Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I wanted to concur with the sentiments of the member for Goldstein: we are representatives of our communities. I want to share some observations, and relay and echo some commentary, from my own community. The Labor government and the environment minister have failed to deliver on their promises to overhaul our broken environmental laws, to make them stronger and to truly protect our environment. This is from my constituents. In fact, they're continuing to undermine these laws every chance they get—basically, doing the gas industries' work for them. And they've tried to do it—and this is the point we were making earlier today—in an underhand way, without anyone noticing.

We, the Greens, are not protesting the safety provisions in this bill; what we are protesting is the rest of it. Basically, what part 2 of schedule 2 of this bill does is, effectively, say that if an action is proposed by Santos or Woodside—for example—but doesn't comply with the requirements of the existing NOPSEMA-endorsed program for a gas project or CCS under environmental laws then, despite not meeting those requirements, the action is still considered to be compliant with the law.

The amendments introduced today by the government do nothing to change the original intent of the provision. That's because they require only that regulations made are not inconsistent with the objectives of ecologically sustainable development—which, coincidentally, have been left to be very vague principles. More importantly, the government's amendments effectively changes nothing about the original draft because the legality of any regulations won't be affected if the rules aren't consistent with ecologically sustainable development, if the resources minister doesn't consult with the environment minister, or if the resources minister does consult with the environment minister and she says it is inconsistent with ecological sustainability. The only thing changed by the government's amendments is that the power to fast-track gas projects expires after 12 months, but anything approved within 12 months will be legally valid. That is why the entire schedule 2, part 2 needed to be scrapped. It's reckless. It's reckless that in a climate crisis—and this is what we're concerned about and what our electorates and our constituents are concerned about—Labor is effectively knee-capping the environmental approvals process to fast-track new gas projects. It's pretty clear that that's actually what's happening.

Just over the weekend, there was a massive paddle-out to protest the Otway Basin mega-seas Mcblasting project—a project that would see underwater explosions every 10 seconds at more than 250 decibels. This is louder than the atomic bombs of the sixties. I'm sure none of us want to even try to imagine the impact on our precious marine ecosystems of blasting of that frequency across a landscape almost the size of Tasmania. These are the sorts of things that are proposed to happen. Labor is actually abandoning the environment; this is in the view of our constituents. Our very future, our grandchildren's future, is why we're here. By giving gas companies increased licence to destroy—as we mentioned before, the government gets a letter from a few gas company executives, and all sorts of other approaches, and then later offers up a bit of legislation that removes all the headaches of environmental approvals processes. Unfortunately, there is a link, we believe, between the levels of donations that are given to the Labor Party and the hearings they get. What could be the reason? This is irrational. The science says this shouldn't be happening.

We can't just stop oil and gas production and consumption in Australia overnight; we know that. We do need some gas in our energy mix for the next decade or so in this country, but we already have far more than we'll need. We're not fabricating this; this is based on scientific reporting. Let me repeat that: we don't need a single extra gas well drilled and we don't need a single extra gas project approved. We just can't afford it. We can't afford the increasing devastation that comes from a warming world.

In terms of the amendments of the member for Warringah, section 790E(1) says that even if a regulation made by the minister for resources under the offshore act is not consistent with the endorsed program, it is regardless considered to be compliant, and that is the issue— (Time expired)

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