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

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Albanese Labor Government to explain its disastrous decision to block the McPhillamys gold mine, despite it having all federal and state environmental approvals and having support of the local Land Council.

President, thank you very much for this opportunity to speak about what is an exceptionally important motion before the Senate, and it's one that I know the government hopes would just go away, would just disappear, and that we wouldn't have to worry about it at all. Let me read it out so that those listening along at home or the solitary person in the gallery understands what it is we are talking about—that is:

The need for the Albanese Labor Government to explain its disastrous decision to block the McPhillamys gold mine, despite it having all federal and state environmental approvals, and having support of the local Land Council.

They're the facts, and so what has happened here is absolutely disturbing.

Let's look at what the reality in Australia is: no project in this country of any significance is safe. It doesn't matter whether it's a mine, a forestry operation or a land development to build more houses that we so desperately need. It doesn't matter if it's a renewables project. They're all unsafe now as a result of what we're seeing with the application of these laws.

As stated, this project, the goldmine in question—the one that would have generated a billion dollars of economic activity and 800 jobs for a regional community in Orange, New South Wales—had all of its state and environmental approvals. The Minns Labor government has criticised, quite heavily, the Albanese Labor government's decision to block this project despite it having all state and federal environmental approvals. That is not a low bar; that is an extremely high bar. This project has been killed. This project is dead. This project can't go ahead, if you listen to the people backing it—like the CEO of the company, Regis Resources, who contradicted the minister who reckoned it could go ahead still. Investor certainty is rocked, and people looking to make decisions about whether they invest here in Australia or elsewhere in the world will be looking at decisions like this.

As I say, it took four years of engaging with the governments, state and federal, to get these environmental approvals across the line. That was done; the boxes were ticked. They'd engaged with the traditional owners, the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council. That was done. But now here we are: at the 11th hour, the project having made it across all of these hurdles, the Minister for the Environment and Water, under section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, decided to knock this project on the head.

We believe this is the wrong decision and it should be overturned. There is no excuse for this, because it comes back to balance. It comes back to the need to ensure that, while we protect our cultural heritage and we don't repeat things like Juukan Gorge and the disaster that occurred there, we allow for economic activity. This decision is not balanced. We don't have a new, standalone cultural heritage act. This government promised it, but here we are, two-and-a-bit years into their term, and there's no such legislation on the horizon. It will not be happening; it will not be going ahead.

This government, rather than dealing with the substance of the problem—forget about the fact that it has knocked dead a project which would generate nearly a thousand jobs and a billion dollars worth of economic activity and, every year, hundreds of millions of dollars of royalties revenue for state and territory governments—wants to play politics with it. The minister says: 'We didn't oppose the mine. We just opposed the tailings dam.' While that's strictly true, of course, a tailings dam, for those in the know, is necessary for a mine to operate in an effective and safe way. It's like saying: 'I didn't kill them. I just severed their legs and let them bleed to death.' That's the equivalent of what has happened here, and this is the appalling part of it.

What's more is that the people who opposed this project, under the act I referenced before, are supported by the Environmental Defenders Office—that organisation we all know so well—funded by the same government that has knocked this project on the head. Whichever way you're going to try and get projects up in this country, you are going to find obstacles and reasons not to do it. Investment is going offshore, and so are the jobs that go with it, particularly in regional communities.

For government ministers to come into this place, or anywhere else for that matter, and say, 'The former coalition environment minister Sussan Ley, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, made a decision like this'—do you know what she blocked? It was a go-kart track—not a gold mine. It was a go-kart track on top of Mount Panorama, not a gold mine generating economic activity and providing hundreds and hundreds of jobs. There is no equivalence between the decisions that minister made at that time and this disastrous decision, which, as I say, must be overturned, or else this government does not have this country's interests at heart.