Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

These Nature Positive (Environment Protections Australia) Bill 2024 and the related bills yet again represent Labor's spin. As the Australian columnist Robert Gottliebsen pointed out earlier this year, 'nature positive' is lifted straight from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four newspeak: calling something positive when it's anything but.

The Albanese Labor government's revised nature-positive proposals are only positive for bloated bureaucracy and more green tape for business, farmers and other job creators. The development of this bill has been anything but the transparent government that we were promised before the May 2022 election. The hallmark of this government's work is that nondisclosure agreements have been used extensively, and industry bodies have reportedly been shown only fragments of the bill. Given the government's practice of guillotining debate, I have to wonder how much time I'm actually going to have on this, so let me get to the facts quickly!

In the last two financial years, there have been 109 referrals for environment protection and biodiversity conservation, or EPBC approval, for renewables projects, compared with 72 for the mining industry. I hasten to add that less than three per cent of referrals come from agriculture. Many proposed mining projects are for rare earths and critical minerals for the green fantasy of an energy grid underpinned by batteries. Let's be clear: there are insufficient resources in the world for every country's wish list for batteries. There is grave danger in putting all our eggs in the battery market when, for instance—and as the co-chair of Parliamentary Friends of Hydrogen—I'd say there might be other technologies that might surpass EV technology. Of course this includes nuclear energy. The sad reality of Greens policy is that batteries are not included. Yet the weak Prime Minister is trying to appease the Greens, who are throwing their toys out of the cot and screaming that we aren't taking action on climate change fast enough. Time and again, we see the Greens political party whining to the responsible adults in the room about economic policy, demanding more money be thrown at their pet projects. Coalition governments fix the budget mess those opposite create, but the Greens are making it harder and harder to get our economy back on track. The subsidies in renewable energy alone are shrouded in such secrecy and obfuscation that there ought to be a major inquiry into the misinformation and falsehoods of the government and captured agencies in the energy debate. The playing field is anything but level and yet we are told time and time again that renewables are the cheapest.

The Australian public are no fools. They see their power bills and they have called the climate con job for what it is. And farmers in my electorate know that the climate agenda is coming for their prime agricultural land. Minister Plibersek has rejected the proposed expansion of the Port of Hastings, which would have paved the way for offshore wind development. Tasmania has gone cold on offshore wind too. Don't get me wrong—if the environmental credentials in offshore wind don't stack up, by all means reject them. My concern for my electorate of Mallee and for regional Victoria is that Labor's push for radical renewable energy targets will see it look to onshore wind to meet those targets. For some reason, Labor is happy to run roughshod over environmental and agricultural land as opposed to projects at sea. It is as though the whales and dolphins vote and regional Australians don't.

Already, the Victorian planning minister Sonia Kilkenny has been given powers to fast track the planning aspect of the renewables rollout on land, laying aside any lack of social licence and community concerns. The Albanese Labor government's May budget committed $20 million to help fast track renewable energy project approvals. Most concerning is a document the Victorian government have tried to hide—that if offshore wind projects fail, they will need to use up to 70 per cent of Victoria's agricultural land. State ministers are already using ministerial orders and new powers to sideline community concerns, so that threat to 70 per cent of Victoria's agricultural land looms very large. Nationwide, Labor's doomed green energy targets right through to 2030 require that 22,000 solar panels be installed every day and 40 wind turbines per month. By 2050 there is to be 28,000 kilometres of new transmission poles and wires, which is equivalent to almost the entire coastline of mainland Australia.

As we have seen in Mallee, with the 400-kilometre VNI West transmission line and wind turbine proposal, state Labor claim to have green credentials but have been ignoring local concerns about the impacts on native species. Victorian Labor will do untold damage, racing from the current situation of 37 per cent of energy from turbines and panels to their political target of 95 per cent in just 11 years. To be clear, there is no social licence from farmers and farming communities for this abuse. I know this because I meet with my farming communities.

I return to that great irony—more EPBC referrals for renewables projects than mining. Are the Greens chaining themselves to farm gates, urging that we lock the gate against wind turbines and the blanketing of pristine bushland with solar panels and transmission lines? No; they're not. They're too busy raging against Israel. The farmers in electorates like Mallee are locking their gates and protesting outside parliaments, and I pay tribute to these farmer custodians of the land. They care about the continuing health of the land for the birds, the snakes, the bats and other species. The Nationals are listening to the custodians of the land, to the farmers and community members who want to continue their generational food and fibre businesses with a globally small but nonetheless rapidly falling carbon footprint. Farmers care about their local environments, landscapes and the long term future—make no mistake.

