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

I want to come back to the substance of this particular amendment. It brings to mind an example which is pertinent. When you, Minister, listed out the sorts of projects that had expressed interest in applying to the fund, many of those were dams. Many of those were in Queensland. I recall a particular dam, the Mary River dam—the Traveston dam, as it was known—that was proposed by the Labor state government and approved by the Labor state government under state laws, and it took the federal environmental laws to refuse approval for that dam in order to safeguard the Mary River cod, the lungfish and the Mary River turtle.

Under the rules for the NAIF fund, that dam could have been approved, for all purposes, by the state government and would have then been able to apply to NAIF for funding. NAIF would not have then been able to look at the principles of ESD. They would not have had the benefit of an independent cost-benefit analysis, and indeed such an ability to refuse approval—which was exercised by then Minister Garrett, if my memory serves me correctly—would not be able to occur. So, for a dam which your side of politics miraculously opposed—I think it is the only dam that the Liberals and Nationals have ever opposed, but good on you for that particular example—your fund would then have been providing taxpayer moneys to build it.

This is exactly why we need an amendment that says: 'If you want to apply for federal money, you have to have gotten federal environmental approval. You can't have just let the states give themselves approval.' Minister, I seek your response to how you would envisage the rules about the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility applying to that Traveston dam example. Correct me if I have got any of that wrong.