Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the House for the opportunity to present this motion, which goes to a significant concern of the residents of the Sutherland Shire and particularly in my own electorate of Cook. Kurnell and Botany Bay are places of profound national significance to all Australians, whether you live near Botany Bay or across the country. It is the landing site of Lieutenant James Cook on 29 April 1770 and was named Botany Bay for the biodiversity of plant and marine life that was discovered there at that time by Banks and Solander and which was much celebrated when they returned to the United Kingdom after their historic voyage. It was the place of first serious exchange between Europeans and Indigenous Australians and, I might also note, Polynesian people—as Tupia was also on the Endeavour. The Indigenous Australians on that occasion were the Gweagal people of the Dharawal nation. I was there on Saturday again for a reconciliation service. There was much talk about the significance of that site and the relationship between Indigenous Australians, European Australians and all other Australians.

It is on the National Heritage List. It is home to the Towra Point wetlands, a Ramsar listed wetland that includes approximately half the remaining mangrove communities in Sydney, habitat to over 30 species of migratory birds listed under the Japan-Australia Migratory Bird Agreement and several others species listed under the New South Wales Threatened Species Conservation Act. It is home to the weedy sea dragon, sting rays, starfish, nudibranchs, feather stars, sea urchins, sea dragons and other invertebrate groups. Most of these are territorial, and they cannot survive once their homes are destroyed. In fact, I am sure all members would be surprised at this. When we think of Botany Bay we often think of industry, ports, large ships, petrol refineries and so on. But those who have had the opportunity to explore the unique marine environment of Botany Bay, particularly the areas of the Towra Point wetlands in my electorate of Cook and Botany Bay National Park, will know it is a rich environmental area. It is also home to more than 700 people and families living in the close community of Kurnell Village. It is a bay where for 70 years hundreds of chemical and industrial plants have poured their wastes, including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, cyanide, lead, mercury and zinc. All of this has been poured into this bay over a long period of time, particularly through the Georges River and the Cooks River, and these wastes have now settled. They have been undisturbed and are lying dormant on the floor of the bay.

This motion is about addressing the serious threat to this very sensitive and very special place posed by Labor’s desalination plant and the associated pipeline at Kurnell. The pipeline is of the same height and width as the Lane Cove tunnel in Sydney but more than three times its length. Its construction will require removal of over one million tonnes of seabed material. This is an ill-considered and ill-conceived project. I would argue on behalf of the residents of my electorate that it is not needed. Of the 1,200-plus average millimetres of rainfall in Sydney each year, 97 per cent goes out to sea. We have a catchment problem in Sydney, not a rainfall problem. Also, it will become a stranded asset. In the Sydney Morning Herald on 17 September 2007, a former New South Wales government water adviser, Stuart White, was quoted as saying:

... if the plant’s need was based on dam levels it would ‘never have been used in the last century’.

‘The plant is likely to be needed very infrequently. This makes it a ‘stranded asset’—economic language for ‘white elephant’ ...

This is the wrong place for it. If you do have to proceed with it, it should be built not at Kurnell but at Malabar. There you can plug into the water network, and the water will be used in the eastern suburbs and the inner western suburbs of Sydney. Then there would be no need for a pipeline across Botany Bay, which is a very shallow bay of no more than five metres on average in depth.

It is a breach of the state Labor government’s commitment to only proceed with this project if dam levels hit 30 per cent—and this is probably the most telling blow of all for the residents of the shire, particularly Kurnell. There was a commitment that we would only go ahead if we were in a crisis where dam levels hit 30 per cent. Dam levels hit 33 per cent and Morris Iemma, the Premier of New South Wales, hit the panic button and he proceeded with the project against the advice of experts, who also said it should only proceed if dam levels hit 30 per cent—dam levels are now over 65 per cent. It is overpriced. While they talk about a price of $2 billion, that does not include the $2 billion that will be needed to develop the wind farm to power the desalination plant so the government can meet its commitment to green energy. That $2 billion spent on green energy should be spent on green energy to displace other forms of energy use across New South Wales. But instead it is going for a white elephant at Kurnell—not to mention the up to $1 billion that will probably be needed in other pipeline associated works to connect the desalination plant to the infrastructure of the city’s water distribution network. So that is $5 billion.

