Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 is a bill that ought be rejected by this chamber. The opposition will be voting against this bill. I move the second reading amendment which has been circulated in my name to give effect to this opposition:

At the end of the motion, add:

“but the Senate:

        (a)    expresses its serious concern that:

              (i)    the bill is being rushed through the Parliament without proper consideration or consultation,

             (ii)    the Howard Government has failed to halt the decline in Australia’s natural environment and best agricultural land,

            (iii)    the bill contains no measures to cut Australia’s spiralling greenhouse pollution or protect Australia from dangerous climate change,

            (iv)    the bill will increase the Howard Government’s politicisation of environment and heritage protection, and

             (v)    many of the proposed changes in the bill will reduce ministerial accountability and opportunities for genuine public consultation;

        (b)    Therefore calls on the Howard Government to:

              (i)    ensure climate change is properly factored into environmental decision-making under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999,

             (ii)    establish a climate change trigger in the Act to ensure large scale greenhouse polluting projects are assessed by the Federal Government, and

            (iii)    allow greater time for public consultation and debate on the bill”.

The amendment points out—

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Excuse me, Senator Carr, we have not got a copy of that.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand that the said amendment has been distributed through the Clerk’s office.

The Acting Deputy President:

We will follow that up.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. The opposition is very concerned about this bill, and the second reading amendment highlights the fact that this bill is being rushed through the parliament without proper consideration or consultation. This 409-page bill was introduced to the House of Representatives on a Thursday. It was debated the following Wednesday. It was done without a Bills Digest and before submissions had even been received by the Senate inquiry. The government sought to establish the inquiry to give legitimacy to its undue haste and to try to cover the fact that it has moved a piece of legislation which fundamentally weakens ministerial accountability and opportunities for public consultation. This is in the context of a government which has failed to halt the decline in Australia’s natural environment and the undermining of our best agricultural land.

This bill contains no measures to cut Australia’s spiralling greenhouse pollution or to protect Australia from dangerous climate change—in fact, in this 409-page bill, the term ‘climate change’ does not appear. This bill seeks to legitimise the manner in which Mr Howard and this government have politicised environment and heritage protection. I am not saying that there aren’t some positive features within this legislation, but the overriding effect of it is negative. That is why the opposition has called upon the Howard government to ensure that climate change is properly factored into environmental decision making under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. That is why we were seeking to establish a climate change trigger in the act to ensure that large-scale greenhouse polluting projects are assessed properly and thoroughly by the Commonwealth government. That is why we are saying there needs to be adequate time for public consultation and debate on legislation as controversial as this bill is.

However, we will be opposing the bill because it is fundamentally bad legislation. This legislation is deeply regressive. It is surrendering many of Australia’s achievements in environmental and heritage management which have been hard won over the last 35 years. It marks a deliberate watering down of environmental and heritage management in Australia. If passed, this bill will weaken the levels of protection for Australia’s biodiversity and heritage.

This bill represents a further lost opportunity to address the challenges of climate change. This should have been done by recognising that climate change is a matter of national environmental significance—it is, frankly, a matter of international environmental significance—but the government has turned its back on the opportunity to do that in this legislation. You would have thought that such a logical step would have been included in this legislation. There should have been attention to detail on climate change and there is not even an oblique reference in the legislation that is before us. It seems our unique flora and fauna are not worth protecting from the ravages of this government and the ravages of climate change.

This is fundamentally sloppy legislation. We will oppose this legislation because it has been presented to this parliament without proper discussion within the community. Its fundamental principles have undermined the proper decision-making processes and in effect corrupted the legislative process. We will be ensuring that this highly controversial legislation is debated in the public at large. I think it is quite clear, given the numbers that have been expressed in this chamber, that it is more than likely that this legislation will be passed, despite the fact that it dramatically downgrades the levels of environmental and heritage protection in this country.

