Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I said before I was interrupted, the delays in approvals can cost millions and millions of dollars. I have experience in that because tragically, in 2012, stage 2 of the Olympic Dam in South Australia was delayed indefinitely by BHP. It was a tragic blow for the working men and women of South Australia who were looking forward so much to the growth and the prosperity that would have provided. You can lay a lot of that squarely to the environment: it was incumbent on that company to perform, or to jump through the hoops, so that it could get its approval. It got its approval; the delays in getting its approval were some years. What happened then? It built uncertainty, and time is a great destroyer when it comes to mining because mining is a global business and we are exposed to global production pressures. Markets change; markets go up and down. Countries become unstable; countries become stable. With all of these processes—the approval processes, all the hurdles the Greens senators in this chamber would love to see doubled and tripled—it became moribund; completely bound up in the approval process. The mining industry would be captured by this ideology which would stop investment. That is what happened in the case of South Australia. There is no other reason that can explain why a company would go through so much investment in approvals and the many delays that they had to put up with. It must have been heartbreaking for all the people who worked on that task force within BHP to finally come to a point where the years had passed so much that the very aspiration which they had when they went for those approvals was no longer the driver for why they would develop that mine.

Let me talk about environmental standards. They will be strengthened under this change. Before the Commonwealth environment minister can enter into any bilateral agreement with the states and territories, they must demonstrate to the minister that their environmental assessment and approval process meets the very highest environmental standards set out in the act. That is evolving, and the community has an expectation. It is not just the franchise of the Greens in this chamber to protect the environment—although they would tell you otherwise. People on this side of the chamber are as concerned as they are on the other side of the chamber about environmental outcomes not only for Australians but also for the planet. The minister will still ensure that the states and territories meet the highest possible standards in environmental protections. This may indeed mean that some of the states and territories will have to make changes to meet the minister's high standard of regulatory and environmental approvals. They must clear that high-jump bar before the minister will sign off on their right to be the sole arbiter when it comes to this act being implemented.

It also introduces certainty, with profitability and prosperity for industries which this country has enjoyed over the last generation. It will introduce business certainty. There are a number of people on the other side who have been in business and know business. Senator Bullock, Senator Sterle and Senator Bilyk, you know that business needs certainty. We on this side of the chamber all know it because we have all had to convince a bank manager about the certainty of our business plan. If you go into a bank and say to the manager, 'I want to build a mine,' or, 'I'm a production company,' or, 'I'm an explorer,' or, 'I want to raise $10 million on the stock exchange,' the first thing the banker will ask is, 'Have you got your approvals?' You might say, 'Well, no, I haven't got my approvals, Mr Banker. But I know the system here in Australia. I will have to go through the Commonwealth, I will have to go through the state or territory, and then I will have to go through the local government. I will have to deal with all of those, not necessarily all at one time, and there may be some duplication.' By then your banker's eyes will have glazed over. By then your banker will be looking at you, saying, 'Oh, really? What you are now going to have to do is go out to the equities market and sell your story around the traps with all the stockbrokers so that you can raise your money.'

This bill introduces certainty. It is a one-stop shop. You go to that agency and you get your approval and you meet those standards which our society, quite rightly, across this country expects. Our federal government, which holds ultimate authority over this act, gets what it expects and gets certainty. It will also strengthen the system. It will improve all those environmental standards that we are looking to achieve. As I said, the Greens do not have a franchise on environmental responsibility. They try to assert themselves over it, but they do not have it.

The bill will also mean that, if we get agreement and get these amendments through this chamber, there will be, for the first time, a sharing of environmental information and data between businesses, governments and the community. This means that, according to this legislation, information will be shared between the Commonwealth, the states, local governments and businesses, and all that data will finish up in the ABS. How sensible would that be, instead of silos of governments with bureaucrats protecting their information and not passing it on? This is what the information age is all about. It is about sharing that information. It is about getting that data so that we can improve the social, business and environmental outcomes that we all want. That level of sharing provides transparency that we have not had before. It provides transparency on environmental information and our collective ability to understand and manage the key issues in our environment. The elimination of the dual state-federal approval process will remove that one big hurdle that stops investment.

Business does benefit—and, God forbid, we need businesses. Do not tell the Greens, but we do need businesses and we do need profits. We want profits because profits are reinvested to grow businesses. When you grow businesses you employ more people. When you employ more people you have fewer people on welfare. When you have fewer people on welfare that is less of a burden. Then we might have a chance to pay back some of the debt that the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor government left us with.

The increased certainty for investors, faster assessment and reduced costs will obviously boost productivity and lead to those jobs of which I just spoke. Business will rejoice if you all get together and pass this bill. It will lower the cost and it will lead to faster approvals and more certainty. The transparency, the audits, the transitional and five-yearly reviews which are proposed are all reporting mechanisms contained in these amendments, which will ensure that the expectations of our community in 2014 will be met. These are mature amendments in line and in keeping with what we expect and with what we expect of ourselves.

The federal environment minister, quite rightly, will retain the ability to call in an assessment and will still retain the right of veto for the approval of the project. In extreme circumstances the minister has the power under this bill to suspend or indeed to cancel an agreement. The states and territories will be accountable to the community and business as well as to the Commonwealth. I do not know why it is assumed in this chamber that we have any fewer people in our state and territory governments looking after the environment than we do here. These are all smart, intelligent people elected to state governments of all political persuasions and I am sure that they are eminently capable of carrying out the duties of their functions at a standard which the community desires at any point in time. I do not know why we think that we should assert ourselves over them. We will still have the right—the minister of the government of the day will have the right—to ensure that the standards are maintained.

In the short time that I have available to me now I will just go to a contribution that Senator Wright made in relation to our home state of South Australia and some of the concerns which she shared about a couple of issues there. She talked about her time of growing up in the seventies and the impact that our species had made through evolution. She spoke quite passionately about pesticides, pollution and the effect of our technologies. Of course, I agree with Senator Wright; there have been mistakes made. Pollution has been emitted and there has been the effect of technology. But that is exactly the evolution that Senator Wright talks of—there will always be an evolution. It is up to the responsible governments—state, territory, local and Commonwealth—to get this right. They will, and they have a good track record of getting it right.

If you talk about the environment protection agencies of the United States of America, we have our own contained at every state, territory and local government level. That is exactly what they are for. We have made a progression and we do, indeed, seek to continue to make progression all the time. That is what we are doing.

I do get somewhat concerned when emotive issues like oil and gas exploration and controlled actions on Kangaroo Island are raised, without any kind of substantiation about protection from what—what is the threat? What was it that the agency failed to do in the approval of these? It is just scaremongering and rhetoric that are provided in the contributions to this chamber and which go largely unchallenged. But I say to Senator Wright: if there are things where she believes there have been shortcuts in environmental approvals or if there is damage being done, do not talk about it in here. Bring it to those agencies—the Environment Protection Authority in South Australia. Bring it up! There is the approval of the Rex mine on the Yorke Peninsula—that is an area which is 0.05 per cent of that peninsula. I urge her to get behind that project. (Time expired)