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

Only a few days ago, interestingly, it appeared there was only one party in this chamber that was supportive of this legislation, and it is interesting to see there's been a change. We were going to bring back the report on this legislation in April, but now we're going to bring it back today. It makes me wonder why. I wonder exactly what has changed in those few days since we had that arrangement where we were going to be deliberating on these important pieces of legislation until April.

It's important to remember that nearly every stakeholder that came to this committee condemned the legislation. At the very least, they said we should be leaving this legislation until we deal with the proper EPBC reforms: get the framework in place first and then deal with everything else afterwards. So what has changed? I have a sneaking suspicion a deal has been done. I will be very interested to see over the coming days exactly what has been done, because it is bad legislation. We remain opposed to it. We should be having the committee report out until April of next year, for proper scrutiny, but instead it appears a deal has been done.