Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I'm confident that I speak for a great many Australians when I say that the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments have done a dreadful job of caring for Australia's environment. I will start to address that issue by first of all talking about the most pressing environmental concern this country and the globe has, and that is climate change. It is abundantly clear that the federal government does not have a plan to deal genuinely with climate change and instead is committed to a carbon future, in particular through its fascination with gas. Let's not beat around the bush: gas is not a transition fuel; gas is a carbon fuel. The fact that this government has laid out a road map for reliance on gas for decades to come is all the proof you need that this government is not committed to dealing with climate change.

Let's not fall for the spin from the government when it says it is doing something about climate change. Let's not fall for the spin when the government talks about our emissions going down. The only reason they've gone down in any significant way is because of a temporary reduction in global and national emissions on account of the pandemic. We can be absolutely confident that once this pandemic is behind us the economy, industry and transport will come back with a vengeance, and not only will we return to the old levels of emissions we will return to much higher emissions.

It is not good enough, it is simply unsustainable, for the government to use the Kyoto credits. No other countries are doing that. There's no basis in international law or within the agreements that are on the table. What's needed, of course, is for the government to lay out a roadmap and put us on the pathway to 100 per cent renewables and zero net carbon emission, and that would be so easy to achieve. For a start renewables are cheaper than carbon energy. It's that simple. It's an undeniable fact that to build wind, solar and other technologies is cheaper than to build a new coal-fired power station or a new gas-fired power station. And let's stop this nonsense about, 'renewables are only effective when the wind blows and the sun shines'. Anyone with any nous understands perfectly that wind and solar are just two parts of the jigsaw. They're just two technologies which we would use as part of a holistic solution that would also rely on technologies like batteries, hydro, pumped hydro, geothermal, wave, tidal, green hydrogen. There are so many ways that we can have reliable and cheap energy in this country. It just takes the political will to commit to it and the political will to discard coal and to discard gas. It is well within this country's capacity to achieve what I describe and what the community wants. We've got the know-how. We've got the money. We've got an abundance of renewable energy resources. It just takes the political will to do it.

Of course, when we talk about the environment it is more than climate change. It's also about our flora, our fauna and our threatened species in particular. To that end, what the government needs to do is stop misusing changes to the EPBC Act and actually commit to an entirely new environmental framework for this country. The EPBC Act would be a good act if it was improved. But it doesn't go far enough. We need an entirely new legislative framework that goes way beyond the EPBC, that will genuinely provide protection for all flora and all fauna in this great country and that will provide protection for our river systems, our water resources and so on. It needs to have tough standards. It needs to have an independent panel to implement it. If the government can't bring itself to a radical overhaul of our entire environmental framework then let's at least get the EPBC Act right. Many Australians, many members of my own community, were not just disappointed, they were downright alarmed that, when Professor Graeme Samuel completed his interim review into the EPBC, rather than the government saying, 'Wow, a very, very credible person looked at this made some very important recommendations and we commit to implementing those recommendations', instead the government cherry-picked one recommendation—that environmental approvals be devolved to the state and territory governments—and rammed through this place, in a recent sitting week, the necessary change to the EPBC Act. Even though Professor Graeme Samuel was absolutely clear in his review of the EPBC Act that any devolving of authority for environmental approvals must be accompanied by an independent agency to oversee the implementation of the EPBC Act—an independent body, a national watchdog, that would be able to lean on tough national standards that would need to be complied with by the state and territory governments. It is not good enough. I say to the minister: if you're going to cherrypick one recommendation from Professor Samuel, you must also go to his other key recommendations, because Professor Samuel was absolutely crystal clear that you must not devolve authority to the state and territory governments unless you do, indeed, have an independent watchdog—a strong watchdog—and you have tough national standards.

I'm particularly concerned for my own state of Tasmania as a result of this development in this place—which, by the way, was rammed through here without proper debate and now is sitting up and hasn't even been dealt with by the Senate. So why the federal government would ram it through here without proper scrutiny by the crossbench and the opposition—or even by its own members—beggars belief. There was no urgency, because the Senate hasn't got to it and won't get to it for ages. And I hope the Senate does what it did in 2014, I think, when it rejected a similar proposal under the Abbott government to devolve environmental approvals. I do worry for my own state, because, in my own state, not only do we now have the prospect of the Tasmanian government having the authority to make the environmental approval for projects; we also have the recent ramming through the Tasmanian parliament of the major projects legislation, which basically gives the government and the minister authority to run roughshod over proper process.

I'll add to that another layer: the fact that Tasmania has the weakest political donation laws of any jurisdiction in the country. In fact, it could be said we've got no donation laws in Tasmania.

So we've got the federal government devolving decision-making for the environment to state and territory governments—in my case, obviously, to the Tasmanian government. We've got the Tasmanian government now with legislative authority to run roughshod over proper process and basically declare anything it wants to be a project of state significance. And we've got next to no donation laws, so we don't know who's giving money to which party and to which candidate. You add that to the mix, and we have a recipe for an environmental disaster in Tasmania. And, in large part, the key ingredient in that recipe is the federal government allowing the state government to make environmental approvals.

Surely everyone in this place understands that this country has one of the most remarkable collections of flora and fauna of any place on the planet. And we are the custodians of it. This government and this minister are the custodians of that. But at the same time we have a frightful extinction rate. And what are we doing about it? We're doing bugger-all! We can do better than this. And it's not just about what we want or what our political donors want or what our mates in industry want or what our mates up the Murray-Darling want with their water. It's not about them. It's about the inherent value of our natural environment in this country and the fact that we are custodians of that for our children and their children and forever into the future. I'll tell you what: future generations are going to lament our generation and this government, the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government, for being key players in the destruction of this priceless natural environment that we have in our country. Frankly, we are betraying our children.

So I call on the government and I call on the minister: lift your game. Do better on climate change. Do consider a whole new environmental framework to protect the natural environment in this country. Go beyond the EPBC. But I say to the minister: if you are going to lean just on the EPBC, then listen to the experts—listen to people like Professor Graeme Samuel—and implement their recommendations. Have a national watchdog. Have tough standards. And only then consider giving authority to the state and territory governments, because, if we'd relied on them in the past, we would've dammed the Franklin and we'd have oil mining on the Great Barrier Reef. (Time expired)

See this speech in context