Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

There's much to unpack in relation to this bill, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Expanding the Water Trigger) Bill 2023 [No. 2]. The first thing to say is that its introduction is yet another legacy of the vacuum created by the Labor Party as a result of their shambolic inability to make changes to Australia's national environmental laws. When the Greens announced on 16 October this year that they would introduce this bill they also released an important letter from Senator Hanson-Young to the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek. It was a letter I took great delight in reading, and so did the rest of Australia. The content of that letter, dated 13 October 2023, confirmed what the coalition had been saying for months, which was that Ms Plibersek's multiple promises to finalise new national environmental laws by the end of this year, 2023, had gone up in smoke. They were just more broken promises. We now know from the admissions of senior officials from her department that even the process of drafting those laws is still many months away. There's a very real possibility that they may not even pass through the parliament before the time of the next federal election.

Extraordinarily, all of this has still never been openly conceded by Ms Plibersek, who laughably claimed just a few weeks ago that the process was running two full months ahead of schedule—an unbelievable claim to make. The major delays under her watch and her woeful performance as minister are already having many far-reaching flow-on effects. One of those is that disillusionment and frustration are rising amongst those Australians who are interested in seeing well-balanced environmental and economic outcomes achieved across our country under the laws that govern them. Another is that the ALP are creating substantial uncertainty about how and whether they will even address the many individual elements of Australia's environmental laws that need to be urgently tackled. There's general agreement that the application of the water trigger is one of those.

Since it was included in the EPBC Act, at the instigation of the then member for New England, Tony Windsor MP, during the years of the Rudd-Gillard governments, a range of problems and concerns have arisen in relation to the application and workability of the trigger. In turn, there remain a very wide variety of views about the trigger and how it should or should not be used into the future. Against this background, it's very concerning that the government, last year, snuck some wording into its so-called and elusive Nature Positive Plan that indicated it is looking at increasing federal power over states and territories in this field of policy, including by expanding the remit of the existing water trigger to all forms of unconventional gas. In the coalition, we are particularly concerned about exactly what changes Labor might make to the water trigger under Ms Plibersek, especially if they entail some sort of expansion. Time and time again during her period as environment minister we've seen her adopt an ideological stance rather than one that's based on consultation and serious, science based evidence. More to the point, we've seen her succumb over and over again to environmental activism without adequately considering the often calamitous economic and social ramifications of her actions.

Across our time in government, the coalition did not support the trigger's application to unconventional forms of gas, and that remains our position. Moreover, it's our belief that less federal intervention and an increased role for the states and territories in this area, and accordingly reduced duplication across different levels of government, will be likely to promote more informed local knowledge and deliver much better results. We don't share the view of the Greens and teals—or Labor, for that matter—that federal expansion here is a good thing. The more the federal water trigger is extended, the more unwieldy and ineffective this area of policy will almost inevitably become.

That said, we can understand why anyone would be tempted to suggest amendments to the individual elements of the EPBC Act at the moment. In the absence of any leadership, hard work or semblance of delivery or achievement from the environment minister, it's not unreasonable for others to try and step in by nominating ad hoc fixes as one option in trying to overcome Labor's utter malaise in this area, and that's exactly what the Greens are trying to do here. Nonetheless, this bill embodies a policy approach that is the opposite to the one that the coalition supports.

We might add that, particularly from their public statements, a number of members of the Greens and teals also seem to be labouring under some fairly significant misunderstandings and misapprehensions of the issues at the core of the bill. The member for Warringah, for example, said on 16 October this year:

… to … expand the definition of the water trigger to cover all forms of unconventional gas … is consistent with the expert advice from … the Samuel review.

It's really not clear how anyone could have seriously formed that view. Indeed, the Samuel review consistently made the point that the Commonwealth's role in this area should be reduced rather than increased. Moreover, it concluded that it is plainly the states and territories that are better vested with these responsibilities. Recommendation 1 of that review, for instance, said quite clearly, 'Matters of national environmental significance should be focused on Commonwealth responsibilities for the environment,' and that the water matter of national environmental significance in sections 24D and 24E should be confined 'only to cross-border water resources'. Likewise, recommendation 18 said:

… Commonwealth assessment pathways should be rationalised to enable a risk-based approach to assessments that is proportionate to the level of impact on matters protected by the EPBC Act.

The review's final report also said:

Many of the suggestions about the Commonwealth taking on a broader role reflect a lack of trust that States and Territories will manage these elements well. The Review does not agree with suggestions that the environmental matters the EPBC Act deals with should be broadened. The remit of the Act should not be expanded to cover environmental matters that are State and Territory responsibilities. To do so would result in muddled responsibilities, further duplication and inefficiency. Unclear responsibilities mean that the community is less able to hold governments to account.

That would be a bad outcome.

The report also noted:

The States and Territories have constitutional responsibility for managing their water resources. This responsibility is reflected in the National Water Initiative, which is the intergovernmental agreement that sets out the respective roles of jurisdictions in water management and the water reform agenda they have collectively agreed to pursue.

Likewise, it stressed:

Direct or indirect changes to water resources that have a potential to impact protected matters have always triggered the EPBC Act and should continue to do so.

The Samuel review also found:

To reduce the complexity of the regulatory process, the pathways for assessing proposals should be rationalised—

rather than, as is the basic proposition behind this bill, widened. The Samuel review also said:

Reducing duplication in development assessment and approval is a sound ambition, and one that governments should continue to pursue. The Review recommends that the EPBC Act should enable the Commonwealth Government to recognise and accredit the regulatory processes and environmental management activities of other parties, including States and Territories and other Commonwealth agencies. This would streamline decision-making by removing the obligation for a project to be assessed under multiple environmental assessment laws.

It should be added that at the federal level the Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development has already been in existence for over a decade, specifically in order to independently advise government regulators on the impacts that coal seam gas and large coalmining development may have on Australia's water resources. That is its very function, and it receives significant federal government support to undertake this work.

Given all that history and context, and in keeping with the coalition's consistent and longstanding approach on this issue of the possible expansion of the water trigger, we won't be supporting this bill. The very conception of the bill suggests that the Greens, the teals and probably the ALP will continue to try to imagine a way to land a solution that's actually illusory, impossible and unworkable, and this will continue to cause many people no end of problems in the process. By contrast, the coalition will continue to advocate for measured and commonsense solutions that actually work and that sensibly balance environmental and economic priorities for Australia.