It has been made possible by an ill-considered law at a state level, the state significant infrastructure provisions under the EPandA act. This bypasses environmental protection laws, including assessment of impact and public consultation. It removes third-party rights of appeal. It prevents stop work and interim protection orders. It prevents notices regarding cultural heritage, threatened species and pollution. And it ignored also the advice of numerous departments at a state level, including the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, the New South Wales Department of Environment and Climate Change and the New South Wales Department of Health—not to mention the Sutherland Shire Council, who were just completely ridden over the top of.

The intent of raising this matter in today’s debate is really to draw attention to the need to undertake some remedial action. In going forward with this matter, I wrote to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. I raised this matter with him because this government has said it wants to put an end to the blame game. So I wrote to the minister not only because he is the minister but also because he is the member for Kingsford Smith and Botany Bay is covered by his electorate. Instead of actually joining me in trying to put some pressure on the state government to ensure that, once they build this thing, they clean up their mess, his response was nothing to do with ending blame games. It says in his letter to me:

I have the power to make decisions in relation to matters of national environmental significance. I am unable to intervene in decisions of state and local government that do not impact on these matters.

This is an opportunity for the federal government in this post blame game era to actually get involved with a project which is causing serious environmental damage to the Botany Bay area and the Kurnell Peninsula, and the minister has remained stonily silent on this issue, despite the fact that Botany Bay sits within his own electorate. The intent here is to put forward some sensible solutions as to what can be done now. The Kurnell community and those who live in the shire are not saying, ‘Stop the desalination plant.’ They understand that it has been rammed over the top of them using the state significant infrastructure legislation. But they are asking for a number of things. Firstly, they are saying develop a remediation plan for this project. If you are going to insist on proceeding, then clean up your mess and compensate the communities and the environment for the unregulated impact of this project. Secondly, do the work to understand the damage that is being done to Kurnell and the bay. At present, because of the way these laws of environmental assessment were bypassed at a state level, we simply do not know the full impact of this project on the environment of Botany Bay, not to mention the cultural and heritage significance of the area. Thirdly, ensure the cop is on the beat. We hear about cops on beats on other issues, but we need a cop on the beat on this project because currently it is residents who are standing and looking over the fence of the construction project and blowing the whistle when they are violating site conditions, when they are violating benchmarks for shudder vibrations from sheet piling. When silt nets are breaking and silt is spilling into the bay, it is the residents who are the ones who are actually blowing the whistle.

As this pipeline comes across Botany Bay and goes into Kyeemagh and starts working its way through the outer southern suburbs of Sydney, residents on that side should heed the warning of what is happening in Kurnell—that this is an unregulated project which will cause major disruption. Furthermore, we need to plan for the future and safeguard the environment from future environmental vandalism under the New South Wales state significant infrastructure legislation. Where parallel approvals are required from the Commonwealth, these remediation plans and the supporting documentation must be a requirement. If Labor wants to lower the bar on environmental protection at a state level, then let us not let the Commonwealth government follow suit. Let us ensure that we insist with state significant infrastructure legislation or promise coming to the Commonwealth on that basis that we apply the tests. The New South Wales Labor government is not listening. It was my hope that the federal minister would listen, if not for the sake of Botany Bay and Kurnell, and in his capacity as minister for the environment, then in his capacity as member for Kingsford Smith with responsibility for his own bay.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have just heard from the member for Cook an entirely fanciful attack on the proposal for the desalination plant at Kurnell. The motion that the member for Cook was speaking to has three parts. The first part states obvious known values about Botany Bay such as that it is the landing site of Lieutenant James Cook on 29 April 1770, that the village of Kurnell is a strong local community and that Botany Bay is a valuable marine environment. All of that is stating the obvious—and that is pretty much all that was said by the member for Cook in his speech. But there is a false implication that these values are threatened by the pipeline of the desalination plant—when there is no evidence of any such threat. The second part of the motion makes several misleading statements about the system of environmental regulation in New South Wales, and I will say a few things about that in a moment. The third part of the motion ignores the history of this project, ignores in particular the role of the former Liberal government—about which the member for Cook has said nothing—and asks the federal environment minister to do something which he has no power to do.

