Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Under this bill the minister for the environment would retain responsibility for direction-setting and Australian government policy under national environmental laws, including the determination of nationally protected matters.

With this bill we are amending nine pieces of environmental law to give appropriate responsibilities to our independent national Environment Protection Australia.

This is consistent with the approach outlined in our Nature Positive Plan.

These amendments would confer permitting and licensing, and compliance and enforcement responsibilities directly onto the CEO of EPA, including in relation to recycling and waste exports, hazardous waste, sea dumping, ozone protection, underwater cultural heritage, air quality and species permitting.

It also would allow for the minister and secretary to delegate their powers and functions under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to the CEO and EPA staff.

It would confer key compliance and enforcement powers in Commonwealth protected areas directly onto the Director of National Parks.

It also supports the establishment of Environment Information Australia by repealing existing state-of-the-environment provisions from the EPBC Act.

As part of our stage 2 reforms, we are making a number of important changes to the EPBC Act that would commence immediately after the passage of this legislation.

The compliance powers available under the EPBC Act have not kept up with modern standards or community expectations.

That is why we are also introducing critical changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 to deliver stronger enforcement.

This bill would expand and update audit powers, introduce environment protection orders, increase criminal and civil penalties for serious contraventions and introduce a civil penalty formula.

We know that most businesses are doing the right thing.

However, the changes to the civil penalty formula would bring it into line with similar federal regulatory regimes such as those that apply to financial crimes.

As with the legislation on financial crimes, this new regime would allow an appropriate financial penalty to be given that reflects the seriousness of an offence and is of substance to deter and punish misconduct.

Our framework would provide flexibility in the range of penalties that can be given for the most egregious offences, safeguards against the consequences of an unlawful action being considered just a cost of doing business, and ensures financial penalties can be commensurate to the value and capacity of a body corporate.

New compliance audits would provide more flexibility to audit a range of activities covered by the EPBC Act.

Existing directed audits will be expanded to cover a greater range of circumstances.

Environment protection orders (EPO), similar to the powers that state and territory EPAs have, are intended for use in response to urgent circumstances where there is an imminent risk of serious damage to a protected matter, or where the damage has already occurred.

These would only be used where the minister or CEO of EPA reasonably believes there has been or is likely to be a contravention the EPBC Act.

An EPO would need to be revoked where the minister or CEO of EPA reasonably believes it is no longer necessary.

These would all add to the compliance and enforcement powers of EPA.

The 'stop clock' amendments would allow proponents to tell the decision-maker that they do not want certain decision-making timeframes to be paused while additional information is sought.

It would give proponents a greater say over statutory timeframes.

These changes would give proponents transparency about why additional information is needed, because the government understands the very real cost of delays to business.

This is a balanced set of reforms that moves quickly to set up crucial institutions and reporting and would get them in place as soon as we can so that we can continue to work on stage 3 of our nature-positive law reforms.

We will keep working with individuals and groups—as we have done to date—to develop the remainder of our reforms so we can get them into the parliament and passed.

That's what the community expects; that's what we will deliver. I commend the bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.

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