Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

Here, we have to work within the Constitution, within the limits of federal power, and the ministers of the day exercise their powers in accordance with the legislation passed by this parliament—this parliament. You can exercise your right to campaign against this mine in New South Wales. You can make whatever allegations you want to make about New South Wales governments, past or present, if you so choose. But in this place we have to deal with federal laws, and in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 we have a law that has been appropriately applied, where the public servants and the ministers of the day have acted within the terms of the law—and this mine has those approvals. We will uphold those approvals, subject to the conditions in place, because as a government we believe in providing certainty to businesses who go through our legal processes.