Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Emergency Management) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge, of course, that these issues attract very strong interest from community members, and may I particularly acknowledge the elders from the Northern Territory who have travelled here today. I know that this will be a question that is important to communities. But the question as you have put it to me, Senator Hanson Young, asks the minister to take a series of steps without having consideration to the law. In fact, what it more particularly asks the minister to do is to take a series of steps in having regard to a whole set of issues that are not relevant to the questions the minister must consider under the legislation. As I've indicated, the minister has asked her department to provide advice to her to assure her that all the companies operating in the Beetaloo basin are complying with their obligations under the act.