Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to comment on the government’s amendments to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. This act is meant to protect Australia’s environment and conserve biodiversity. We have just heard Senator Ian Macdonald telling us that this is the greenest government that has ever graced the parliament. He claims that on the basis of how much money has been spent, not on the basis of outcomes. I would put a challenge to the government. All of the environmental legislation in this country was abolished and put into this one piece of legislation—this omnibus legislation—several years ago and the claim is that it protects Australia’s environment and conserves biodiversity. My challenge to the government is for them to name me one single environmental trend that has improved since this legislation was brought in. It is not about how much money that you have spent—a gambler spends a fortune in the casino every day, but it does not mean that there is any outcome. You can spend whatever you like. I am asking about performance. It is not about how much money you spend; it is about outcomes. Let us hear of one single trend.

Are there any species that have recovered from the brink of extinction—from being critically endangered—since this government came to power? The answer is no. Is there any ecosystem trend that you can point to that is improving, be it desertification, be it wetlands or be it forest communities? Have any species been on the rise or become set for improvement since this legislation came into being? The answer is no. Every single trend, whether you look at coral reefs, wetlands, desertification, salinity, soil erosion or loss of forest communities, is going the wrong way under this government. The Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 sets things even further back.

We all recognise that biodiversity embraces the entire variety of genes, species and ecosystems that constitute life on earth. It stems from over 3,000 million years of evolution. Humankind is part of biodiversity. Human existence would be impossible without biodiversity. It is crucial to the services supplied by nature. The climate; the provision of water and air; soil fertility; the nutrient cycle; the production of food, fuel, fibre and medicines; our economic competitiveness; employment security; and our quality of life all depend on biodiversity. But what we are witnessing, as I said, is a steady loss of biodiversity right around the planet and no more so than here in Australia. It is of great concern from all points of view. Many scientists are now desperate about the plight of biodiversity around the planet, especially since biodiversity loss is being exacerbated by climate change. Loss of habitat and alien invasive species, exacerbated by climate change, are driving extinctions around the planet at a rate never witnessed before.

We only have to look around Australia to see that. Look at the plight of the Tasmanian devil, for example. It is going to extinction as we speak, and nobody could have predicated even 10 years ago that that would be the case. Look at the plight of the coral reefs. Whether this government is prepared to acknowledge it or not, coral reefs have passed the threshold of dangerous climate change. It is too late for the world’s coral reefs. It is too late for the Great Barrier Reef here in Australia—it has passed the threshold. The acidification of the Southern Ocean having already weakened the corals in the Great Barrier Reef, we are now seeing global warming to the point where we are going to have bleaching events much more frequently than every five years. The reefs cannot recover from that level of bleaching. Evidence has just come in from the Seychelles showing that fabulous reefs have now been reduced to collapsed structures covered in algae. That is the fate in store for the world’s coral reefs. If you have a look in the Stern report, it points out very clearly in one of its diagrammatic pieces of evidence that with an increase in temperature of between one degree and two degrees the coral reefs die, and that is where we are proceeding very rapidly towards because the world is not addressing climate change and, with it, biodiversity loss.

We in Australia have a global obligation to protect biodiversity. We are signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity and we have ratified that convention. We also support—I would hope—the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Millennium goal 7 has incorporated biodiversity as one of the targets. In fact, at its most recent meeting the convention incorporated the 2010 target. Halting biodiversity loss in Europe by 2010 is a target of the European Union. Those countries are taking that seriously. We have the government of Finland together with the government of Germany putting a huge amount of effort into bringing together the multilateral environment agreements and building synergies between the framework convention on climate change and the biodiversity convention and moving that work forward so that when Germany chairs the G8 and hosts the biodiversity convention in a couple of years time that work on biodiversity will be well and truly advanced.

