Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 is a disaster for our nation’s environmental and cultural heritage. That such a bill could be brought before the parliament in the current atmosphere of growing public alarm about the environment, to emasculate the already weak legislation, the one piece of legislation that empowers the government to protect Australia’s environment—that is, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999—is testimony not just to the Howard government’s dereliction and culpability in its handling of Australia’s environment but to the power of the vested interests—that is, the mining corporations, the logging corporations and the other lobbyists from the big end of town. The government does not have an environmental conscience and does not give a tinker’s cuss about the Australian environment, and therefore it is abandoning its responsibility as the custodian of the Australia that the next generation and all future generations will inherit.

That such a horror piece of legislation as this could be before the parliament at this end of the year can only be matched with the cynicism of the minister for the environment, who just walked out of this chamber, having been here for a few minutes. This legislation has been brought before the parliament before the all-important State of the environment report has been brought in—he ought to have had that before the parliament by now—so that this country can get a glimpse, even from the inevitably politically loaded report that it must be, about how rapidly our nation’s environmental heritage is being destroyed.

One only has to look at the loss of species. Amongst all the wealthy nations on earth, we are the worst performer. Regarding the impending loss of species—our Australian wildlife and plant life heritage—amongst all the world’s wealthy nations, we have the biggest list of endangered species. Who would have thought that a Prime Minister, who almost never appears in public without being in front of the flag and uses the Australian idiom time and time again to profess his great fealty to this country, could be so totally derelict about what makes this nation a nation? Of course, above all things, that is our land, our seas, our waterways, our forests, our mountains, our plains and the diversity of vegetation and wildlife that makes up this country. Indigenous Australia has always known that and Australians all know that, but here we have a piece of legislation which is going to see the current unprecedented rate of destruction of the natural fabric of this planet accelerated.

The Humane Society International and World Wide Fund for Nature Australia have briefly put together a list of their concerns about this tooth-pulling legislation which comes at a time when our environment laws need to be strengthened. They point out that the bill before us will potentially wipe 500 threatened ecological communities from the current waiting list for protection. These are being taken off the list by a derelict government and a failed minister for two reasons. The first reason is self-evident—there is a failure to look at those 500 threatened species, properly assess them and bring into place management plans to protect them. The two national and international environmental organisations point out that these 500 threatened ecological communities involve millions of hectares of endangered habitat across the country. There, Acting Deputy President Moore—as a member of parliament you will know—is the problem. There is no way that this venal, small-minded, materially oriented government which is lacking in the values of heart, warmth and relationship to this planet which gives us life is going to protect millions of hectares of endangered habitat across this country.

The Stern report, which says that climate change threatens the planet but also will come with a $9 trillion a year bill if we do not act on it by mid-century, pointed out that, in protecting the environment, we are in fact protecting the future of the economy. But we have a Prime Minister still so bereft of Australian concerns—those deep-hearted ones that go beyond standing before business groups and talking about cutting tax—that he cannot get the idea that, as a responsible nation to coming generations, we should be protecting our environment, therefore protecting our economy, and also ensuring their life, their happiness and their excitement about diversity on this planet, on which we are one of five million to 30 million species—just one species, dependent on the rest.

He does not get the idea that, if you do not look after the environment, you will not look after the economy. In fact, in his thinking he is so far back into the industrial age that he still believes that it is a case of the environment or the economy. There is no way that he can listen to a Sir Nicholas Stern, an economist, if it cuts across that war of ideas that there is in his 1950s head as he sells out this country through a weak, vacillating and procrastinating person—inevitably, a person of conflicting ideas—such as we have in the Minister for the Environment and Heritage.

The second point that the Humane Society International and World Wide Fund for Nature Australia pointed out that this bill will do is remove the mandatory requirement to develop a recovery plan once a threatened species or ecological community is listed under the law as threatened. That is, if one of the Australian species is listed as rare, vulnerable or critically endangered, under the very moderate—in fact, weak—Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the minister is required to bring in a recovery plan—not just let it go, but do something about rescuing that species from oblivion. This legislation removes that requirement.