We just had a bizarre statement by the member for Cook which went like this: ‘I wrote to the minister because this government wants to put an end to the blame game.’ The member for Cook then told us that the minister wrote back saying, entirely correctly—as had two previous Liberal environment ministers—that there was no power for the federal government to intervene. Yet the member for Cook said in the next sentence that this was an opportunity for the federal government to act and that the minister has remained ‘stonily silent’. How it can be said that the minister for the environment has remained stonily silent when he courteously and promptly wrote back to the letter from the member for Cook is a mystery perhaps the member for Cook can explain later.

It is simply not true, as was suggested by the member for Cook in his motion, that due to the use of the New South Wales Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 the risks from this project remain unknown. The member for Cook used a similar phrase in his speech when he said, ‘We simply do not know what the impact is’—that also is not true. Sydney Water published a 455-page environmental assessment in April 2007, which contained a very detailed examination and assessment of likely impacts. Before that—and this is the significant thing—Sydney Water had referred the project to the federal minister under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act of the Commonwealth with a very lengthy submission setting out the likely impacts of this project, which were regarded as negligible.

In that referral to the federal Minister for the Environment and Heritage on 26 September 2005, it was explained that the desalination plant was intended to assist the New South Wales government’s strategy of drought-proofing Sydney’s water supply over the next 25 years. At the time there were suggestions made that the proposal should be a controlled action because of potential significant impacts on the Kurnell Peninsula national heritage place, the Towra Point Ramsar site and listed threatened and migratory species. There were 1,470 submissions in respect of this referral and, as the referral document made clear, the two relevant listed threatened species present on the site were not thought to be at risk from this project because—

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the member for Isaacs willing to give way?

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No; I have too much to say, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Too much to say!

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Much too much to say. The next step in this process was that the then federal Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Campbell, found that there was no reason for the proposed development to be treated as a controlled action, under the federal legislation, and that it did not require further assessment or approval under the act. In other words, this project was found not to have a significant impact on matters of national environmental significance.

On 8 November 2005, having extended the time for consideration, Senator Campbell formally said, ‘This is not a matter that is governed by the federal legislation.’ There were two more years of Liberal government until the change of government on 24 November last year—including a new environment minister, the present shadow Treasurer. We did not hear the present member for Cook, nor did we hear the former member for Cook, Mr Baird, demanding action from those two former Liberal ministers—Senator Campbell or the member for Wentworth. There is very possibly one strong and good reason the member for Cook was not making that call, because in September 2007 we learned from the former Treasurer, the member for Higgins, that he was strongly supporting the desalination plant. This is what he said in September 2007:

We have a situation where our capital cities are running out of water, and I think we should have a desalination plant for every capital city in Australia.

Another good reason we see nothing attacking former Liberal ministers for the environment from the present member for Cook, or indeed from his predecessor, is that the Liberal Party is only ever interested in scoring cheap political points. It is not the substance of the issue which interests the member for Cook; it is simply the question of how to boost his own visibility, perhaps, or how to use the issue to attack the Labor state government. Indeed, that is what he is seeking to do. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts has made it clear that, if there is any change to the project that results in potentially significant impacts on matters of national environmental significance, a new referral to the federal minister will be required, and that might lead to a new assessment process.

