Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

The government's arguments in favour of this Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standards and Assurance) Bill 2021 are the height of hypocrisy—the absolute height of hypocrisy! We would all remember that it wasn't long ago that the government brought legislation to this parliament which we supported and which was about making sure that the federal government—the federal parliament—had control over international relations. It was about making sure that states were not given primacy in terms of the agreements that our government of Australia makes with the rest of the world. What is in front of us now is for every single environmental treaty, without exception, to be deferred to the states—every single one of them! There is nothing in the EPBC Act that doesn't have its source in an international convention. This goes all the way back to Whitlam, where the external affairs power was used to make sure that the federal parliament could have a say on environmental matters. Why? Because the state of our continent and the state of our oceans are of concern to all Australians.

Why did that become a big issue back then? Because those parties opposite us wanted to drill in the Great Barrier Reef. That's where this started. And today the government wants to say, 'Oh, well, in the name of getting decisions made quickly, let's hand all these powers to the states.' The World Heritage Convention is a federal power. The Ramsar convention is a federal power. Everything that comes under the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the IUCN, is a federal power. Everything that comes under the Bond convention is a federal power.

Why did we, back in 2012, introduce a water trigger? We introduced a water trigger because underground water goes across state boundaries and is of concern to all Australians and, therefore, this parliament. The parliament decided to establish a water trigger because it felt it couldn't trust the states to deal with it in a way that involved national responsibility. What does this government now want to do? It wants to take the water trigger power and give it to the states. So a federal power that was established because the states couldn't be trusted is now going to be deferred back to the states. If you have ever wanted to know how international conventions and foreign affairs powers matter to the national government, look at the conversations that have happened over the last 48 hours about the Great Barrier Reef. If you want to argue, 'Those issues are for the states,' look at the level of national concern there is, including an answer in question time today from the environment minister for Australia, about the Great Barrier Reef, and you'll see exactly why these issues should have national responsibility.

The parliament is being asked to hand powers that only exist because of treaties over to the states. Everything the government said only a few months ago about 'Oh, well, foreign affairs is entirely the preserve of the Commonwealth, and foreign affairs needs to be run through the Commonwealth parliament' is abandoned the moment they talk about environmental protection. All of it disappears in an instant. They say, 'Oh, but Labor state premiers want to have the power.' Of course they do! Every state premier always wants to have full power over these issues. Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen wanted to have full power to mine the Great Barrier Reef. It was the Tasmanian state government that wanted to dam the Franklin. It was the Northern Territory government that didn't want Kakadu protected and wanted to mine Coronation Hill. Every major environmental protection that we talk about as being iconic in this land is something that occurred when the states didn't want it and the Commonwealth did.

On the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which the National Party have tried to derail in the Senate today: does anyone think that, if we had just asked the states to handle that, it ever would have happened? We tried that for roughly 100 years. It didn't go too well. And now the government are saying, 'Let's just hand it over to the states.' What's their argument? 'It'd be quicker.' It is true that the pace of environmental approvals has slowed down, but the reason it has slowed down is that they've gutted the Public Service. The fastest level of approvals, in terms of value of production being unlocked, happened in the last term of the last Labor government. We had Wheatstone. We had the gas projects across Queensland and offshore from the Northern Territory. We had the Prelude project. We had the Olympic Dam expansion. The approval was given, by me.

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