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

I welcome the government's commitment to oppose this amendment. I welcome very sincerely the fact that the government has corrected the record with regard to the advice that we heard yesterday that there are no constitutional impediments to any of the amendments before the Senate. Very clearly, there would be constitutional impediments in relation to this amendment proposed by the Greens. Very clearly, the Commonwealth would find itself going straight to the High Court from action taken by the states were this amendment to be adopted as legislation.

We should not forget at all, in looking at this amendment, that were it to be passed it would be a complete subversion of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, because the EPBC Act deals with environmental approvals. It deals with setting out the types of standards for maintaining appropriate matters of national environmental significance and protecting those matters when allowing developments to proceed, whether they be building developments, mining developments or whatever the nature of those developments might be. Nowhere else in the EPBC Act does it seek to or attempt to use its powers as some type of land management provision. That is what the Australian Greens are seeking to do with this amendment. They want to take and expand Commonwealth powers and the powers under the EPBC Act into a whole different world of activity by dragging them into approving and assessing whether or not landowners have given valid consent to the use of their land. That is a whole different realm to the consideration of whether or not an action or a development actually has an impact on the land in terms of matters of national environmental significance.

We need to appreciate that this amendment, along with further amendments to be addressed by the Greens—which I note the government has yet to rule out—would expand scope into national parks and otherwise. It is really a type of Trojan horse amendment by the Greens to expand the nature of this bill quite dramatically, beyond its initial intent. In many ways, I would question the validity of an amendment like this before the chair, because it goes so much further than the intent of the bill under question, and it goes so much further than the base and intent of the act that this bill seeks to amend.

As I outlined previously, there are arrangements in place with regard to how land access is provided for developments—land access in relation to both exploration and production. As Senator Joyce rightly pointed out and added to my remarks, the evolution of these access arrangements at a state level has been undertaken for more than a century—and the arrangements have changed over time—but a common theme and thread is that the minerals and resources in the ground have been recognised to be the minerals and resources from which the wealth that should be shared by the people of the state is generated. The Greens, by seeking to pursue an amendment like this, are attempting to deny the people of every state in Australia the opportunity to share in those resources and the opportunity to benefit from the wealth that the development of those resources can provide. The fact is that the development of those resources can be used to fund schools, can be used to fund hospitals and can be used to protect the environment in other ways.

Progress reported.