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

Premier Campbell Newman has a great defender in Senator O'Sullivan—an interesting choice there. It is better left unsaid. I will not withdraw that comment.

As I said, unfortunately, it is not just the federal government with this program of repealing and reducing as many environmental laws as they can but also the government of Queensland. We are up to 19 environmental laws that have now been either watered down or repealed. In fact, it is pretty easy to lose count. We have lost our wild river protections; the vegetation management laws, which protect the beautiful biodiversity; and of course the carbon stores and the uniqueness of many of our ecosystems in Queensland—they have been watered down almost beyond recognition.

Perhaps the most insulting recent change happened just a week or so ago. The Queensland government have now removed the ability of Queenslanders to object in the Land Court to large mines, except if you are a neighbour or a local council that has its infrastructure impacted. I am just incredulous. This is a silencing of the community at a rate we have not seen since the Joh days. The thought of putting folk like that in complete control of icons that are not just nationally environmentally significant but are globally environmentally significant would be laughable if it were not so serious. This is exactly why, when you have proposals such as today's to just quietly and sneakily repeal protection for groundwater in the Murray-Darling Basin, to not worry so much about ozone depleting substances, and to allow sea installations to be built without reference to environmental issues, you just have to hold the line and say, 'Enough is enough.' That is why in the committee stage we will be moving amendments to keep those three positive environmental protections on our law books and why we will continue to rail against the tendency towards a plutocracy that we see from this government in giving the big mining companies absolutely everything that they want. It seems that they are simply running the show. I just remind senators in this place that actually we are elected here to represent people; we are not elected here to just further the vested interests of big corporates, who are, with their activities, threatening the sustainability of our environment for future generations. Thank you.