There are already state laws requiring environmental factors to be considered, such as the environmental effects statement or EES process in Victoria. In fact, an increasing number of wind turbine projects, transmission lines and mining for battery minerals are being referred to EES processes as well. At last check, there were five renewable projects under EES in my state since January 2022. Of the six mining projects under EES, three are for critical minerals such as battery resources. I hasten to add all three are in my electorate. So let's be very clear about nature positive. The jury is well and truly out about how genuinely nature positive renewables and critical mineral projects are. Don't get me wrong—if they tick the truly environmental boxes and if there is genuine social licence, go for it. That is not what we are seeing in Victoria. The Albanese Labor government wants to step over the current state based environmental assessment processes and create another layer of bureaucracy through this bill. You just can't get enough bureaucracy.

Labor's new federal environmental protection agency, the EPA, will be given $120 million to operate, but I note that Minister Plibersek's so-called war on feral cats has failed to fire a shot, with not one cent allocated in the May budget, despite the minister saying in September, 'If we don't act now, our native animals won't stand a chance,' saying that cats kill six million animals every night in Australia. By contrast the former coalition government announced $724,547 in funding in Mallee alone under our Threatened Species Strategy Action Plan to improve feral cat and fox management and to reduce their impact on the south-eastern red-tailed black cockatoo and the black-eared miner. Labor waved the white flag on feral cats but will create a double-up EPA, administering the same laws that Professor Graeme Samuel, after he reviewed the EPBC Act, described as 'woefully inadequate'. He certainly didn't recommend the EPA this government intends to create today.

This bill creates both the EPA and a new organisation called Environment Information Australia; however, neither currently have federal laws for them to actually oversee. After two years of selectively consulting in budget-lock-up-style consultations and hiding her plans from the Australian public, Minister Plibersek proposes using taxpayer funds to hire more bureaucrats, without any legislative machinery for them to operate. Labor want to double-down on the dual state and federal Aboriginal heritage processes and duplicate the environmental approval process as well. By contrast, the former coalition government created the one-stop-shop approach to approvals.

During the first five quarters of the coalition government, there were 269 EPBC Act referrals for assessment, and 94.8 per cent of them were decided on time. During the first five quarters of the Albanese Labor government, there were 280 EPBC Act referrals for assessment, and only 79.6 per cent of them were decided on time. Yet earlier this month Minister Plibersek claimed that 51 EPBC approvals for renewable projects since the May 2022 election were somehow more than the coalition approved in nine years in power. In April the minister tried to claim she had approved onshore wind projects three times faster than the former coalition government; however, industry analysis indicated that the minister had approved 10 offshore windfarms in 23 months in office, the same if not fewer than the number approved by the Morrison government over the same period of time—and let's not forget COVID. The minister might want to get her spin right before making outlandish claims.

The coalition government was heading towards accrediting states and territories to make more assessments in accordance with new national standards recommended by the Samuel review. We need to reduce unnecessary duplication and bureaucracy. In keeping with localism and federalism, rather than more centralised power and funding to Canberra, we should make those closest and most accountable for poor decision-making determine project outcomes that consider local impacts and, crucially, social licence.

When it comes to approvals under a future-changed EPBC Act, let's bear in mind the mentality that environmental bureaucracies see 'the changing climate', or emissions, as a 'mandatory consideration in environmental planning'. This green bureaucracy wants to embed climate considerations in all roles and functions of government. We are seeing it spread further afield, beyond environmental agencies, to agencies like the National Health and Medical Research Council, who are telling Australians that meat is bad for their personal health because it has a carbon footprint!

The minister is threatening monetary fines of up to $780 million and jail terms for businesses judged to have breached environmental obligations, enforced through stop-work orders and audits. Labor is scaring off job-creating investment and destroying Australia's productivity. Worse still, this bill will allow significant ministerial powers to be transferred to an unelected and unaccountable EPA CEO, who will be able to act with near impunity—so, too, the head of Environment Information Australia. We already know that, with weak ministers in the cabinet, bureaucracies are already using a snake's nest of power and resources to push their own agendas. Through this bill the EPA would be empowered to issue far-reaching environmental protection orders and huge new penalties on businesses.

Added to this complex mix and cost of delaying projects is the role of activist groups like the Environmental Defenders Office, or EDO, which stages lawfare against resource projects. Australia is the second-largest target in the world, behind the USA, for environmental lawfare. We are seen as a soft target. The EDO's reputation has been severely tarnished by its conduct over songlines in the Northern Territory in the Santos Barossa case and over allegations of witness coaching. Leader of the Nationals, David Littleproud, said in May that there will be no funding going to the EDO under a coalition government. The EDO relies on state and territory government grants and philanthropy, underpinned by $8.2 million over four years from the Albanese Labor government, continuing Labor's protection of economic vandals.

In conclusion, these bills only add more cost, bureaucracy and red tape, enabling a Labor government agenda that is anything but positive for nature. Labor are railroading regional communities for renewable projects that do more harm than good. Yet again, Labor robs regions to buy votes in the inner cities.

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