Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, except that you are now trying to tell me that it is a Greens amendment. It is certainly not a Greens amendment. When Senator Cormann took the call earlier, you suggested that you were going to respond to some of the issues that I had raised. I again invite you to respond to those, Minister—that is, how do you functionally and practically see this amendment operating in the regulations that you have put forward? The explanatory memorandum to the bill talks about how the excluded projects or the negative list system will work. It highlights the four original adverse impact areas. We are now planning to include a fifth, and that has been planned to be done for some time. Part 1.27 of the explanatory memorandum says:

These impacts may be in, or in the vicinity of, the project area, or any of the project areas, for that kind of project … The intention is that vicinity may be interpreted broadly, including water resource availability in associated catchments.

So how are 'vicinity' and 'adverse impact on land access for agricultural production' going to be defined? In the regulations we have been presented with some definitions for 'adverse impact on the availability of water', and there is a threshold level of 600 millilitres of annual rainfall and a whole lot of terms about how that operates and waivers and so on. They are all there for good debate, good analysis and good consideration by interested stakeholders. The question is, how will this new paragraph (e) in clause 56 of the bill, about land access for agricultural production, work? What will the thresholds for that be? How will that be defined in the regulations? Yes we think it should be done, but we want to have confidence that it is done well, that it is done right, that it is done effectively. If it is worth doing, it is worth making sure it is an effective amendment to the bill.

Minister, can you explain for the record how you expect these regulations to reflect this amendment? What will the threshold considerations for land access for agricultural production be for inclusion on the negative list of projects or kinds of projects? What will be taken into account? What will be the tipping point? How can Senator Williams for his constituency or Senator Nash, who has raised these issues before, for her constituency know with confidence that this new paragraph is going to protect prime agricultural land and ensure that it is not subject to projects that would see it taken out of agricultural production?