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

Senator Waters says it will not work. Well, there we go—I am pleased to know that the Greens have got a great big crystal ball over in that corner of the chamber! I am pleased to know that the Greens know what the future holds entirely! I guess we do hear that from many in the Greens all of the time—that they know what is going to happen in the future and have supreme confidence that their outlook on the world is of course the only outlook on the world.

The genesis of this bill lies in a government policy that barely lasted for 12 months. It lies in the fact that this Labor government, for a brief period of time, attempted to have the same policy position as the coalition—a policy position of saying that we should attempt to follow the recommendations of the Hawke review, streamline some of the processes if possible, and get greater complementarity between what the Commonwealth and the states are doing in terms of environmental assessments, and, in doing so, maintain all of the standards. And, for a brief window there, the government agreed with us. However, the government changed its mind late last year after Senator Waters had introduced this bill and has since backed down yet again—another case of a government in disarray and a government that backflips on its promises and statements.

But I think it is important to look at the recommendation of the Hawke report that led to this process of changing the EPBC Act, or led to this process of the coalition and the government saying, 'We should have greater streamlining.' Recommendation 4 of the Hawke report—and it is a long one but I think it is important to put it all on the record—states:

The Review recommends that the Commonwealth work with the States and Territories as appropriate to improve the efficiency of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) regime under the Act, including through:

(1) greater use of strategic assessments;

(2) accreditation of State and Territory processes where they meet appropriate standards;

(3) accreditation of environmental management systems for Commonwealth agencies where the systems meet appropriate standards;

(4) publication of criteria for systems and processes that would be appropriate for accreditation;

(5) creation of a Commonwealth monitoring, performance audit and oversight power to ensure that any process accredited achieves the outcomes it claimed to accomplish;

(6) streamlining and simplification of assessment methods, including combining assessment by preliminary documentation and assessment on referral information and removal of assessment by Public Environment Report;

(7) establishing joint State or Territory and Commonwealth assessment panels;

(8) use of joint assessment panels or public inquiry for projects where the proponent is either the State or Territory or Australian Government; and

(9) greater use of public inquiries and joint assessment panels for major projects.

In the main, these are wise recommendations. In the main, these recommendations of the Hawke report would provide a step forward by seeing greater cooperation in a formalised sense between the Commonwealth and the states around assessment and approval regimes in a transparent way where processes are accredited, where they must meet appropriate standards, where those standards must be made public, and where there is an understanding and a review and continued assessment to ensure that systems and processes used by the states are appropriately upheld as a result of such accreditation approaches.

So the Hawke review outlined a comprehensive way in which the powers in the original EPBC Act as it still stands today could be used to engage the states in a bilateral assessment and approvals process in a way that would protect and uphold existing standards. As I said earlier, the Hawke review was a very, very comprehensive review.

The government, to its initial credit, indicated its support for those recommendations. The government, initially, in its response stated that the government was:

… committed to enhancing the scope and use of these mechanisms to reduce duplication of systems and provide more certainty for business without reducing protection for matters of national environmental significance.

Minister Burke went on in his response on 24 August 2011 to say that the environmental reforms included:

A more streamlined assessment process to cut red tape for business and improve timeframes for decision making, including an option for decisions on proposals within 35 business days, if all required information is provided.

He also committed to new national standards for accrediting environmental impact assessments and approvals to better align Commonwealth and state systems.

The government made very clear in its response to the Hawke review that it accepted, supported and embraced the review's recommendations to have greater utilisation of the bilaterals processes within the existing EPBC Act—the exact same clauses that the Greens, through this bill, seek to strip out. The Prime Minister took this approach to COAG and sought to begin the process of working with the states to actually try to get in place these reforms that would see a more complementary approach between the Commonwealth and the states to environmental approvals. What the Prime Minister said at the COAG joint press conference on 12 April 2012 was:

Look, what we want to work towards here is a streamlined system, so that projects don't go through two layers of assessment for no real gain.

And so the classic examples that are brought by business is where people have gone through sequential assessments, so it's double the time, things that have been required for the first assessment are required in slightly modified form for the second assessment, so they don't even get the benefits of just uplifting the work and re-presenting it, it's got to be redone.

So clearly that is an inefficient system.

In a press release she said:

At the inaugural meeting of the Business Advisory Forum yesterday, business leaders raised delays in environmental approvals and assessments as a major cost. These delays, due to duplicative processes across federal and state systems, can take businesses months or even years to resolve.

Today COAG acted on that concern and the Gillard Government and states and territories agreed to fast track arrangements to use state assessment and approval processes by March 2013.

Well, here we are in March 2013, and of course what happened is that at the end of last year the Prime Minister ran away from those comments. Even though the Prime Minister said, 'The removal of these regulations will protect the environment whilst ending the costly delays that result from double handling and duplication,' Senator Cameron claims in relation to issues around duplication and increased business cost that the evidence has not been provided to justify those claims. Senator Cameron comes in here and says—as he did through the committee process and in the committee report—that there is 'just not the evidence' to back up the claims that there are increased costs, that there is duplication and that there is any impediment to business through the operation of the EPBC Act and state environmental approvals processes at present.

Well, Senator Cameron must think that the Prime Minister had the wool pulled over her eyes when she made those statements. Senator Cameron must think that the Hawke review had the wool pulled over its eyes when it supported reform. Senator Cameron must think that Minister Burke, when he supported the recommendations of the Hawke review, had the wool pulled over his eyes. That can be the only explanation for Senator Cameron's views and the views of the Greens in this matter: that they think everybody on the government side was conned into supporting reform and was conned into believing there were higher costs.

The reality is that there was clear evidence. That evidence was supported by the Hawke review. That evidence of higher costs and duplication was supported by Minister Burke when he accepted the recommendations of the Hawke review. And the higher costs, duplication and impact on business were acknowledged by the Prime Minister at the COAG meeting in April last year. But something changed between April last year and December last year, when COAG was expected to sign off on changes that would try to achieve streamlining and greater efficiency. Something changed that caused the Prime Minister to once again backflip on promises made to the electorate, to business and to the Business Advisory Forum of COAG. Something changed that saw the Prime Minister simply walk away from these reforms.

I would love to know what it is that changed. Was it simply pressure from the Greens? Was it fear that the Greens, through this bill and other parts of their campaign, would launch some type of public campaign against the government? Was it fear that preferences might not be forthcoming for the government later on? We now know that since then the Labor-Greens marriage has technically broken down—