David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in opposition to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025 and I foreshadow a second reading amendment circulated my name.

This is a bill that strips power from the environment minister. It guts oversight from the federal government. It undermines the very integrity of our national environmental laws, laws that are already weak and broken. And, to make matters worse, this bill is being rammed through the Senate without proper scrutiny, without consultation and without any serious attempt to weigh its consequences. Let's call this for what it is. This is an abuse of process, a carve out for a polluting industry and a betrayal of the government's own promises to the Australian people.

This chamber exists for a reason. It's not a rubber stamp; it's the house of review. It's a safeguard to ensure that our laws are scrutinised, challenged and improved before they become permanent, and yet here we are again being asked to wave through highly consequential legislation with no Senate committee inquiry, no expert hearings and no meaningful debate. The government has teamed up with the coalition to guillotine debate and force this bill through on the final day of the Senate. This is not how a functioning democracy should operate. This is how power protects itself. This is how vested interests get what they want while the public and the planet—our home—lose.

Let's be very clear about this bill after some of the contributions we've heard. This bill is not about streamlining environmental decision-making, it's about shielding certain industries, especially the salmon farming industry in Macquarie Harbour, from proper scrutiny. Under current law, if new information emerges or if there is a change in circumstances any person can ask the minister to reconsider a previous decision. It's a vital safeguard, a check against outdated or inaccurate assumptions. It's a line of defence when threatened species are at risk. And this bill tears that line of defence down.

If passed, the environment minister will be prevented from revisiting certain decisions, even if those decisions are actively harming our most precious environmental assets, even if they're driving a species to extinction, even if the original assumptions were clearly wrong—and the maugean skate, a prehistoric species living only in Macquarie Harbour, is a tragic case in point. The maugean skate has survived for some hundred million years. That's an amount of time that I think we struggle to get our heads around. The maugean skate has been around since the dinosaurs. It has adapted to one of the most unique marine environments on Earth. But it may not survive this decision to wind back environmental protections. Scientists tell us salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour is pushing this World Heritage animal to the brink of extinction. The RSPCA has now, finally, withdrawn its certification from Huon Aquaculture, one of the multinationals operating in Tasmania, citing mass fish deaths and animal welfare concerns.

Yet, rather than step in to reassess the environmental approval—rather than pause and listen to the warnings of scientists, conservationists and community groups—the government is trying to remove the power to do so altogether. This bill would make it impossible for the federal government to step in and say: 'Stop. We need to reassess. This is doing irreversible harm.' This is legislation that prioritises profit over protection, that puts industry before integrity, that puts extinction on autopilot.

For the young Australians who come through here, who would have seen pictures of the thylacine or maybe video of the last thylacine and thought, 'What ignorance, what insanity; what were people thinking back then, when they had government policy, when they had a bounty on a species like that?'—well, it's happening today, brought to you by the Labor Party and the coalition. I think this bill, on the last day of parliament in 2025, is very instructive as to where we currently sit when it comes to our democracy, the declining trust in the major parties, the disillusionment of many long-term Labor voters in what Labor actually stand for, and the huge disparity between what they say they stand for, what they promise, and what they actually deliver.

You need look no further than our Prime Minister. In 2005, the year I finished high school, now Prime Minister Albanese introduced his own climate trigger legislation into the House of Representatives—great speech: it talks about the future, talks about how climate is the biggest issue we face and how we desperately need leadership on this and how we should be considering climate. In 2015, a decade later, he stood against the coalition's attempts to wind back our environmental laws. I think it's worth quoting him:

The right of citizens with standing to challenge their governments in court is a fundamental pillar of a robust democracy. We must not set this principle aside simply to provide a drowning Prime Minister with a headline …

Well, a decade later, here we are: the last day of parliament, and a prime minister desperate for a headline when it comes to salmon. Australians deserve better. We deserve better. The people and places across this incredible continent deserve better.

