Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy) to a question without notice asked by Senator Waters today relating to the environment protection and biodiversity conservation legislative reforms.

I thank the minister for taking the bulk of those questions on notice, and I certainly look forward to a prompt reply to those important questions. In relation particularly to the minister's mooting yesterday of devol­ving some of the Commonwealth's powers to approve actions under that act, we are extremely alarmed at the suggestion that the federal government would relinquish to the states any of its role in approving those damaging actions. The reason is that the states have done an atrocious job of protect­ing our environment. We have seen massive biodiversity decline, and all of our indicators on water quality and in fact any other enviro­nmental measure are heading downwards. We need a strong and independent role for the federal government in regulating the environment. The federal government is responsible under our laws for protecting matters of national environmental signi­ficance and it must not abrogate that responsibility. It cannot act like a rubber stamp. It must be a check and balance on the rapaciousness and recklessness of the states in this regard.

My other concern is that if the federal government did delegate those approvals who would be responsible for enforcing the conditions? Would that be left to the states? We know that state environment departments are notoriously underresourced and that enforcement is unfortunately a very rare occurrence. Enforcement is often left to very poor community groups who risk massive court costs when they take these matters into their own hands, if they are able to do so. That would be a completely unacceptable situation. Senator Conroy made reference to the need to reform the act to ensure that it can work effectively in a modern Australia. We could not agree more: it does need to work. It needs to work to do its job, which under the objects of the act is to conserve biodiversity and protect the environment rather than see those things destroyed rapid­ly. As I said, the federal government must not abrogate its responsibility. These are nationally significant matters and the Greens will not be supporting any moves to devolve decision-making powers to the states.

I welcome Senator Conroy taking on notice the question of the water trigger and I look forward to his response. Minister Burke dismissed this yesterday on the flimsy basis that a water trigger would pick up every single water use that was proposed—every bore would be covered. That is just patently ridiculous. The minister would well know that the act only covers significant impacts and therefore a water trigger would only ever pick up the large-scale, significant impacts. I am afraid that was a convenient but misplaced excuse. The federal government needs a power over water. This is the driest continent on the planet. When water is so scarce—and according to climate change predictions it will continue to get more scarce—it is just ridiculous that the federal government does not have the power to regulate water across the country. For example, it is a farce that when the environ­ment minister is assessing coal seam gas applications, which extract billions of litres of water from our artesian aquifers, he cannot even consider the environmental impacts of that water extraction. It makes a mockery of the process. The community, unfortunately, has lost confidence in the ability of our environmental laws to do their jobs. We need to rectify that and we need a water trigger in those laws.

In relation to Minister Burke's moves to formalise and extend offsets—and I note that there is a draft discussion paper out which we will be scrutinising further—we are extremely alarmed at the moves to extend the notion of offsets. There has yet to be a successful example of an offset. You simply cannot offset for biodiversity loss. In fact, the best offset is to simply not proceed with bad developments. We are talking here about significant impacts on matters of national environmental significance. These are not inconsequential matters. They simply cannot be offset. They are too important to be clear-felled, mined or turned into shopping centres, while some unrelated bit of land that is not in anybody's way is protected instead. We fear that offsets are a way to buy your way out of the rules, and that is not what the Australian public expects. We are very alarmed at the reference in the offsets policy that 25 per cent of the offset can be for research or education. I am afraid that is akin to destroying the last bilby habitat and then preparing a brochure on how important bilbies are. We certainly look forward to scrutinising this reform package further.

Question agreed to.