If you look at the Mary River that Senator Bartlett referred to, the Beattie Labor government is about to build a dam at Traveston—a travesty of a dam—which will flood the prime breeding places left in a very small range for the threatened Queensland lungfish, which scientists point out is a living link which tells us how vertebrate species like we human beings came ashore from the oceans millions of years ago. It actually tells us about our own history.

If you ask the world expert, Professor Joss from Macquarie University, about this dam, she will tell you that it is going to drive this marvellous Australian species rapidly into extinction. That is what happens when you destroy the breeding ground of a species. Premier Beattie can talk about ladders and lift wells and all sorts of other things, but the breeding ground in the gravel of the river is going to be suffocated under metres of water. The minister for the environment’s advisers know that. The minister for the environment knows that. Premier Beattie and all of his Labor Party apparatchiks know that—one of them, at least, had the conscience, bless her, to resign from the party before the last election and stand against this dam. The Prime Minister knows that. The Prime Minister is fully aware of what that dam will do. But, under this legislation, one fears that the government will give the go-ahead for that destructive and unnecessary dam but the requirement for a recovery plan, of all things, to help that lungfish recover and have a more assured future for the future of this nation is being ripped out of the legislation and thrown into the gutter.

The third point that the key environment groups made was that the bill will remove the mandatory requirement to identify critical habitat for threatened species in any recovery plans that are developed. At the moment, if you are going to have a recovery plan—if the minister decides that there will be one—sensibly, the legislation says, ‘Find the critical habitat upon which that species depends and protect it.’ That is being torn out of this legislation. We will not do that anymore. With the Mary River, for example, we know where the critical habitat is. That is the key river for the survival of the Queensland lungfish, the Mary River turtle, the Mary River cod and other species.

But no longer will this weak and hopeless minister for this anti-environment government have to sensibly look for critical habitats for such species. Now the government will be able to say, ‘What could we do? Build the dam.’ There is nothing in the law to stop it. There is nothing that the minister will have to consider anymore. The two members of the government opposite—so there are 36 missing—might ask their colleagues to consider, when they come to vote for a gag on this bill a little later this week, because the debate on this legislation will not be allowed in full in this parliament, whether they will be able to look their grandchildren in the eye when somebody brings along a copy of this legislation and says, ‘Why did you do it?’

The fourth point that the HSI and WWF list is that, sadly, this bill will make it harder for the public to secure legal protection for threatened species and ecological communities because there is a new requirement in it for public nominations to comply with themes set by the minister or risk having their nomination left off lists for consideration. So you do not look at a species to see whether it is threatened anymore; as Senator Siewert indicated, it has to fit in with a specific theme that the minister will be able to point to that was set for that particular time. If it does not fit in, too bad. We are going to hear: ‘Trust the minister.’ If the minister ever does come back into the chamber we are going to hear him say that. But the minister took up his papers and hightailed it out of here before I got up to speak.

The minister is not going to stand in here and hear what this legislation is about and look anybody on this side of the chamber in the eye, because he knows that he is a disgrace to that ministry. He knows that he is selling out the nation’s environment with this legislation. He knows that he is paving the way for the extinction of a whole host of threatened species which, under the current act, have some chance of surviving. Some greedy proposal will come along which this government will not get in the way of—certainly not to protect Australia’s environmental heritage.

The bill will give the minister arbitrary discretion to remove a publicly nominated species or ecological community from the annual list of species to be assessed for listing. Currently, the minister gives the scientific committee repeated extensions to postpone consideration et cetera. Now the minister will be able to just knock a species off the list. The bill allows the minister to refuse to have reassessed a threatened species that was previously rejected for protection, even if its conservation status has worsened. So the minister may have rejected a species for listing in the past and, if the species heads towards extinction and comes up for listing again, he can just knock it off because he can say, ‘The government looked at that at some previous time.’ I will finish off with a statement from the Humane Society International that I think is so inherently heartfelt and understated—

Debate interrupted.