Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

This Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill 2024 is the thin edge of the wedge. What really perturbs me and so many others, particularly farmers, is that their lives and livelihoods are being encroached upon more and more. They have so much difficulty doing what they do now, without another layer of bureaucracy being placed over their occupations, their industries and how they go about their business.

What really concerns many as well is what happens if, after the next election, there is a minority Labor government operating in conjunction with a crossbench and, in particular, the Greens political party, because that would be disastrous for this nation—because the Greens political party is not just an environment party; the Greens political party is much more than that. They, dangerously, want to change the way we live. They, dangerously, want to rewrite history. They, dangerously, want to pervert the future such that the way we have modelled our society is altered for the worse in years to come.

The simple truth is that this bill is bad for business and it's particularly bad for rural and regional and remote communities. Why? Because it's yet another example of more restrictive, and worse, regulation. This regulation—red tape, green tape, green lawfare; call it what you will—is being foisted onto small and local businesses. They don't have chief financial officers. They don't have compliance officers. They don't have human resources managers. But hang on; yes, they do, because they're all of those things. The mum-and-dad businesses are doing all of that and so much more. And if they do employ people—and that's becoming increasingly difficult for all manner of reasons—then they often pay that person or persons more than what they take home themselves. They never have a holiday.

It's particularly hard for those businesses which operate somehow, somewhere in a space involving environmental laws. It's just making it harder to employ people. The barriers they face are forcing them to not employ people, to do it all themselves, to work harder and harder and harder, almost into an early grave. Take the phasing out of gillnet fishing on the Great Barrier Reef: provisions under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the EPBC Act, means it is becoming increasingly difficult. I know that some of what we face here is state compliance, state law, but—come on!—do we really need another environmental protection authority overseeing everything?

When people come to your electorate office and complain about this, that and everything else under environmental law, it becomes so difficult to know whether it's going to be a state EPA or the Commonwealth's jurisdiction. It all gets caught up, and I think sometimes that's what government wants; that's what the bureaucracy wants. They want these things to be tied up for years and years and years. It's no wonder nothing ever gets done. It's no wonder nothing ever gets delivered. It's no wonder it's so hard to build infrastructure. Every time you try you've got another layer of cultural law and green lawfare and minority groups that just want to stop everything.

We had a policy that we wanted to build dams. It was so difficult because the Commonwealth can't build dams without the say-so of the states. And it wasn't just the Labor states saying no; sometimes it was those states that were wearing our own political colours, political stripes, that made it so difficult to get on and build water infrastructure for flood regulations, to stop communities being flooded, but also to store water for valuable food and fibre production. And it shouldn't be so. I mean we're smarter than that—well, we should be!

It is becoming so onerous on businesses, on ministers just to get something done. I do feel as though there is this insidious creep of more and more compliance. All too often ministers are being made to just comply with what the bureaucrats tell them is necessary, tell them is so. And look out if they don't, because they could potentially end up in the federal National Anti-Corruption Commission if they don't follow what the public servants, the bureaucracy, has told them must be done.

We need to protect the environment. There's absolutely no question about that. We haven't got a planet B at the moment, and I get the fact that we need to protect the planet, but we also need to protect people in jobs, we need to protect people who want to build things, we need to protect people who want to just live a commonsense life. And heaven help us if the Greens political party forms a power-sharing agreement with Labor after the next election! We've seen just this week the move to ban live sheep exports. We know that this is not an animal welfare thing. We know that this is not good for the environment. It's just bad for business, bad for Western Australia, bad for the agricultural industry full-stop. It's sad to say that the biggest budget expense for agriculture, for farming, in the federal budget handed down on 14 May was $107 million to stop farmers farming. That's a fact. So, heaven forbid what is going to happen if the Greens are in a power-sharing arrangement.

They have a Horse Racing Transition Taskforce that's going to co-ordinate and shut down the horseracing industry. Yes; let's go and do that! It only employs 70,000 people. It only engages with hundreds of millions of dollars back to mainly state coffers, but also in the form of federal taxes. It is one of our biggest industries but if the Greens get their opportunity, they will shut it down. It just doesn't make sense. This is where all this overregulation is headed. I was being facetious when I said, 'Yes; let's do that.' It is just getting too much.

And then, of course, we had the Labor-Greens love-in with their agreement to strip water irrigation in the Murray-Darling Basin. That was where we had the budget come down with 'NFP' next to the amount the government will pay to buy back water, and 'buying back water' is code for those river communities which rely on irrigation to almost cease existence. Many of those communities were formed as part of the soldier settlement plan, certainly in the Mirrool district and the Griffith district in the southern and western Riverina areas. But they've been told that what they do is environmentally unsustainable. It's just like our farmers—the best stewards for the environment in the nation get told to stop farming. They get paid, incentivised, to do so. This is just a nonsense! The NFP I referred to in the budget papers is 'not for publication', so we don't know how much money the government is going to spend on stopping irrigation farmers from growing the food and fibre that is the best in the world. We need it here for domestic purposes. We need it for our exports, but not according to the government and, certainly, according to the Greens. The government should realise this and put the Greens political party last on their how-to-vote cards. This legislation is absolute overreach. I wonder where it will all stop? We don't know because Labor and the Greens are always plotting against their natural enemies, which are our farmers.

What we see in this place—and I know that the member for Parkes has often said it, and that member for Herbert here would agree with me too—is that we just get tired of getting lectured to by MPs who come in here and whose electorates are about as big as this. That's my handkerchief, for those who can't see this. They represent these all-holy, pure and pious people who don't understand that their food just doesn't come from the supermarket. It actually gets to the supermarket via trucks, and they're against them and against the drivers who drive them. It comes originally from a paddock. But they don't understand that, they just think it comes from the fridge at the supermarket.

The government puts everything in place, this legislation included, to stop farmers doing what they do best. We have the best in the world, the best international practice, for growing the food and fibre that is second to none anywhere. I don't ever hear those opposite, and certainly those who sit on the crossbench, say thank you to our farmers: 'Thank you for doing what you do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.' That's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Without a farmer, that doesn't happen. We don't get food on the table. It's legislation such as this, with, 'Oh, yeah, let's just have more public servants.' How many did we get in the budget? Tens of thousands more.

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