You might wonder why it is that the member for Cook is wasting the time of this parliament calling on the federal environment minister to do something which he has no power to do and which previous Liberal environment ministers have said they had no power to do. The first reason might be that the member for Cook is single-handedly, and somewhat ridiculously, trying to paint the Liberal Party as a party which actually cares about the environment.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would be delighted to ask a question about solar panels.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sit down, thank you. The member for Isaacs will continue.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But, secondly and probably more importantly, it is because the real threatened species is not the weedy sea dragon—which I think was one of the species referred to by the member for Cook—nor the grey-headed flying fox, but anyone in the New South Wales Liberal Party who is more progressive than Genghis Khan. Notably, one of the threatened species in the New South Wales Liberal Party is the present member for Cook, who earlier this year—extraordinarily—was not allowed to join a branch of his own party in his own electorate. I do not have to search for my own description of the significance of this, because some prominent Liberals have done it for me. The New South Wales state President of the Liberal Party, Geoff Selig, said, ‘It is ridiculous and makes us a laughing stock.’

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, will the member take a question?

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Will the member receive a question?

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No. In respect of this extraordinary event of the member for Cook not being permitted to join a branch of his own party in his own electorate, the state opposition leader said that ‘there is a state of civil war’ in the Liberal Party. And the former member for Cook, Mr Baird, described it as ‘factional nonsense which highlights the problems that we face’.

To recapitulate, the Rudd Labor government understands its environmental responsibilities. The minister for the environment understands his environmental responsibilities. If there is a proper and lawful basis for federal intervention in any major project anywhere in Australia which threatens matters of national environmental significance, the federal minister will act. But we will not be dictated to by the member for Cook or other members of his party who are intent on attacking state Labor governments, prepared to wholly ignore proper processes and pretend to have discovered very recently a concern for the environment which was not previously visible.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I rise to support this motion from the member for Cook. The reason I do so is very simple. Both he and I in our respective maiden speeches set out a very clear principle: our task, our responsibility, in our own electorates was to protect our coasts and work towards clean coasts. In each of our situations, there is a threat which is fundamental, and each has been brought about by, in his case, the action and inaction of the New South Wales government and, in the case of the Mornington Peninsula and the Gunnamatta outfall, the inaction of the Victorian government.

Turning specifically to this motion, we want to address it in two parts. My learned colleague the member for Cook set out the physical risks associated with the desalination plant. I want to deal with the second element: the opportunity cost of pursuing a $2 billion project which soaks up that capital, which would otherwise be available and should otherwise be applied to the process of cleaning up our coasts. The problem that we face here is that, on the edge of Botany Bay, 166 billion litres of high-rate primary sewage is discharged every year. It is discharged from Malabar Headland. I would note that the site of Malabar Headland is within the electorate of the current minister for the environment. So let me repeat that, to the best of my knowledge—and this is an opinion, not a categorical statement—the current minister for the environment has, at no stage, raised the desperate need to end this practice of dumping 166 billion litres of waste water every year off the Malabar Headland.

Why is this a problem? It is a problem for two reasons. Firstly: it is a fouling of our ocean. It is high-rate primary sewage which, as the member for Wentworth has famously said, simply represents the removal of sandshoes from our waste products. We are using the ocean as a dumping ground. Secondly: this waste of water, as well as pollution of our ocean, is likely to be in place for another generation. This motion goes to the heart of that problem. By taking $2 billion which could be used to clean up most of the almost 400 billion litres of waste water which comes from the Malabar Headland, from the Bondi ocean outfall and from the North Sydney ocean outfall, we are seeing a grand opportunity cost.