You would have thought that Australia’s deserved reputation, developed throughout the 1970s and 1980s as a pacesetter in terms of environmental protection, would have warranted proper protection in this legislation. But the government has essentially turned its back on those matters. The truth of the matter is this government is deeply regressive and deeply reactionary. This Prime Minister has sought to revisit the debates of the 1970s and he wishes to re-engage in debates, which were lost in the 1970s, through legislation of this type. He seeks to re-establish the sorts of views left behind in the 1970s. With a minister such as Senator Ian Campbell, this is a government which is fundamentally floundering when it comes to the question of environment. This bill will seek to legitimise the sort of slapdash, shoddy, contemptuous attitude that this minister has displayed with his William the Conqueror’s approach to the parrot, for instance—the one-in-a-thousand-year parrot scandal that we have seen. He has sought to apply the principles of political science, not natural science, when it comes to the issue of environmental protection.

We have got a perfunctory examination of fundamental questions which are matters of deep concern in this community. This legislation seeks to legitimise the downgrading of those concerns. In the process it has denigrated the public attitudes which seek to emphasise the importance of these matters. In so doing it has also denigrated members of this parliament who, equally, are very concerned about protecting Australia’s environment and our international reputation as a community that understands the importance of these issues.

It is not just the opposition that has shared this concern; it has been of course members of the government’s own backbench. Senator Ray, in referring to the government’s response to the Alert Digest, No. 11 of 2006, made the following point about the 12 pages of detailed critique of this legislation, which had been unanimously carried by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. He said today that those 12 pages of report raised issues which were of such importance that they were to ‘prompt government and opposition senators to join me in expressing concern at the apparent lack of rigour in the drafting of this bill and particularly of the drafting of the explanatory memorandum which accompanies it’.

The government has sought to bring forward answers to those criticisms. Senator Ray has pointed out that, for the most part, the committee—not just opposition senators—drew a number of these concerns to the attention of the Senate. He said that they ‘maintain their view that the government has failed to address those fundamental concerns’. When it goes to fundamental issues of civil liberties, one would have expected that in this day and age legislation of this type would have acknowledged those and would not have transgressed upon them.

Senator Johnston put it very clearly when he spoke of the explanatory memorandum in the following terms:

This explanatory memorandum is probably one of the most appalling I have ever seen in the short time I have been in the Senate. It discloses no motivation, no reasoning and no justification for some of the most draconian powers that this parliament can conceivably and possibly enact ... This legislation should go back to the drawing board.

You would have to agree with Senator Johnston, and I think reasonable people will take that view. I am not certain, however, that the government is made up of reasonable people, so it just may well be that the government has taken a position to pass this legislation. On this occasion, however, I must reiterate and agree with Senator Johnston. It is not often that I do, but I think on this particular matter he has hit the nail right on the head. The committee continues to maintain that there is a failure to find persuasive reasons to support the government’s explanations for its fundamental failure in regard to these matters.

They have the ludicrous notion that there should be a distinction between frisk searches and ordinary searches when it comes to the penalties and actions of officers and that that should be legitimised under this legislation. As Senator Ray pointed out to us a short while ago, the committee was concerned to note that certain provisions in the bill make no distinction between frisk searches and ordinary searches, but that it would be unnecessary in normal circumstances for such a distinction to be made because they would not appear in legislation of this type. The committee remains unpersuaded by the clever and smartypants attitude that the government has sought to adopt when it comes to finding ways of getting out of these very serious concerns that go to the issues of fundamental civil rights in this country.

Frankly, you have to ask yourself what type of legislation should allow for the insertion of a power to strip search. There are circumstances, I acknowledge, where such a power is warranted—as the committee has pointed out, in the existing Migration Act. But it has only ever been used once since January 2003, which is hardly a compelling case to legitimise it or demand that it continue under this legislation.

It surely fails to demonstrate the need for the introduction of such extraordinary powers, such exceptional powers, in environmental legislation of this type. I would have thought that the normal provisions where such extensive powers occur in parliaments across Australia would apply in this case. The normal provisions are that it is the responsibility of those parliaments, where they allow the police to exercise such powers, to ensure that they are monitored by appropriate parliamentary committees and that there is the clearest and the strongest accountability reporting mechanisms. All of those things are of course lacking from this legislation. It is bad legislation. There are so many problems, so many flaws, so many imprecise assumptions and so many unsupported leaps of faith.

