Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Hansard source

As the senator representing the Perry Masons of the backbench has indicated, it was a consent order. And he caved in; he surrendered to it. That was the legal advice that he was finally forced to accept, because he had no defence at law for his actions and had to give in and agree that his position was indefensible, which was clear for anyone else to see. That position was clearly spelt out in the Senate estimates. It was clearly demonstrated in the Senate estimates that the minister’s position was totally indefensible.

What strikes me here is that the minister’s obligation to be fair and transparent in the way in which he administers the duties of his ministerial office has been fundamentally corroded by the political commitments that he gave during the election campaign. He has prostituted his office as a consequence of making those commitments to the electorate of McMillan, as part of the marginal seat strategy of the Liberal Party, rather than undertaking his office on the basis of the integrity and legitimacy of the legislative and regulatory processes that are available to him as a minister within this government.

Quite simply, we take the view that this minister has to go. Any analysis of the extraordinary events over the past two years makes it very clear that there are three basic problems in the way in which he has behaved: firstly, he has corrupted environmental approval processes for party political gain; secondly, he has twisted and misused scientific evidence provided to him in the approval process and he has been caught out doing so; and, thirdly, he has now been forced to backflip in the Federal Court and has exposed the Commonwealth of Australia to the potential of considerable legal liability. These are all serious failings for any minister and collectively they are grounds for dismissal. This Senate ought to censure this minister and the Prime Minister ought to sack him.

Let us go through the issues that I mentioned. On the matter of misusing his office for political advantage, it has become quite apparent that Senator Ian Campbell pursued these policies following the commitments he gave in McMillan during the election campaign. He saw an opportunity to use his office to swing a marginal seat in Victoria to the Liberal Party. Before he had even sighted scientific analysis against this proposal, he publicly announced that he would do everything in his power as a minister to halt the Bald Hills project.

The scientific evidence is that there were no parrots identified in the surveys undertaken. Over a 12-month period, the consultants undertook a study, and 10,441 birds were seen, but not one single orange-bellied parrot was spotted. There was no record of the orange-bellied parrot at Bald Hills. There was identified, 20 kilometres away, a habitat for the orange-bellied parrot. There was in fact a sighting 40 kilometres away from the proposed wind farm site, but there had already been a wind farm approved for that site. But in the case of Bald Hills the scientific facts were very clear. The minister commissioned advice, it did not suit his purpose and he chose to ignore it. He sought advice from the department and that did not suit him, so he ignored that. He ignored the legal precedent established by his own colleagues in previous Howard governments. He sought to buy time, 450 days of time. He sought to avoid the fact that he had to make a decision within 30 days. He chose to ignore that in his desperate bid, his desperate worldwide quest, to find a parrot that would suit his purposes with regard to Bald Hills.

The second line of defence that he chose to use was to white-ant the approval process. Despite his very best efforts, he could not find a mechanism to do that, because his own department confirmed the validity of the Victorian approval processes. Independent experts retained by his department reached the same conclusions. In fact, his expert went further, to an unwelcome extent. She argued that the analysis was clear and that further research would be of no use to him. This is exactly what Senator Campbell did not want to hear. He did not want this project to proceed, no matter what the science said, and it did not suit him to have his own departmental officials tell him that he was dead wrong. That is what occurred. He went ahead anyway. He commissioned further advice, this time a general study of the possible impact of wind farms. He chose to look at 23 separate examples and still did not come up with the result that he wanted. This process was, of course, an attempt to buy time and defer decisions, but the proponent intervened with court action and forced him to make a decision. That decision was made, and it went against the company. It was finally overturned by the Federal Court on 4 August.

