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

I rise to speak on the Omnibus Repeal Day (Spring 2015) Bill. We just had the autumn bill; it seems we have all seasons in one day. That is very interesting, because the bill, with one key exception, does not really do anything and one wonders what the government is going to put to this chamber. Are we going to see any substantive legislation this week? Who knows. Anyway, this is certainly not it. There is one sting in the tail, though. There are a handful of amendments to our environmental laws. As people know, this is an area I have long viewed as weak and needing reform. Sadly, the reform that has been proposed in this handful of amendments would further reduce community notice and community participation and then the community right to enforce laws before the court. So once again we see environmental rights being attacked by this government.

This has been a bit of a recurring theme over the last 2½ years. The latest attack is of course to not tell the community when the minister has made a decision on what is called a staged referral or a split referral. When a developer wants to do a development and they think they do not really want to have to get federal permission, because the feds only need to approve an impact that is significant on matters of national environmental significance developers can stage their development to try to avoid that threshold, the minister needs to turn his or her mind to whether that is being deliberately done and needs to tell the community when he or she has made the decision.

Debate interrupted.