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

Just to finalise the government's response to the amendments moved by the member for North Sydney previously when we were discussing this issue, as I said in those comments, I very much respect the intent of the member's amendments, and I certainly will continue to work with the member and other members of the crossbench on this legislation.

The final issue that the member raised that I wanted to address was her amendment relating to the publishing of advice that the CEO of Environment Protection Australia may appoint an advisory group. The legislation that we are proposing already says that the CEO of Environment Protection Australia may publish the advice from the advisory group or one or more of its members on the Environment Protection Australia website where it's appropriate to do so. This supports transparency, but it also balances considerations that there is some information that the advisory group may have that is not appropriate to make public.

I wanted to give the House a couple of examples of this. It may be, for example, that Environment Protection Australia is making a decision that relates to a parcel of land where there are threatened species. There may be the last few examples of a threatened plant. That is very attractive to plant collectors if they know the exact location. Members would be very well aware of the finding some decades ago of the Wollemi pine, which, of course, is a tree that was common 91 million years ago. It's commonly referred to as a 'dinosaur plant'. They were thought to have become extinct about two million years ago, until an off-duty national parks staff member found some—a tiny stand of them. Since that time, there has been every effort made to propagate these plants—you can buy them, of course—but also to translocate them to other, secret locations in the hope that they may grow again in the future.

The original stand of Wollemi pines has been infected by a pathogen—phytophthora root rot—because it seems someone who thought they were doing absolutely no harm went with no malice to visit the location of these Wollemi pines, and now these trees that had survived for millions of years are actually in danger of dying of root rot. They can treat the symptoms, but they can't eliminate the pathogen.

There are other examples, like the 40 million-year-old Springbrook leatherwood trees in South-East Queensland. There are a tiny a number of them in a tiny part of a national park in South-East Queensland. People being able to locate these last remaining examples of threatened species would be a real problem.

The other example, of course, is there may be advice from traditional owners. Traditional owners have every right to control the information that they provide to Environment Protection Australia. It is an absolutely fundamental premise and tenet of our environmental law reforms that, where traditional owners provide information about the lands that they are responsible for, they have control of that information.

I should also say that the advisory group will comprise a variety of members. They won't function by consensus. You might have advice from an engineer and an ecologist that give you different perspectives on a decision. We won't be getting one piece of advice from the advisory group that then goes to Environment Protection Australia. The CEO of the EPA will be entitled to take different advice or different perspectives from the different experts that they have, so that may also limit the advice that the experts are prepared to give.

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