There is the capacity under this bill for the minister to have greatly increased discretionary powers when it comes to the determination of environmental protections. Concerns have been expressed by previous supporters of the government’s policy, such as the World Wildlife Fund. They have pointed out just how fatally flawed these amendments are. They argue that the proposed transfer of vastly expanded discretionary powers to the minister and the deliberate reduction in ministerial accountability are undemocratic.

We see that as well with regard to heritage protection. Organisations are deeply shocked by the implications of these measures. These include the National Trust, as I have indicated before—hardly a revolutionary organisation, the National Trust—and ICOMOS, which is hardly a militant organisation. They have indicated that they now repudiate—and, I get the sense, deeply regret—their earlier support for the government’s heritage policy, because under this legislation a minister can determine what can be considered for environmental protection or heritage listing without anyone else being able to make appropriate legal appeals, even in a case where the minister has got the law wrong.

We have a situation where the value and influence of independent, arms-length advice and scientific evaluation is being lost. As ICOMOS argued in their submission to the committee inquiry:

The Minister has the power to add to or remove any place from the Priority Assessment List … having ‘regard to any matters the Minister considers appropriate’ …

like whether or not the seat that a particular site appears in will be on the Liberal Party marginal seat list. That may be the science here: what is the swing required for the seat to change hands? That is the sort of assessment, under this arrangement, that the minister can make—again, ‘any matters the minister considers appropriate’. ICOMOS indicated:

… the listing should be based solely on the assessment of the National Heritage values of a place.

But it is quite apparent from the way this government acts that these are now essentially politically based decisions.

The nomination of threatened species or heritage sites for listing, one of the most important aspects of environment and heritage legislation dating back to the 1970s, has been based on an objective assessment process, a scientific process—evidence based policy. They are the types of actions one expects from the Australian Public Service, the sorts of actions that have given us an international reputation as a country that produces some of the best public servants in the world. But under these provisions their actions will be subverted as a result of the government now having the capacity to undermine evidence based decisions and make decisions not on the basis of scientific assessment but on the basis of the political priorities of the minister of the day.

In this legislation there are no guarantees of the integrity of the decision-making process when it comes to environmental and heritage management and protection. In the place of objective assessment or scientific analysis, we will now have a situation where the current minister—as we have seen in the case of the orange-bellied parrot—can sweep aside any decision if it is politically advantageous to the Liberal Party to do so. Instead of a system of nominations based on objective principles, this legislation invents a new, cute little system of annual nominations for approved annual ‘themes’ under which the minister can determine what can and cannot be assessed for protection or listing. As the Australian Conservation Foundation indicated in their submission to the committee inquiry:

Themes may be administratively convenient or politically attractive, but alas species do not become threatened thematically.

So this legislation reduces accountability and transparency in two primary ways. Firstly, it restricts the ability of individuals or community organisations to seek reviews of ministerial decisions. As the Law Council—again, hardly a radical organisation—has pointed out, this is high-handed action, and they argued that ministerial discretion should be subject to at least review by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Secondly, the current legislation prevents the High Court from requiring undertakings for damages as a condition for granting interim injunctions.

Public interest actions in defence of environment or heritage sites are now to be abolished. In other words, this legislation will effectively eradicate third-party enforcement because the threat of bankruptcy will ensure that organisations whose legal actions in the past have been instrumental in protecting heritage sites or our biodiversity will no longer be able to do so. The minister can ride roughshod over professional advice, he can ignore scientific or heritage assessment and he can use whatever spurious reasons come to hand without being answerable to anyone. Frankly, on that basis, this legislation should be rejected.

