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

I rise to contribute on this debate on whether or not we will scrutinise a proposal that will barely do anything to fix the environment and whether we will scrutinise that properly or, as the two large parties would prefer, it is a perfunctory inquiry into a bill that appears very ineffective.

I was an environmental lawyer before I came to this place. I have a deep interest in how we manage our precious natural assets. And all the indicators are going downhill. Despite some of the lovely promises by this government when they were seeking to form government, we have seen so very little action, and we have seen such decline in biodiversity. We have seen extinction rates continue to go up, despite, again, the lovely words that promised we wouldn't have any more extinctions. We've seen critical habitat continue to be felled. We've seen coal and gas approvals continue to be dished out like confetti—by this government, who said they were going to be different from the last mob yet continue to approve the fossil fuel projects that come to the minister's desk. One wonders whether the donations that are made by the coal and gas companies have some influence over those decisions; certainly the weakness of our environmental laws do.

Our environmental laws don't even require the climate impacts of coalmines and gas to be directly considered when the minister is deciding whether to approve those projects. It is ludicrous. These laws, which were written by former Prime Minister John Howard in the nineties, are not serving the needs of our current natural biodiversity and climate challenges. They are out of date. They need to be modernised—and that's what I thought this government promised they would do. Well, where are these reforms? We've got before us, with this package of bills, a proposal to change the chairs on the Titanic. It is a proposal to change the name tag of the existing departmental compliance group and give them more power. These are the same people, administering the same laws, who are presiding over the continued destruction of nature.

So yes, we need an inquiry into this, because we want laws that work. We want laws that will protect nature. We want laws that will encourage the minister to say, 'No; I'm not going to approve new coal or new gas.' That is surely the function of our environmental laws. Yet we have this flaccid proposal from the government to simply change the name tag of the compliance branch in the department. I'm sure they're great people, but there are not enough of them, and unfortunately they have been quite ineffective to date. Everybody knows that if you breach your environmental permit, the conditions of your development approval, you don't really get into strife. I'm afraid that changing the name tag is going to do absolutely nothing to address that.

What we need in our environmental laws is strong enforcement, but we need strong enforcement of laws that actually work. We need a climate trigger in our environmental laws. We need the minister to be able to say, 'I've considered the climate impacts of this new coalmine, of those new gas wells, and on the basis of the climate I am saying no.' That is not what we have at the minute, and it is so clear that that is why the confetti of approvals for new coal and new gas keep rolling out of the minister's door. Just 48 hours ago in my home state of Queensland, on some of our best food-producing land, out west of where I live, in Wandoan, approval was given by this government for more coalseam gas wells atop the Great Artesian Basin, atop some of our best food-producing land, out to 2080. On what planet should we still be using gas in 2080? Well, there's not going to be much left of this planet if that's the sort of approach this government is taking—and they're allowed to take that approach because our environmental laws say it is fine; there is no barrier to the minister's ticking off on that wanton pollution, because the laws are broken.

We need a climate trigger. We need native forest logging stopped—again, through our federal laws, not reliant upon the goodwill of some states who have, thankfully, been progressing this. We need environmental laws that actually work to protect the environment, and we need a minister who's prepared to act in the interests of the environment and do their job. Instead, we have a package of bills that won't do a thing. It will simply change the name tag on the door of an existing ineffective regime that sees biodiversity continue to be trashed and the climate continue to worsen. We expected better from this government, and we stand at the ready to fix these environmental laws. Will you please come to the party, and let's do that together.