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

With the jubilation of us succeeding in having a Greens bill passed, you will forgive us for the short delay. I rise with pleasure to speak on the Environment and Infrastructure Legislation Amendment (Stop Adani) Bill 2017, which has been introduced by the Greens, which hopefully passes like the last bill did. This bill is an important bill because it does two things. It would insert into the Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility Act a test that says that we need to check a person's corporate environmental history to see if they are in fact a fit and proper person to be receiving taxpayer money. You might think that, for a $5 billion slush fund, there would already be such a test in the act and that we would already check whether someone was a fit and proper corporate person to receive free concessional mates rates loans using taxpayer money, but, unbelievably, there is no such test in the NAIF Act at the moment. So this bill would insert such a test.

The second aspect of this bill would be to require, under our environmental laws, a review of the approvals already given to the Adani group of companies for their Carmichael mine. The reason for this is the appalling track record of environmental breaches and also of allegations of fraud, corruption, money laundering and the use of tax havens which has come to light since those approvals have been issued. This bill would not only clarify that the environmental history of someone who wants to get environmental approval needs to be looked at before approval is given; it would also specifically trigger a review of the Adani approvals already issued, supported by both sides of politics, to take into account the litany of dodgy practices that has come to light since those approvals have been issued. So this bill would make sure that the Australian government cannot simply hand out $1 billion to Adani without actually checking whether they are a suitable person—