As I said, in the case of the orange-bellied parrot debacle, we have already seen what this government is capable of and it is quite apparent that this is a government that is really not interested in the protection of the environment. (Time expired)

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have made a number of ‘outraged response’ speeches in this place this week and it is extremely difficult not to do the same on this occasion. The Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 is the most astounding piece of legislation that I have seen in a long time. The Greens will be opposing this legislation. It brings in extensive changes to an act that is already not adequate to protect our environment and which should be strengthened. I will attempt to address these extensive changes now, but I am aware that my colleagues will pick up other areas and cover those in more detail.

This is one of the most important pieces of legislation that we have seen in this place in recent times. It spells out with great clarity exactly how the government intends to treat the Australian environment in years to come. The Greens did not support the original form of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conversation Act when it was passed in 1999. It was extremely controversial legislation, and extremely controversial within the environment movement. I should know because I was there being involved in the debate. But it is significant to note that even those environment groups that supported the legislation in 1999 unanimously reject these amendments. The Greens indicated that outsourcing Commonwealth environmental responsibilities would undermine environmental protection. We predicted that hiding behind instruments such as the regional forest agreements would fatally compromise the values that this act was meant to protect. We strongly believed in 1999 that climate change was a matter of national environmental significance. Seven years later, the government has compounded its failure in 1999 to produce the kinds of measures required and to take climate change into account. It has not learnt. Seven years of water scarcity, climate change, land clearing and biodiversity loss later, we are confronted with 400 pages of amendments that cripple a body of law that was weak to begin with.

The bill appeared from nowhere. There was no exposure draft, there was no discussion paper and there was no consultation with the community or with the environment and heritage groups and other organisations that work most closely with this act. The government is in too much of a hurry to wait and wants to rush this through before they see the outcomes of the Australian National Audit Office review, before they see the review of the triggers and before they see the 2006 State of the environment report—or, more accurately, before the community sees these reports and is further outraged by the degradation to our environment. These reports, I believe, will clearly show that this act has not been functioning adequately.

No government review has been conducted into whether the act is working to protect our environment. The only independent review of the operations of this act was conducted by the Australia Institute in 2005. In its summary, it confirmed the misgivings we expressed at the outset:

After almost six years, it has become patently clear that the Environmental Assessment and Approval (EM) process has not lived up to the sometimes grand expectations held for it. Most importantly, the EM regime has failed to prevent the continuing degradation of Australia’s natural and cultural heritage ... it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the EM regime has wasted an enormous amount of public and private resources, without realising any significant environmental outcomes.

Our only real point of agreement with the government is that we agree that this act is in urgent need of amendment. The Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, which looked at this legislation and of which I was part, was given, as everybody knows, unrealistic deadlines within which to analyse and report on this bill. It was given completely inadequate time in which to conduct hearings. Interest groups were given 10 days to analyse 400 pages of amendments and prepare responses. It is quite obvious that the government is not interested in listening to the feedback and having any genuine consultation with the community and holds the environment and heritage sector in contempt.

There must be some important reasons why the government is in such a rush to bypass all the normal processes and inputs which you would normally expect if it were genuinely wishing to improve this legislation. We know what the rush is about, and it is spelled out in the explanatory memorandum. This bill:

• Reduces processing time and costs for development interests …

The government has introduced this bill not to protect the environment but to further relax such protections that do exist. The Minister for the Environment and Heritage is becoming a junior minister for development.

Every five years, the minister for the environment is meant to prepare a section 28 report on whether additional matters of national environmental significance should be considered under this act. There is no sign of this report. According to this bill, there are also no new matters of national environmental significance that we need to be concerned with. I find it completely breathtaking that at the end of 2006 this government still does not consider that climate change is a matter of national environmental significance. The premier piece of environmental legislation in Australia is silent on the most important and significant environmental issue of our age. My colleague Senator Milne will introduce a climate change trigger to this bill, and the government will most likely not support it. We will also be introducing triggers for unsustainable water use, large-scale land clearing and large dams.