In fact, at the most recent COP on biodiversity, the decision of the COP urged:

Parties—

which includes Australia—

Governments, international financial institutions, donors, and relevant interGovernmental organizations, as a contribution towards the Millennium Development Goals,  to implement development activities in ways that are consistent with, and do not compromise, the achievement of the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the 2010 target, including by improving environmental policies in relevant development agencies and sectors such as through integrating concerns relating to biodiversity and the Millennium Development Goals more directly into environmental impact assessments, strategic environmental assessments and other such tools, including at the national level through the national strategies for sustainable and the poverty reduction strategies and programmes.

It goes on to urge:

Parties to report on their actions at the national level to link efforts to achieve relevant Millennium Development Goals and the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity in their next national report;

I will look forward to Australia’s national report to the biodiversity COP on how these amendments to the EPBC legislation do that, because they go in exactly the wrong direction.

I have been a critic of this legislation since it was first developed. I stand by that criticism because there is no place that the government can point to where this legislation has facilitated either environmental protection or biodiversity conservation. In fact, it has facilitated continuing degradation of our natural and cultural heritage. It has not provided any incentive for developers and producers to engage in any voluntary environmental programs. And, as the Australia Institute concluded, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the environmental assessment regime has wasted an enormous amount of public and private resources without realising any significant environmental outcomes. That is my judgement about this legislation as well.

Now the legislation is to be made a lot worse. How is it to be made a lot worse? That has been outlined pretty clearly in a number of the criticisms made by the environment groups. It potentially wipes out ecological communities from the current waiting list for protection under the EPBC Act. That is because of the repeal of section 185.

Section 267 is amended such that a recovery plan is no longer a mandatory requirement once a threatened species or ecological community is listed under the law as threatened. So we are not even going to have recovery plans. How does that fit with our obligations under the CBD to show how national legislation actually facilitates the protection of biodiversity? We are no longer going to have mandatory requirements to identify critical habitats for threatened species in any recovery plans that might happen to be developed. As I pointed out, you cannot maintain a species unless you maintain the critical habitat for it. We are losing many of our migratory species as well because of loss of habitat surrounding loss of wetlands, loss of forest areas, loss of nesting sites and so on.

The new section in the act, 194K, gives the Minister for the Environment and Heritage arbitrary discretion to remove a publicly nominated species, ecological community or key threatening process from the annual list of species to be assessed for listing. The minister can make these changes for any reason that the minister deems appropriate, so any controversial nominations may never in fact be considered for protection. You have the minister now being able to refuse to have assessed a threatened species that was previously rejected, even if its conservation status has worsened. The koala is an example of a species that that might be applied to.

Section 324 is amended such that the nomination process for including places on the National Heritage List is also controlled by an annual thematic process at the discretion of the minister. There is the potential to allow the indefinite postponement of an assessment so that controversial nominations may never be assessed for protection. On and on and on it goes. What this does is effectively say that it is going to be up to the minister to decide what is assessed, when it is assessed, whether there is a recovery plan, whether the recovery plan is ever implemented. I do not know why you just don’t drop the pretence, repeal the whole bill and say that Australia does not have a commitment to environmental protection or biodiversity conservation—and actually be up front. The rest of the world knows full well that that is the effect of the regime that we currently have. It is now even more so because of this particular piece of legislation.

I intend to insert into this legislation by amendment a greenhouse gas trigger. As Senator Macdonald said, Senator Hill did talk about a trigger—in fact, at the behest of the Prime Minister, who, back in the late nineties, talked about putting a greenhouse gas trigger into the legislation. The government went so far as to put out a press release on 5 May 2000 entitled ‘Greenhouse trigger design released’. Senator Hill released the actual design for the greenhouse trigger, but it never went anywhere—it was just buried. Now the government has the temerity to say that this is not a good idea, when in fact it is its own idea that it chose to bury because it chose to do nothing about climate change.

My amendment on the greenhouse trigger goes much further than the half a million tonnes that the Labor Party has put in. That is because climate change is understood to be a much more accelerating and critical issue now than it was back at the turn of the century, a few years ago. We now know that climate change is the critical issue facing the planet and we have to act on it. How can a federal government say it is committed to reducing greenhouse gases nationally if it has no process for assessing the likely impact of greenhouse gases from any major development proposal?

