Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Earlier this week the government said that they were too busy responding to the pandemic to be able to move forward on a Commonwealth anticorruption authority. Well, the government is never—and I do mean never—too busy doing anything else to continue its war on nature and to continue its war on our environment, on our biodiversity, on our climate, on our forests, on our beaches, on our coastlines and on all the beautiful creatures that make those places their homes.

The EPBC Act is already failing to protect nature. We know that because that's been stated in the recent release of an independent review of that act, but this legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Streamlining Environmental Approvals) Bill 2020, which the government has rushed into this place today under the cover of a pandemic, will make it even worse. It will weaken the already pathetically weak protections that our environment has in Commonwealth law.

This amendment bill will accelerate the theft of our children's future and our grandchildren's future. It will accelerate the generational threat of their chance to have lives with the same levels of hope and opportunity that we have all had the chance to live. It will accelerate the death and displacement of billions of people during this century, and of course, as always, it is the people living in the deepest poverty who will pay the harshest price. They will pay in their droves with their lives, because this government is a corporatist government. It is part of a corporatist kleptocracy which is stealing the futures of so many of our families and so many future generations in this country. It is corporate profit and greed that is driving this destruction, which this government continues to enable time after time by moving amending legislation like this.

It's time we stood up and said enough. It's time we understood that we all rely on nature for our very survival and our very existence and that, in fact, we are part of nature. And you know what? You're all going to realise one day that we're part of nature, because nature is fighting back, and we are bearing the brunt of that in this country, with the bushfires, with the floods and with all of the other climate driven crises that are actually killing our people in Australia.

The Greens will of course fight this legislation all the way because it's bad legislation that fails to reflect fundamental realities about how nature works and how we, as humans, are part of the planetary ecosystem that ultimately we all rely on for our survival. Of course, we're happy and open to negotiate on the reporting date contained in Senator Hanson-Young's amendment. But, given that we have an obvious rationale for wanting to ensure that this legislation is not rushed through this place and given that the government at least occasionally pays lip service to the concept of listening to people, listening to communities and consulting with them, we urge the government to support our amendment and allow that listening process and that consultation to take place through the auspices of a Senate inquiry.