David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on these combined bills, the Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill 2024, the Nature Positive (Environment Information Australia) Bill 2024 and the Nature Positive (Environment Law Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill. My concerns were triggered with the classic motherhood statement attached to this bill, 'nature positive'. I've read all about the nature-positive agenda that populates many extreme green websites and that is to turn 30 per cent of the known developed world into natural bush again. You can tell from the outset where this is coming from.

These bills as a whole deliver incredible powers to an unelected bureaucrat. There is a delegated authority being moved from the legislature—namely, us—and ministers, to unelected appointed bureaucrats. I don't like that principle. Our whole legislative process, at state level—New South Wales, in particular—and here at the federal level, over the last few years has had many more bits of important decision-making moved to unelected bureaucracy—rather than the minister, who actually has to face the people.

Governments come and go, and that is the beauty of a democracy. If the people of Australia don't like what's happening, they can vote people out. But you can't vote bureaucrats out; they are appointed. They are there. And, with the delegated authority, they don't have to answer to anyone. They only have to administer the incredible powers that they've been given.

The first of these laws creates or establishes another statutory body, an environmental protection authority, as well as its CEO and the powers that that CEO and any other delegated person in the organisation would have over nine environmental laws. We are very used to some things being signed off by ministerial subs—we've all been familiar with that—but once these come into full force, a lot of these things may not even reach ministerial level. They won't be assessed. There will be no-one to go to if you are a person who is getting an agricultural process underway or—shock, horror—a new housing development underway or a new freeway, a new port, a new mine, a new energy facility, a new powerline. It will be subject at a federal level in a duplicated system to what already happens at state level.

We have environmental protection agencies in many jurisdictions and this will be another classic case of the federal government knows best. They will come in, as the member for Hunter said, with teeth and the ability to give huge fines. People will not invest in this country anymore if we keep going at this rate. Existing businesses in this country, particularly in agriculture and the primary industries of fishing, forestry, of growing food and fibre, are being attacked on all fronts.

This cluster of bills will, I'm sure, send shivers down the spines of many people, because the delay in getting through another level of bureaucracy is going to be a huge cost and a huge detriment to anyone trying to develop things in this country, particularly after they have gone through the state and local government processes. It is not a free-for-all. There are so many restrictions, inquiries, evaluations. It is amazing anything gets done in Australia. The government is talking about this boom in rare-earth minerals and manufacturing things in Australia again, but, I'll tell you what, to get a mine up and running in Australia, it takes about 15 years. With this new bureaucracy, you could add another three or four at least, going on past experience.

Now, you've got to remember this is just another one of these very deleterious pieces of legislation. They are here already. I talked about the restoring our rivers bills. That sounds so beautiful—restoring our rivers. The Murray Darling will look like the Danube, the Rhine, the Mississippi, perfectly filled with flowing, bubbling, little fish jumping. There will be trees and everything will be wonderful, but what will happen? They are going to attack and take another 750 gigalitres of water out of the pool. What has happened already? The Barmah forest, the river red gums that are designed to be intermittently flooded are dying because there is so much water that used to be taken in irrigation to grow food—you know, the illegal substances of food, grains, crops—that depend on water. That bill has led to more and more irrigation water leaving valleys, leaving productive food and fibre, and the economy in those areas will weather as a result.

We also have the nature repair bill. What is wrong with restoring nature? There is nothing wrong with restoring nature. We have heaps of nature in Australia. I have read a lot of tourism magazines lately to see how we are being rated in international tourism, because that it is another huge industry in this country that we do well. In two UK and European surveys—in the last two that I've read—the No. 1 nature capital of the world is acknowledged to be Australia. That's how they see it. Compared to other countries that do rape and pillage, we have such a good legacy here already. We have got a national park system in every state. We have got a managed forestry system. We have got standards for irrigation systems. We have a well-managed Murray-Darling Basin. Though we have droughts and we have extremes of weather, these bills and this sort of mindset that we've got to regulate everything to death are going to be the death of our greatness. We will be doing what the member alluded to—this bizarre idea that we've got to turn 30 per cent of our productive land back to nature.

As I said, we have huge legacy native bush—unless you are trying to build windfarms, which they're doing in Queensland. At the moment, they get a leave pass from all these current approvals at state level in Queensland. There are several thousand kilometres of roads being built up and down the Great Dividing Range that have been approved under state code 23 without any environmental assessment, all because it's putting up renewable energy. But these wind turbines will only be producing energy about 30 per cent of the time. Once they're there, they destroy the native bush on these hills and on these mountaintops. The animals leave. The electromagnetic vibrations—animals that we see as Australian native classics, like the possum and the kangaroo, hear all this whirring. They don't like it; they leave. You can see the before-and-after pictures taken by Steven Nowakowski, former Greens candidate in a Queensland election, who's outlined all this environmental destruction.

We've got this bill coming in to give unelected bureaucrats huge powers, but the same machinery that's bringing this in is giving everyone a free-for-all in Queensland and the same in New South Wales. All the environmental processes are getting a red-carpet ride to get all these renewable projects approved offshore.

The Port Stephens offshore wind project off Newcastle, for which one exploration licence has already been approved, is in an area where you've got 10,000 whales travelling up and down, north and south, every year—at least 10,000. You've got a commercial fishing zone in the middle of that and the one off the Illawarra. They've got another one off Perth and off the coast of Gippsland—all these things that are really disturbing the environment.

These windfarms are massive. The ones that are proposed will not be at shallow depths close to the shore; they'll be 30 kilometres out. But they're so big you can still see them from the shore. That's how big they are. I can't imagine any fishing happening in these zones, because they've got exclusion zones around each one of them. The one off Port Stephens in Newcastle is earmarked to have up to 297 of these massive 260-metre-tall wind turbines. So there goes the fishing industry—the bluewater economy of Port Stephens. Half the commercial take on the north coast comes off that area. A billion-dollar industry based in Port Stephens will suffer, all because, if they actually survive a storm or an east coast low, they'll be intermittently generating electricity, when you could have a new power station built on dry land for much cheaper without any of this environmental ravaging.

It's a most beautiful place, Port Stephens and up into the Forster-Tuncurry area. You have got a state marine reserve. You've got a federal marine reserve against it. You've got Gould's petrel and other seabirds that are protected. You've got a series of islands. It's a nature wonderland, and they want to turn it into an industrial park out at sea. We have all this restriction coming with this legislation, but, again, renewables are getting a leave pass, and they're herding the bills through as quickly as possible. They have this obsession with building renewables.

Getting back to these bills, as you can gather, I have grave concerns about the loss of ministerial control over major environmental law and about handballing it to people who, once elected and appointed, don't have to answer to the communities. They can control all the information, get information on everything and gum up the works. We will have environmental lawfare and applications to the department. It won't just be the usual green lawfare; we will have a very aggressive, highly empowered, unelected bureaucracy duplicating what's happened at the state level. It will happen at the federal level. As I said, just about everything we want to develop in this country—our energy security, commercial fishing to feed cities and nations or recreational fishing, if you want to do those—will be limited by all these other renewable energy projects. I'd be interested to see what the new bureaucracy thinks about them and whether they will perpetuate this double standard that they're giving to renewable projects.

You can gather, Mr Speaker, that I don't approve of the bill, and I don't recommend it to the House. I think we should leave the approval at the one-stop shop. If you have one EPA in New South Wales, one in Victoria or one in Queensland, we believe in applying the same laws for everyone. You can't cherry-pick which industries get regulated to death and which ones get a leave pass. I'll leave it at that, but I definitely recommend caution. This is putting lots of rushed, angry types of powers into the hands of very powerful bureaucrats.

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