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

Perhaps I was not quite clear enough in my question. I was specifically talking about the excluded offsets projects, specifically talking about the negative list. The way that Senator Xenophon's amendment is worded simply means that the minister must determine that, if there is an adverse impact on the avail­ability of water or on land and resource access for agricultural production then the project is automatically deemed to be an excluded offsets project. It is thereby saying that, if there is an adverse impact on water or on land and resource access for agricultural products production, it should automatically be an excluded offsets project. That seems to me to be quite straightforward and quite sensible. Perhaps I was not clear enough in my phrasing of the question, but is there anything in the regulations that have just been placed before us that would automatically deem to be an excluded offsets project an activity that is going to have an adverse impact on the availability of water or an adverse impact on land and resource access for agricultural production?