For more than a decade, the government has shown enormous reluctance to properly engage with the debates on climate change, biodiversity loss, water and land-clearing issues. These are real crises which are crippling agriculture and are now bearing down on our coast areas, our rivers, our wetlands, our cities and our species. We have in front of us the first opportunity to set down a national response to these issues in legislation. Instead, we are presented with a 400-page piece of legislation which amounts to a get out of jail free card for big business and their strongest advocates, the federal government.

In addition to avoiding the central environmental threats faced by this country, in essence this bill does four things. First, it avoids Commonwealth responsibility. It divests responsibility for national environmental issues away from the Commonwealth, fundamentally undermining the objectives of the act. Four assessment bilaterals have already been signed allowing the states to do the Commonwealth’s job in assessing development proposals. The whole point of this legislation should have been to introduce consistent Commonwealth regulation of issues of national environmental significance. Instead, responsibility is being hived off to states and corporations for them to regulate themselves. Just as troubling is the notion of approvals bilaterals. We have just learnt that one is apparently under negotiation with the government of Western Australia over the Burrup Peninsula. This is presumably to let the federal minister for heritage off the hook in terms of having to make a decision on development over the Burrup. If ever there was an example of a state government failing in its environment and heritage obligations, this is it. But the Commonwealth is currently negotiating away its responsibilities and this bill will further entrench this trend.

The trend extends to the system of exemptions that makes it impossible to apply a nationally consistent framework to protect threatened areas. Proponents will be able to hide behind bioregional plans, strategic assessments and conservation agreements, in addition to regional forest agreements, and avoid community scrutiny of their activities. A proponent with a large and controversial development will be able to lobby for a particular area to be covered under a strategic assessment or bioregional plan. Once that administrative arrangement is in place, projects said to be consistent with the overall plan can be built with minimal government or public oversight. This is a loophole big enough to drive a nuclear waste dump or uranium mine through. This has, of course, increased the willingness of the government to override the act altogether when it is convenient. The Commonwealth’s radioactive waste dump proposal in the Northern Territory is the most infamous example of this. There seems to be little point to having national environmental laws if the government’s most controversial projects are going to be exempt from them.

The second issue is the reduction of democratic participation. This bill reduces opportunities for democratic participation and review. Major barriers in the way of public participation have been put in the bill and it has also taken away the capacity of the public to appeal decisions. Since the act came into force, 11 third-party enforcement actions have been brought to the courts. Perhaps the most famous is the so-called flying fox case of Booth v Bosworth in 2000. Carol Booth brought a successful injunction against a Queensland lychee farmer whose overhead electrical grid was killing 18,000 speckled flying foxes a year. Under the current act, she was protected from having to give an undertaking as to damages. In the words of the original report of the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts on this bill:

The committee considers that requiring undertakings as to damages would be an unnecessary hurdle to persons or organisations seeking to enforce provisions of the bill in the public interest.

That protection is being repealed. From now on, in the event that the government is failing to enforce the act and a citizen or group decides to take action, they will be asked to post a bond and be exposed to the costs in the event that they lose the case. So there will be no more flying fox cases, no more protection and no longer an ability for the public to protect our species where the government is unwilling to do so, as it was in that case.

The government will spend $13.8 million in 2006-07 on assessing and monitoring activities that could impact matters of national environmental significance. By comparison, it will spend $170 million on subsidising the consumption of draught beer. We spend $63 million per year on enforcing national competition laws but less than a quarter of this amount on enforcing national environment laws. As a further slap in the face, Minister Ian Campbell announced a $60 million gift to Chevron Texaco to subsidise their activities on Barrow Island. That represents 30 hours worth of Chevron’s profits in 2005. The government clearly intends to continue starving the Department of Environment and Heritage of resources. A further $1.6 million is being stripped for the 2007-08 budget. You would think the government would want to reduce barriers to citizen and non-government enforcement actions given its lack of funding to enforce its own laws; instead, the opposite is happening. The Minister for the Environment and Heritage is also removing the right of appeal of ministerial decisions by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. This has implications across the board, including for trading in live animals such as the CITES listed species. This is one further avenue of democratic review sealed off by this government. What possible rationale can there be for these actions except to avoid the scrutiny of the public?