The government tells us that this is a narrow amendment, that it applies to only one case. But that's not true. The language of this bill is extremely broad. That means we don't know how many projects it might cover. It could be salmon farms today and gas projects tomorrow, fracking in the NT or offshore drilling in sensitive marine zones. It opens the door to more carve outs, more loopholes and more legislative exemptions for industries that pollute, extract and destroy. That's the real danger here. Yes, the maugean skate is at risk, but it's about more than that. It's about creating a precedent that says some industries are above environmental law, that says some environmental harms are beyond federal concern, that says 'hands off', even when the damage is severe and irreversible. Worse, I've received independent advice from leading barristers chambers in Sydney that this bill does not even achieve the outcome it purports to seek. So, we have a bill that does not achieve the outcome it seeks and has potentially far-reaching consequences for our national environmental laws. No wonder there's a decline in trust in government.

What are we doing here? The coalition is willing to just wave through legislation that may not even do what they want, because this isn't actually about that. This isn't about actual good governance; it's about some culture war that they want to fight.

The disappointment I hear from people when it comes to environment and nature protection in this term of government is palpable. This government was elected on a promise to fix our national environmental laws. Labor then promised no new extinctions. They promised a stronger EPBC Act. They promised a federal EPA. They promised transparency, consultation and evidence based decision-making. What have we seen instead? Where are all those things? We've seen yet another captain's call by the Prime Minister to withdraw legislation that would have established a federal EPA and improved environmental enforcement; we've seen decisions to open up and extend coal and gas projects; and now we see a bill that makes it harder, not easier, to protect nature. This is not environmental reform. This is environmental regression. This is environmental vandalism. This is short-changing the future, and it flies in the face of everything this Labor government told the Australian public it stood for.

You have to ask the question. There are many good people in the Labor Party. How do they roll over to a captain's call like this and accept a Prime Minister who says, "You know what? Don't worry about the maugean skate. It can go. If you vote for that, we'll do what we promised everyone we would do three years ago. We'll take it to the election again, even though we had the numbers in the Senate to do it'?

If you look at who stands to benefit from this legislation, none of the three major salmon-farming companies in Tasmania are Australian owned. Last financial year, they made a combined $7 billion in revenue. They didn't pay a cent of company tax—$7 billion in revenue, and zero company tax. At the same time, they're clearly just externalising all sorts of costs, from the inland waters to Macquarie Harbour to Hobart's drinking water and the impact that hatcheries are having upstream. These are multinational corporations exploiting Tasmanian waters and damaging a UNESCO World Heritage site. One of these companies is banned from fish farming in Washington state. Washington state says, 'You cannot be trusted, and you cannot do business in this state.' The founder of one of the other companies was jailed for bribery and corruption. But they get the red carpet from the Prime Minister. They're being handed an exemption from federal oversight, handing the environmental cost to local communities and future generations.

The future of Tasmania is surely a sustainable aquaculture industry, ecotourism and a regenerative economy—industries with real long-term potential and minimal ecological harm. This isn't about the national interest; this is about vested interests, and it's shameful that both major parties are lining up to serve them. This bill is the latest in a disturbing pattern of this government working with the coalition to fast-track legislation, sideline scrutiny and avoid accountability. A month ago, it was electoral reform, pushed through without consultation. Before that, we saw the federal EPA shelved to appease the fossil fuel and mining industry lobbyists in WA. Now we see this legislation, introduced on budget day, in the final sitting week of parliament, with no committee scrutiny and no opportunity for community input—just a rush to the finish line, no matter the consequences. That's not how environmental law should be made. It's not how public trust is built; it's how it's broken.

This chamber deserves better than to be treated as an inconvenience to executive power. The Australian people deserve better than a government that says one thing before an election and does the opposite after. Our environment, nature in Australia, the places and species that we love and that make this place unique deserve better than the legal carveout that would send them into oblivion. This bill shouldn't pass, because once a species has gone it is gone forever. Once trust in environmental law is lost it's very hard to restore. Once we start letting governments change laws for the benefit of a single industry without scrutiny, without consultation and without accountability we are not just failing environment; we are failing our democracy.

I oppose this bill and I would urge other senators to think about what you are voting on this evening. Think about the future of this country. Think about a species that has been around for 100 million years and is unique to Macquarie Harbour. It is found nowhere else. You with your vote will very likely send it to extinction. It's a very different thing to have some skates being bred in a tank versus a species living in its habitat where it has been for 100 million years.

We've got to start making better decisions as a country, as a Senate. Let's think longer term than this. This is the worst of politics—the absolute worst of politics. It stinks to high heaven. I hope when you vote you know what you are voting on, and if this thing does go extinct I hope it haunts you.