Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens were in fact the body that suggested the reference of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act to the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts for inquiry because the act is a very important piece of legislation that was highly controversial at the time it was introduced and there has been a great deal of criticism about its effectiveness. We thought it was appropriate that the Senate review the legislation, and the Greens have submitted additional comments as part of this committee’s report. The Greens believe that the majority report covered a wide range of issues and we do not disagree with the comments the report made, but we felt there were additional issues that needed to be addressed.

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act was originally intended to be Australia’s key piece of environmental legislation, and it should be. Part of what it does is enact our commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss. Unfortunately, it is clear from both the submissions and the oral evidence to the inquiry and the fact that our biodiversity continues to be in serious decline in many parts of Australia, as the State of the environment report clearly states, that the act is not achieving its objective.

Native vegetation continues to be cleared at a very alarming rate. Australia has the highest rate of mammalian species extinction on the planet. We are one of the 12 megadiverse areas on the planet and the only developed megadiverse area, therefore we have a special responsibility. As we have debated in this place many times, there is very deep concern about interception and overextraction of surface water and groundwater, evidenced by the creation of an environmental, economic and social disaster in the Murray-Darling Basin. And we are still unable to effectively tackle invasive plants and species—for example, cane toads are crossing the border into my state of Western Australia and we are having very great difficulty keeping them out. So we still have many environmental problems in Australia that, quite clearly, this act has not been able to deal with.

One of the issues Senator McEwen identified was that the act falls down even in its object: it says only that it is to provide for protection, when the object should be protection. It is absolutely essential that the government addresses that when it reviews this legislation and, hopefully, brings in substantive amendments. Another key issue that came up in the inquiry is the piecemeal approach the act takes to environmental protection. It cannot take a holistic approach on a national level to matters of national environmental significance because other aspects of the act mean that it takes a part approach. It cannot look at cumulative effects. It cannot look at the overall impact of proposals. Therefore, not only is the list of matters of national environmental significance not comprehensive enough—and I will come to that in a minute—but it cannot even give protection on the issues that are there already, such as World Heritage values, our national heritage and our Ramsar wetlands, and when species finally make it onto the endangered species list it is unable to look after those issues properly either.

Funding issues came up when this act was implemented. The point was made very strongly that there had not been enough money put into the implementation of the act. It was only, in fact, very recently that the government put more funding in. I am not knocking them for putting more funding in, but it only occurred very recently and only enabled sufficient monitoring of the conditions that have been put on projects that have been assessed.

I received just today a letter that talks about the lack of funding for critical elements of the albatross and petrel recovery plans and the long-line fishing threat abatement plan. While these plans have now been revised, this letter—which is a copy of a letter that was sent to the minister—talks about the very deep concern that Humane Society International has about the lack of funding for albatross and petrel conservation in Australia. It particularly points out the absurdity of a situation in which the federal government has in fact invested in funding for pest eradication on Macquarie Island but is not funding a key part of the threat abatement plan, which is monitoring the colonies of albatross to see if the plan is having an impact or the eradication of the pest species is having an impact. All that is needed is $60,000 to implement that component of the plan, and yet that is not being funded. That is a classic example of what has been raised with the committee in terms of the lack of appropriate funding.

One very significant issue that was raised with the committee in a submission, and which we raised in our additional comments, is the fact that climate change is not a matter of national environmental significance. The Greens support the recommendation of the majority of the committee that it be considered. The Greens, in our additional comments, recommend that it should be a national trigger. It is essential that that, along with water, is added. Other issues are land clearing and migratory fish. We colloquially call them ‘triggers’. That means that they trigger the Commonwealth assessment process. We believe that another matter of national environmental significance should be vulnerable ecological communities.

In terms of climate change, not only do we think that it should be a trigger but we think that in the longer term there is a need for a significant shift in the development of our environmental protection legislation. We think that the current framework should be improved. We have made a number of recommendations about how we think it should be improved. That will deal with the most immediate issues, but we also believe that we need to take a more holistic approach to this and have a fundamental rethink about the way we are protecting and providing for our environment in the future under a scenario of climate change. Climate change is going to have profound effects on our environment. We have to rethink our national plan and the way that we manage our national parks and our conservation estate. We need to be planning for resilience. At the moment, that is not built into our planning for the conservation estate. We think that that is absolutely essential. We will continue to pursue those issues to do with a paradigm shift. In her submission, Dr Marg Blakers calls it a paradigm shift. We agree with that; we think that that is needed.

Other areas that we have concerns about are, for example, the broad ministerial discretion that is allowed under the act and the exemptions that have been offered under the matters of national environmental significance. The issue that will come up in our second report is the issue of regional forest agreements. That is a highly controversial issue. The Greens do not believe that there should be that exemption under this act. That will be addressed in a subsequent report. I do not want anyone thinking, from reading our first report, that that issue is not going to be dealt with; it will be dealt with. That is a huge issue that needs to be considered. People will be aware that the Greens have been concerned about this issue for a significant period of time. We will address that in the subsequent report.

There is a wide range of issues identified both in the majority report and in the Greens additional report that we urge the government to take on board in the review. The review will be absolutely critical in directing the future of our Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and determining whether Australia gets right protecting and conserving what we have left—bearing in mind that we have done a lot of damage to our environment. It is essential that we get it right. The previous government got it wrong—it is not good English, but they got it further wrong; they made it worse—when they made those amendments in 2006. Those amendments need to be corrected. But significant improvements to the act also need to be made in order for us to protect our very fragile natural environment.