The third issue is threatened species and places. The already flawed system for listing and protection of threatened species, ecological communities and heritage assets is being further downgraded. The minister has turned the listing process for threatened species and ecological communities into a theme park. I remind the minister that species are not threatened according to themes. They are threatened right across the country and in our oceans by well-understood processes that range from land clearing, through to overfishing and climate change. The minister has shown no hesitation in using the current system for political ends, as the orange-bellied parrot fiasco illustrates. We now run the risk of this same minister deciding the threatened species flavour of the month on a political whim, sidelining good science and conservation interests that are such an essential part of our system if it is to work properly. Currently, the minister can indefinitely postpone the consideration of politically sensitive listing proposals by tying them up in bureaucratic processes. That is the reason why, despite overwhelming scientific evidence, commercial fish species that are reaching the threshold of extinction have not been put on the threatened species list. That is why only one is listed for protection—and that one, only just.

However, since he is probably getting bored with tying everybody up in bureaucratic processes, the minister with this legislation is now given the right to arbitrarily remove a nominated species or ecological community from the consideration of the Threatened Species Scientific Committee. That is so much easier than making the hard decision about whether to offer a species the protection it deserves under the law or to tie it up in the bureaucratic process. I will never again underestimate the capacity of the government to make a bad situation worse, as is going to happen with our threatened species process.

The notion of critical habitat has received only scant treatment in the bill. Habitat destruction is the key factor in the fight for survival for many species, but the government has failed to address this issue with robust protections for critical habitat. There is a backlog of 500 threatened ecological communities currently nominated under this act. They are now at risk of being wiped from the lists during this transition process. What a wonderful way to clear a backlog—you just legislate it out of existence! No doubt we will hear that the states will be taking up the slack and adding these nominations to their lists. I tried to find a place in the bill that makes sure that this will occur but it is not there.

There is also no longer the requirement to develop recovery plans once a threatened species or threatened community is listed. Over the life of this act, recovery plans have been watered down to the point where they are of marginal use. Instead of legislating some teeth into them, they have been made entirely optional. Most troubling is that, if a species has been refused protection in a previous assessment, the minister will shortly be able to refuse to look at it again even if its conservation status has worsened. These amendments are a one-way ride to extinction for many species. Quite frankly, they could not have come at a worse time for Australia’s unique and fragile environment.

Lastly, I am dismayed by the vesting of inordinate discretionary powers in the hands of the minister. He has effectively sidelined the expert bodies set up to advise him under the act. It is part of the pattern of centralisation of power and unaccountability that has so strongly characterised this term of the Howard government. Under the act, this minister has the Threatened Species Scientific Committee and the Australian Heritage Council—both highly regarded bodies which are eminently qualified to provide advice on ecological listings and heritage nominations—but he sidelines these expert bodies. The scientific committee has been muzzled and left on the sidelines. It can provide all the input it likes, but the minister has the power to dismiss it arbitrarily. The actual conservation status of a species is no longer listed as a relevant criterion for placing it on a priority action list. The scientific committee is also to be prevented from disclosing any information used to make its assessments, which appears to be an attempt to frustrate freedom of information applications.

The Australian Heritage Council has not done much better out of this bill. I am sure the minister had the contentious case of the Burrup Peninsula uppermost in mind when he oversaw the drafting of these provisions. The Heritage Council will be dragged into the minister’s arbitrary theme park approach. Any place the minister considers is too hot to handle can be deleted from the list by the minister or deferred indefinitely. Currently the minister has 60 working days to decide the fate of a nominated place such as the Burrup. With the clock running down, the minister has introduced amendments which allow him to delay a decision on such a place forever.

I can only stress that this government, and this environment minister in particular, will be harshly judged by the community for the measures introduced in this bill. An act which was functioning poorly will shortly be completely gutted. The Australian community has moved on and is demanding leadership and robust environmental protection in the face of habitat loss, water stress and climate change. The minister and the government are oblivious to these demands and are dancing to a short-term development tune that only they can hear.

