Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

In relation to these particular amendments, I want to refer to clause 56 itself, because one of the issues with dealing with this piece of legislation now before we have the regulations is, as I said before in this place and as I am sure I will say again before we get to the end of this process, the complete lack of detail that the Senate has to deal with in determining our position and our understanding of this bill.

If I can just take the Senate to clause 56 itself, it says:

(1)    For the purposes of this Act, an offsets project is an excluded offsets project if it is a project of a kind specified in the regulations.

(2)    In deciding whether to recommend to the Governor-General that regulations should be made for the purposes of subsection (1) specifying a particular kind of project, the Minister must have regard to whether there is a significant risk that that kind of project will have a significant adverse impact on one or more of the following:

  (a) the availability of water;

  (b) the conservation of biodiversity;

  (c) employment;

  (d) the local community;

in, or in the vicinity of, the project area, or any of the project areas, for that kind of project.

My point, Parliamentary Secretary, is that all we have to go on in terms of any security or surety for the community out there to know that there will be no adverse impacts is this line:

… the Minister must have regard to whether there is a significant risk …

That is it. Everything else is in the regulations that we do not have. That is nowhere near the level of certainty and the level of detail that this chamber needs to have to determine whether or not that is appropriate. I am very supportive of Senator Xenophon's amendment, because I think it deals with some of the issues that are facing us very clearly, very well and very simply. The very fact that I am supportive of this is because of the lack of detail that is available for the Senate. The government is saying: 'Trust us. This'll come later. Trust us. We'll give you the regulations in a little while.' I note that Minister Evans said a little earlier, 'This is the way the process works: you get the framework of the legislation and we do the regulations later.' By and large that is the process, but we expect within the framework that is given to us with the legislation a level of detail, certainty and understanding of how this will operate. That is simply not there, and that is not good enough for the chamber, which is why the amendment that Senator Xenophon has put forward is appropriate, because it deals with three things and gives absolute certainty that those three things will be excluded offsets projects.

I note the parliamentary secretary has already referred to the managed investment schemes. I think—I certainly do not want to verbal you, Parliamentary Secretary—he said they would be excluded offsets projects. But we need to be sure about the other issues of the availability of water or land and resource access for agricultural production. I do not see how including this now in any way, shape or form can have a negative impact on communities down the track, because what Senator Xenophon's amendment is saying is that, if any of these proponents bowls up a methodology that is going to have an adverse impact on the availability of water or land and resource access for agricultural production, it should not be accepted; it should not be allowed. I cannot see how that makes anything other than—to borrow Senator Ludwig's phrase—perfect common sense. It is just absolute common sense.

It worries me if the government are not prepared to say, right here and now, that they will not allow anything that is going to have an adverse impact on water or on land and resource access. Why not? Why won't they say, right now, 'We're going to rule anything out that is going to have an adverse impact on the availability of water or land and resource access for agricultural production'? Why won't they rule it out? That should cause great concern, because it is a very simple piece of certainty for producers, for landowners, for potential proponents out there to know exactly that those particular things are going to be excluded offsets projects—and so they should be.

By not agreeing to this amendment, are the government saying that they will be allowing projects that have an adverse impact on those things? Is that what the government are saying? I cannot read that any other way than that indeed they expect there may be something that comes through. On this side of the chamber we will not stand here and accept that the government are going to allow any level of risk for adverse impact on those things for our communities. It is simply not acceptable. As the minister has indicated that they are opposing the amendment, I ask him: does that mean that they will be considering projects put forward that have an adverse impact in those areas?