Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

And I have Senator Siewert saying, 'Yes, I've got it'. Through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, to Senator Siewert: I have an enormous amount of confidence in my fellow Western Australians and I am going to point out in the time I have available during this contribution those areas in which we can demonstrate that Western Australia are best placed to actually make the decisions we make in protecting the environment of our state. I will come back to that of course.

So what does happen in this particular instance? Rather than have this duplication that we see all too often—and I will show examples of it over time, where there is simply frustration, wasted time, wasted funds, wasted resources and wasted money—we will have a circumstance now in which under the normal course of events these environmental decisions and approval decisions will be taken at the state level. But, contrary to what the previous speaker, Senator Milne, in her gloom-and-doom predictions, had to say, we know that under the legislation the Commonwealth will maintain its role. It will remain accountable for its obligations under the EPBC Act. It will retain—I say again it will retain—an approval role for actions in Commonwealth waters, on Commonwealth land or by Commonwealth agencies. It will have an ongoing role to ensure that the commitments under these bilateral agreements are met.

Indeed, as Minister Hunt has said, if anything it will enhance environmental responsibility on behalf of those to whom responsibility will be given, because before they can satisfy the minister of their capability to actually join into these bilateral arrangements they will have to convince him that they have legislative arrangements in place to be able to give effect to the commitments that they will actually undertake.