the member for Hunter and his policy decisions.

As a government we seek to bring certainty to our nation, to the court processes and of course with our environment policies. I am particularly passionate about this piece of legislation due to my responsibilities as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and because my electorate of Paterson is impacted so directly by the attacks on the coal industry. This is a government that has to ensure some of the toughest and most effective environmental laws in the world are upheld. We are protecting the Great Barrier Reef, building a generation of environmental enthusiasts with the Green Army and implementing unprecedented water reform in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Minister Hunt introduced this legislation to ensure that environmental activists no longer receive special treatment under the EPBC Act. Let me be clear that the proposed amendments do not change environmental standards. This legislation makes sense because it brings the EPBC Act into line with other Commonwealth laws. Farmers, landowners and any other person whose interests are adversely affected by the decision will continue to have the right to appeal any decision.

We want to create certainty for business. Under this government, Australia is open for business and part of that is removing uncertainty for investors by halving the time for approvals and clearing Labor's backlog of approvals, and by approving over one trillion dollars in project approvals. Does Labor really want to support green activist groups who cost jobs of their union members and delay critical investment? I call on the Labor Party to support this sound legislation.

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