Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025. Let me start by congratulating Senator Duniam and the entire Tasmanian Liberal team for the work they've done in this area, dragging this government kicking and screaming to make a sensible policy decision in this area. I won't say this bill is a sensible policy decision, because there are many flaws with it, but I do congratulate Senator Duniam and the entire Tasmanian team for the work they've done in standing up for their home state of Tasmania.

Well, there's a whiff of desperation about this government. An absolute stench is emanating from this government. We saw it last night with the budget, where they threw economic responsibility out the window in an attempt at a headline reading 'Tax cut' when all they are delivering to the hardworking people of Australia is less than a cup of coffee a week. It just wanted the headlines, because that's all this government does. It's based on political expediency: attempting to get its own ideological ideas up whilst retaining power at all costs.

We saw it with the EPA discussion, when the Prime Minister, with great fanfare, took the cabinet to my home state of Western Australia and very clearly stated that plans for things like the EPA and nature-positive laws had been shelved. Premier Cook made a big show of strength out of it, about how he'd forced change on the federal government—for his own electoral purposes—and the Prime Minister seemed to back him up.

Then we get back to this place, and revealed through freedom of information, just a few days after that visit to Western Australia, was this correspondence between the Labor government and the Greens—two groups that have been fighting like Kilkenny cats in here today—undermining what the Prime Minister had publicly said, seeking to do a deal about the EPA, when that had already been ruled out. I'm going to quote from this document. This is coming from the government:

I would be grateful for your confirmation that the Australian Greens will support the bills, including the amendments above—

We're talking about the EPA bills here—

when they come before the Senate. I also seek confirmation, as discussed—

So, the deal was being done—

that you will support the Government on all procedural votes required to ensure the timely passage of the bills through the Senate as early as possible this sitting week, including on a guillotine or similar motion.

There were dirty deals between Labor and the Greens, in here fighting like Kilkenny cats today but doing these dirty deals behind closed doors, saying something very different in my home state of Western Australia.

Senator Cash is in the chamber, and Senator O'Sullivan is in the chamber. When we look at this bill, it begs the question: what about the North West Shelf? In the dead of yesterday, in the cover of the budget, the decision on the North West Shelf under the EBPC Act was pushed out until after the election—pushed out again, delayed again. How long has this project been waiting? What state approval process has this project been going through? It's not one year, Senator O'Sullivan—you know this—and not two years, Senator Cash; I know you know this. It is six years—six years through a state approval process. Yet the Labor government still kicks the can down the road. They pretend to support Western Australia. They pretend to support the gas industry. But do they really, when they've got secret deals being done with the Greens over the EPA bills, when they've got the nature-positive bills tucked in the back drawer, just waiting until after the election, when they know they've got to do a deals with the Greens on the crossbench to retain government—or they think they might have to?

Well, there's only one way for Western Australians to stop this, and that's to make sure we don't have a minority government after the next election, that we don't have Labor and the Greens doing deals after the next election, whether it's in this place or the other place. The only way we can ensure sensible policy outcomes that support the jobs of all the FIFO workers in Western Australia and that support the jobs in Tasmania that Senator Duniam has talked about is actually to vote Liberal, to make sure we get this government out and we have a majority Liberal government in place, if you care about things like the North West Shelf project in Western Australia, if you know that those jobs are vital to the economy in Western Australia, if you know that the continuation of that project is vital to energy supplies in Western Australia. Western Australia hasn't faced the blackouts, the failures of the energy system, that places like South Australia have faced, because we have access to abundant, cheap gas. But the Labor government is putting that at risk for their own desperate electoral outcomes.

We've seen this government betray Western Australia so many times. Close to my heart is the betrayal of the sheep industry in Western Australia. For a few Animal Justice Party preferences in the eastern states, they have forsaken the Western Australian sheep industry, a sheep industry that has already declined, under their watch, by more than 25 per cent and looks like it will decline by 50 per cent over this term of government into the early part of the next term of government.