Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We now understand the government is intent on further weakening Australia's carefully established framework of environmental protection. In response to a court decision setting out the government's own technical and administrative shortcomings in relation to the Adani Carmichael proposal, the Abbott government now wants to change the rules. It wants to ensure that legitimate challenges to projects with wide-ranging, long-term, and severe environmental impacts are silenced.

My first concerted political involvement came as a coastal campaigner in the south-west of WA. I know how hard it is and how much work is involved for a community campaign made up of ordinary citizens, volunteers, farmers, law students, scientists and activists to examine and contest a huge development project in the interests of our shared social and environmental wellbeing. It is difficult, frustrating, and often thankless work—but it is essential. To describe such people as vigilantes is ridiculous and offensive.

Let us be honest: the imbalance is stark already between these community efforts and the well-funded and well-connected corporate interests that pursue development proposals. There is absolutely no good reason for sharpening that imbalance. You can be certain that the changes this government has made and is now contemplating to weaken environmental protection will result in disasters.

This is a government with no regard for the rule of law and no regard for the importance of due process. It is a government that decides the outcome it wants in advance and throws a tantrum when the process, the law or the people take a different turn. Silencing and excluding the participation of legitimate environmental advocates is dangerous and it is wrong.