So we have a situation where we have people bragging about the fact that the federal government is supposedly doing something on climate change while, at the same time, we have new coalmines up for approval. Queensland coalmines were approved, and now we have the Anvil Hill mine, which is set to generate 0.1 of one per cent of the total global greenhouse gas emissions in any one year. That is outrageous. And yet it cannot be considered in terms of Australia’s total emission reductions in the government’s plan because there is no greenhouse gas trigger at the federal level. You cannot be serious about trying to assess Australia’s capacity to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions if there is no capacity at the federal level to look at a development application and see how it might fit in with an overall strategy. So I intend to move that particular amendment.

I also have an amendment in relation to nuclear, to make sure that there are no further loopholes in the government’s legislation in relation to that by making sure that a nuclear waste dump, transportation of nuclear materials and uranium mining and processing facilities cannot be slipped through under the changes that the government is making through its bioregional processes.

I return now to climate change and the greenhouse gas trigger, in particular the appalling criticism in the Australian today of the judge in New South Wales who made a courageous decision in relation to the Anvil Hill mine. What the judge did in relation to the environmental impact assessment was to say that future greenhouse gas emissions should be taken into account in an environmental impact assessment. It is a landmark decision, and for the editor of the Australian to come out and say that this is a narrow ideological decision shows quite clearly that, whatever it says about climate change, the Australian is not serious about any actions that reduce greenhouse gases.

For the benefit of the editor of the Australian, what has to be recognised is that under international law it is illegal for one state to cause harm to another state. That is now codified in international law. Australia selling vast amounts of coal to China and putting huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is in breach of the requirement under international law not to cause harm to another state. In fact, in most countries, it is illegal under domestic law for polluters to cause nuisance to the public and put defective products on the market, and damages must be paid. International and domestic law prohibit human rights violations, and domestic laws impose duties on directors of insurance companies or pension funds to act in the best interests of shareholders who may suffer financial harm as a result of climate impacts.

What we are going to see is increasing litigation around the world on the basis of human rights. One hundred million people around the world depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods. Countries that deliberately do not take action to reduce greenhouse gases and that refuse to ratify Kyoto are in breach of any obligations in relation to this matter, and there will be countries that take action against countries that do not do the right thing. Very soon you will see the European Union seeking to use trade law in order to say that profits generated in countries that do not reduce their greenhouse gases in a mandatory way are giving a subsidy to those, and that will be disputed under trade law.

Australia is setting itself up for a major fall here, because the rest of the world will not tolerate free riding, and that is how they see what Australia is doing on greenhouse gases. Every single day there is new scientific evidence. Just yesterday, scientists were talking about the Ross Ice Shelf, saying it has collapsed previously and collapsed quickly. A whole new body of law is being looked at in relation to climate change. Just look at the United States. On 8 April last year the Federal Appeals Court in Washington heard a case brought by two dozen states and others against the US Environmental Protection Agency for failing to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The federal court dismissed the case, but in June this year the United States Supreme Court argued and agreed that it would hear the case. It is still ongoing and the debate it has caused in the US is quite considerable.

So we are going to see the courts doing what governments ought to be doing. The judgement in New South Wales is a courageous judgement. It is completely consistent with what is happening around the world, and we are going to find that cases will be brought against Australian companies under international human rights laws for violating the right to life and livelihoods of people who depend on natural ecosystems because of what those companies and the governments that facilitate those actions permit. I am suggesting that this government is putting the Australian economy and people at risk of financial sanctions, not just ecological outcomes.

We have to have action on climate change. We have to have action to protect our environment and the ecosystems on which we all depend for our life. We get air and water. We get all of these services from the environment but they are being trashed. This legislation is doing nothing to turn around the trends of decline. I want to see some action from the government that will facilitate strong action, not the abrogation of everything to the discretion of a minister who, at his or her own whim, can do as they like. I find it extremely offensive that in this legislation all we see is how much money the government have spent. They cannot point to one outcome of an improved trend in biodiversity conservation. There is not one species that has been taken off the threatened, endangered or critically endangered lists because of the government’s actions. (Time expired)