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

I rise to speak with the most vehemence possible in opposition to this ridiculous Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Bilateral Agreement Implementation) Bill 2014. Surprise, surprise! Tony Abbott wants to trash the environment and make it even easier for the big miners and big developers to trash the place. Well, he has gone too far—far too far.

We have had 30 years now of the gradual stepping up of the Commonwealth government to take on more responsibility for the environment. It has been through international developments with things like the World Heritage Convention, the biodiversity convention and the Ramsar Convention. Of course, there was that famous High Court case of 30 years ago, where the federal government stepped in and said, 'No, you can't dam the Franklin; this is of world heritage significance.' That was when we established the principle that the federal government had a role to play in protecting the environment. Up until then it had basically been up to the states.

Thank goodness that that decision was taken, because prior to that, and in the intervening 30 years, we have seen continued poor decision making by state governments right across the country, continually putting the interests of short-term, private profits and promises of jobs—that rarely eventuate, I might add—ahead of protecting the environment—ahead of clean water and clean air and a sustainable future for all of us. We have had that for 30 years now, with the Commonwealth stepping in only for the worst of the worst projects—only when there is likely to be a significant impact; a very high threshold—on a matter of national environmental significance. Already, it is just a sliver of the thousands of proposals that go ahead every year. The Commonwealth only ever looks at the worst of the worst, and it has been able to stop some of those most damaging projects.

We saw a couple of years ago, to my great disappointment, a proposal by the then Gillard government to give away those approval powers that the Commonwealth had fought so hard to win over 30 years to state governments, who have a terrible track record of, as I say, letting anything go and letting those private interests trump the public interest of a healthy environment. With concerted community and environment sector campaigning, and with some internal advice that revealed what an absolute dog's breakfast that plan would turn out to be, thankfully the Gillard government resiled from that proposal to hand off those powers.

We are absolutely thrilled that the Labor Party have now changed their view and have today and at other times in recent months confirmed that they agree the federal government should keep what limited environment powers it has to try to protect things such as World Heritage, species that are nationally threatened and internationally significant wetlands. We really welcome that and thank them for that.

I am particularly concerned about the Abbott government's plan not just to give away approval powers as the previous government planned but to, with this bill today, make that go even further. Nothing is sacred with this bill. The water trigger is on the chopping block. People might recall that, in the last parliament, the Greens, the Independents and the then Labor government finally came to an agreement whereby the federal government would start protecting water federally from things such as large coalmines and coal seam gas. We know the huge damage that can be done to aquifers when you punch a hole through them to try to get to coal seam gas. We know the contamination risk is very real—both from the fracking fluids and from the mobilising of naturally occurring carcinogens in the geology. We know the potential for the groundwater table to drop once you start messing with that pressure. So we know the need for the water trigger. I was so pleased when Tony Windsor agreed with the Greens that we needed to keep that power in federal hands. That is why this Abbott government needs this bill. It is because they want to give that away, as well as everything else. Well, 'Over our dead bodies' is what we are saying today.

But it does not stop there. This bill, completely unbelievable in its appallingness, says it is not just the state governments that should take over national environment decision-making powers. It says it is okay for local councils to do that as well. I am a huge fan of local councils and, in the main, I think they do an excellent job within their jurisdictions. But I do not think we should be giving them control over the management of World Heritage areas and internationally significant wetlands. They do not have the expertise for that, and they do not have the personnel to properly perform the role. That particular part of this bill is an absolute outrage.

The third and sneakiest part of this bill is to do with the federal standards, which this government has crowed about and said, 'It does not really matter who is in charge; it will be the same standards being applied by the faceless men making these decisions.' One of the amendments in this bill says that those very standards actually do not have to be reflected in state laws and therefore can be ignored. It makes an absolute farce of the claim that federal standards would ever be adhered to. If they are not in the state laws then of course they are not going to be adhered to. Where is the obligation to adhere to them? The absence of logic in this government's rhetoric boggles the mind. They are the three key awful changes that this bill would facilitate.

There are two stages to this process. The actual hand-off of powers happens by agreement between the Commonwealth and the states, because John Howard put that provision into these laws when they first passed 14 years ago. So there are deals already being done with the states to give away federal environment powers. The Greens intend to block those as well when they come to this chamber. I hope that we will have the support of other parties to do that as well. We need to stop both this bill and those bilateral agreements to make sure that the Commonwealth can still look after World Heritage and things such as the Great Barrier Reef and water that stands to be affected by coal and coal seam gas.

The government have gone to great pains to claim that there will be all sorts of safeguards, that nothing bad is going to happen and that it does not matter who is making the decisions. They have said that that is irrelevant. There are so many reasons why that is wrong. I will touch on some of those today. I have already mentioned the fact that those standards will not now need to be reflected in state law if this bill passes. That makes a mockery of the claim that the standards would be upheld. We know that the states simply are not going to act in the national interest. That is not their job. Why would they? They are state governments. They are meant to act in their state's interests. They are not going to and nor are they obliged to act in the national interest.

My concern is also that when many of the proponents for the most damaging developments—large infrastructure projects such as ports and the like—are state governments you will have the fox in charge of the henhouse if this government's proposal goes through. What an absolute conflict of interest. How they cannot see that flagrant conflict of interest and how they can live with not putting in any parameters on managing it is beyond me. We know that the standards will fall when the decision maker changes. We know there will be these huge conflicts of interest that will not be able to be managed. We know that those standards will not be reflected in law, and we know that the state laws are already atrocious when it comes to looking after the environment. There have been countless legal analyses of them. No state or territory in the whole country currently meets the standard that the federal environmental laws do. They are just not strong enough. So the notion that you can somehow give the states more powers and that miraculously they will start caring about the environment is truly ridiculous. We know they are not up to the job.

We know that there have been many staff sackings not just federally but also at the state level. In my home state of Queensland, Campbell Newman has been on an absolute rampage to sack almost 14,000 public servants and a large proportion of those from our environment department. We know that there have been 220 staff sacked from the environment department. Where are the personnel to take on this additional federal responsibility? They are not there; they have been sacked or pressured to take a voluntary redundancy. There are not the people to do this work. There is not the legislative safeguard to ensure that the same sort of decision would be made. There is no guarding against this massive conflict of interest of states ticking off on their own projects.

The government might say, 'That is fine. We've got this great call-in power in our draft agreements with the states,' but I have had a very close look at that and it will not work. There is a highly prescribed test for when the Commonwealth minister can miraculously have a state of mind where he or she knows that something fishy is going on at the state level and can call that back in—but it has to be before the state has already issued the approval. How are they going to know that something fishy is going on when they are moving staff on from their own assessment department, and when it is in the state government's interest not to tell people that they are dodgy? I mean—hello, how could that test ever work? The state governments are not going to dob themselves in, so the federal minister will never know, in a timely enough manner, when to step in in the time frame that this so-called safeguard provides. It is a complete farce. The Commonwealth already has only a tiny shred of environmental responsibility and this safeguard, which, frankly, reads like it has been written to fail, would not provide any protection at all.

In the short time that we have had Campbell Newman as our Premier in Queensland, he has set about attacking the environment like there is no tomorrow—perhaps he is intending on there being no tomorrow. I have a list of more than 30 changes: be they repeals, be they watering downs or be they abolitions.