The member for Banks represents a Sydney seat and I cannot believe that he would condone the dumping of 166 billion litres of waste water—primary treated, barely treated, effluent—off the coast of Malabar Headland. And then, when you take on board Bondi and North Head near Manly, that is 350 billion litres of primary treated waste water. The rest of the country treats their water to a secondary or tertiary standard. This is water which, at a time of national need, should be recycled for industry and agriculture. Yet at this moment, at the very time we should be adopting a 21st-century approach to cleaning up these 19th-century avenues for dumping our sewage off our coasts, the New South Wales government has come along and embedded this practice for another generation. This capital resource can and should be used, as the rest of the country has done, for cleaning up our coasts. I know that honourable members on the opposite side believe this. They cannot sit there and condone the dumping of primary sewage on a monumental basis every year off our coast. But that is what this decision will do—it will use $2 billion of scarce capital resource on a desalination plant. Desalination may have a role, but our view in the Liberal Party is that it is the last resort, not the first resort. Our task is very simple: clean up our coasts by recycling our waste water for industry and agriculture. It is what the rest of the world does; it is what the rest of Australia is going to do; it is what Sydney Water must do. And the priority must be recycling rather than desalination, because that is the way of the 21st century.

Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise also to speak on the private member’s motion put by the member for Cook. I acknowledge what the honourable member has said about the national environmental and heritage significance of the Kurnell Peninsula and Botany Bay. However, the federal environment minister’s powers under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 relate only to projects which are likely to impact on matters of national environmental significance. In respect of the New South Wales government’s proposed desalination project, this did mean the Kurnell Peninsula national heritage place, the Towra Point Ramsar wetlands site and the listed threatened and migratory species. The New South Wales government referred the proposed desalination plant to the federal government for consideration under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 in September 2005. The referral was made available for public comment and almost 1,500 submissions were received. The question for consideration at that time was whether the proposal should be a controlled action, as defined under the act, because of the potential impacts on the Kurnell Peninsula national heritage place, the Towra Point Ramsar wetlands site and listed threatened and migratory species.

The then Minister for Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Senator Ian Campbell, determined on 8 November 2005 that the proposed action was not a controlled action and therefore did not require further assessment or approval under the terms of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. He and his department were required to consider each component of the proposed project, the proposed action and the proposed mitigation measures. After examining the assessment material presented by New South Wales, the former minister for the environment, Minister Campbell—one of your own party—decided that this was not a matter within the federal jurisdiction.

I can sympathise with the member for Cook where there is perhaps some community concern about the project, but I have to tell him that Senator Ian Campbell had form. In my own electorate of Hasluck in Perth, Senator Ian Campbell was intimately involved in the decision to approve a brickworks development on Perth airport land. That is Commonwealth land, and under the Airports Act the jurisdiction of developments on the site is exclusively in the hands of the federal government. Indeed, part of the problem with the project proposal was that there was no ability for state or local government authorities, let alone ordinary members of the community, to have any impact or any influence on the decision that Senator Ian Campbell had the power to recommend and be involved in. Of course, as history transpires, in August 2006 the then Howard government’s ministers, including Senator Ian Campbell, approved the development of a brickworks on Perth airport land, right in the centre of a residential area with clear environmental and health consequences for residents within the electorate of Hasluck. Many conjecture that it may well have been one of the decisions that did not assist the former member for Hasluck in his campaign to hold his seat at the 2007 federal election.

If there have been changes in the proposed project by the New South Wales government that result in potentially significant impacts on those matters of national environmental significance, a new referral to the federal department will be required and could possibly lead to a new assessment process. If existing works, despite assurances from New South Wales to the contrary, do impact on matters of national environmental significance then the department of the environment’s compliance and enforcement branch will investigate. I am absolutely certain that the minister for the environment will not hesitate to rigorously apply the law. As I say, some opposition to this project may not be based on environmental grounds but rather on the question of desalination. I can speak from Western Australia’s own experience on the success of the Kwinana desalination plant—so much so that we are now building a second one—and that plant has received significant approval and provides 17 per cent of Perth’s water supply. We are, of course, the only capital city in Australia that has not been required to go to water restrictions on sprinklers and the like. It is about planning for the future.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.