Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting these Greens amendments. I just make a couple of points. The first is that the amendments from the Greens here seek to insert into the legislation a provision equivalent to a provision in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. As I mentioned here in an earlier contribution, any projects that require environmental approvals—and, of course, those that trigger the federal EPBC Act—will be required to be consistent with, and seek approval under, that act, so those provisions in that act would apply to those projects.

Again I note—and I said I would note this many times—these provisions are not in the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Act or mandate. There is no specific insertion of the principles of ESD into that particular act or mandate, so it is not clear to me why we would do something different for northern Australia from what we do for clean energy. Further, adding these types of provisions into this Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Bill has the potential to impose greater barriers or greater bureaucracy onto the approval or processes for infrastructure in northern Australia than in southern Australia, because, of course, only projects that trigger the EPBC Act would need these types of principles applied—and they should be applied and will be applied, and finance will not be provided unless approvals are granted under that act. But it is not clear why we would seek to increase the scope of that act for all potential infrastructure projects that may be covered by this particular fund, even those that may not trigger the EPBC Act itself, and in a way that is different from a very similar piece of legislation, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation legislation.