There is a problem here of a minister ignoring scientific advice, and we know that in this portfolio it is particularly important for the minister of the Crown to pursue evidence based policy. That is exactly what we have not got in this case. We have got a decision being taken by the minister on political grounds, not on scientific grounds. He wilfully defied the scientific advice, on the basis that he had already made a political decision. He sought to reinterpret that advice, to misrepresent that advice, to take evidence out of context, to twist it to his political advantage, and he has been caught out on that score as well. His hand-picked advice, the Biosis report, said that ‘almost any negative impact on the species could be sufficient to tip the balance’ against the parrot. However, the fundamental problem was to address that question at source, not by the rejection of this particular wind farm. That is what his scientific advice told him:

Our analyses suggest that such actions will have extremely limited beneficial value to conservation of the parrot without addressing very much greater adverse effects that are currently operating against it.

The real question that arises is: what action did the minister have to take to support his conclusions? He had no evidence to back up his decision, which had already been made. He fell back on twisting the evidence and relying on half-truths. Evidence was presented from the scientific research, and I quoted from it yesterday. Ashley Stephens, an officer of the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, wrote to the authors of the Biosis report, asking whether the multiplied effect from tables 3 and 4 of the report meant that there was a mortality rate of one bird every 1,000 years. The senior zoologist confirmed on 7 April 2006 at 10.28 am, in an email response:

Yes you’ve calculated correctly.

So there was just no question about what the evidence was and what it meant, except for this minister. It fundamentally contradicted his major proposition. In the May estimates hearings, what did he try to do? He tried to bluff his way out of the situation again. He sought to abuse and denigrate members of the opposition. If I recall rightly, when I tabled that particular email he went so far as to suggest that I had acted improperly. I recall he even said that I was gutless. Whatever claims have been made against me, that is one that would not fit.

However, the Prime Minister has expressed some concern about the actions of this minister. For instance, on the Neil Mitchell program, which is broadcast on Southern Cross Radio, earlier this year Neil Mitchell asked the Prime Minister: ‘What about the moth?’ John Howard said to him, ‘The moth?’ The conversation continued:

NEIL MITCHELL: You’re going to stop a residential development at Melton because of a moth—the golden sun moth.

JOHN HOWARD: Who said that? I’m not aware of that. Who’s stopping it? A residential…

NEIL MITCHELL: You are.

JOHN HOWARD: I’m stopping it?

NEIL MITCHELL: Well, your minister.

JOHN HOWARD: My minister is?

NEIL MITCHELL: Ian Campbell is.

JOHN HOWARD: Well I will investigate that. He hasn’t taken any decision has he?

NEIL MITCHELL: No, he’s looking ... he’s considering whether the future of the moth is jeopardised.

John Howard then said: ‘Yeah, all right. I’ll have a look at it.’ Of course, the statement was made shortly thereafter that the housing development in Melton could go ahead.

We had a court fiasco, which was predicated, of course, to follow from such a trend of events. It was inevitable that the minister would get himself into such trouble. The end game is that it has highlighted the scandal within this government. The scandal within this government is that the minister for the environment is prepared to misuse his office, to prostitute his office, for political advantage and to do so to try to advance the marginal seat objectives of the Liberal Party in the state of Victoria. He has sought to ignore the clear precedents of previous ministers within the same government. He has sought to ignore the legal advice given to him. He has sought to ignore the unequivocal departmental advice given to him. He has now placed himself in the position where a Federal Court judge has told him that he must reconsider this matter according to law.

The wind farm has been set aside. He has agreed to pay the plaintiff’s costs. We all know that that does not occur in the Commonwealth of Australia unless the Commonwealth of Australia knows how weak its position is. I noticed in the press today, and the minister confirmed it in question time, that the very same project is now to be approved on the basis that the proponent comes back with a management plan, which, of course, is the position that should have been taken 450 days before the minister made his ill-fated decision on 3 April. The minister has found that his whole argument has been torn to shreds by the court in this country. The half-truths, the misrepresentations, the political hyperbole, have been exposed for the lies that they are. The minister’s position has been overturned at great expense to the Commonwealth. This is a clear case of there being no principles at stake because the minister has acted without principle. (Time expired)