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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This morning I received a response from Minister Cormann as the Minister representing Minister Hunt in this matter. Sadly, rather than complying with the order for production of documents, the minister has sought to defer a response. We have another month to wait to find out what Minister Hunt did or did not know about the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority's concern for the future of the Great Barrier Reef, in particular their concern about the Abbot Point coal terminal expansion and the damage that the dredging and offshore dumping of sludge would cause to the reef.

If the minister did not know that there were serious concerns held by the marine park authority about the environmental effects of this dredging and dumping, that would enable the minister to now reconsider his decisions on whether that coal terminal should be expanded and whether that dredging and dumping should occur. We ask Minister Hunt to familiarise himself with that material, if he had not previously been informed of it, and to now use that as justification under the EPBC Act to revisit his approval decision.

If the minister had, in fact, been informed of the marine park authority's internal concerns about the Abbot Point proposal but approved it anyway, I would then contend that the minister is not fit to be the Minister for the Environment. So we are very interested, as is the community, to find out whether or not the minister did know of this concern that the freedom of information documents have revealed. But it seems we will be forced to wait for a month until we can answer that question.

I note that the reason given for this delay is the community court cases now afoot which are challenging the decisions of the minister and the marine park to approve the offshore dumping. I note particularly that the minister says not only that there is sub judice immunity—because it is before the courts—but that other legal immunities may arise where disclosure of the documents would be potentially prejudicial to legal proceedings. This is very interesting. I cannot wait to see these documents if they are indeed prejudicial to court proceedings that are underway. Clearly there must be some potentially very damning information contained within them.

So all community members, and indeed the 63,000 people who rely on the reef being healthy for their livelihoods, will await these documents and await information on what Minister Hunt knew of the scientific concerns about the Abbot Point coal terminal expansion. It seems we have to wait this extra month, but we look forward to learning whether the minister ignored the science or was, in fact, not told of the science—and therefore now has the chance to reconsider his decision to allow the creation of the world's biggest coal port within the World Heritage area that is the Great Barrier Reef.