The Greens will be opposing this bill. We oppose the amendments in this bill. The government has wasted the opportunity to strengthen environmental protection in this country that is so urgently needed. The Greens will be moving amendments that will significantly strengthen this act and provide a trigger for climate change, a trigger to deal with our water crisis and a trigger to deal with land clearing, which is still the dominant reason for species loss in this country. Unfortunately, Australia has an unenviable record. It has the highest loss of the mammalian species in the world, and it has biodiversity hot spots in a number of places. The south-west of Western Australia, my home state, is one of the most highly diverse areas in the world. Unfortunately, our biodiversity is going backwards fast due to the impacts of salinity, the impacts of climate change, the impacts of habitat loss and the impacts of land clearing. Unless this government acts to strengthen our environmental protection act, our species in Australia have a very, very sorry outlook.

This government has abused the environmental protection act. It has not used the strength in the act, weak as it may be. It has failed to use it adequately. It has not put in the required resources, and now it wants to completely gut it and take out the community’s capacity for participation, adequate scrutiny and the ability to carry out its job. It has not been doing its job; now it is taking away the community’s capacity to do its job for it. These changes are not supported by the Greens and should be rejected by the Senate.

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to see that the Minister for the Environment and Heritage is present for this part of the debate, but I am not sure that he will listen closely to the contributions. On behalf of the Democrats I must say that I am disappointed with the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 before us. It is widely known—at least, I assume it is widely known—that the Democrats supported the Liberal Party’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act when it was put forward in 1999. We supported it, I might say, only after ensuring that it was very heavily amended, but, in doing so, we were subjected to some extremely strong criticism, including from my friends in the Greens just to my right, from the Labor party and from some environment groups in Australia.

A number of environment groups—the WWF, in particular, the peak environment body in Tasmania and in my state of Queensland, and the Humane Society International—supported our position in passing very heavily amended new and extremely strengthened environment laws into being. Having taken that stance nearly 7½ years ago on the basis of our informed decision that this was a significant strengthening of the environment laws in place at a national level—much stronger than the laws they replaced—it is, I have to say, quite disappointing that there was so little engagement by the government with those who have shown a willingness to work with it. Our record has shown that we are willing to work constructively with the government. As we all know, the government does not need Democrat support to get legislation through the Senate now, but I would have liked to have thought that the government would have seen it as beneficial to have at least involved those environment groups who not only supported the Democrats and the government’s amended legislation at the time but also continued to work with the government and the act.

One of the things I was pleased to see come out of the Senate committee inquiry was that the evidence from those groups who have chosen to work with the act shows that it has been demonstrated that the act is a powerful piece of legislation. The act is capable of providing very significant environmental protection, and the act has operated to provide significant environmental protection. It has not operated anywhere near as frequently as I would have liked, and that has been commented on across the board.

Clearly, I think the evidence that was provided in the very short committee inquiry vindicated the Democrats’ decision to pass the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 as it demonstrated that, where there is political will or where there has been willingness and ability by people at the community level to ensure compliance with the act, it has delivered significant positive results. That is why it is particularly disappointing and particularly noteworthy that, as Senator Siewert pointed out, those groups who supported the adoption of the act and sought to work with it have been so strongly critical. I think it is a missed opportunity for the government and by the department and the minister not to seek to engage with those groups.

If you contrast the processes, you see that the final stages of the passage of the EPBC in 1999 were certainly controversial and, I am quite willing to acknowledge, less than ideal. But the process leading up to that was very extensive. Initial legislation was released. There was a comprehensive Senate committee inquiry straddling the life of two parliaments and then a further significant inquiry into the amended legislation after the 1998 election through to the first part of 1999, so there was literally well over a year’s worth of meaningful and genuine consultation that led to the legislation and the amendments that were derived from that process. Compare that to this time around, where there was no consultation. That is the evidence from environment groups, from people who actually work with the legislation. There was no meaningful consultation. The heritage groups that work with the legislation—again, to some degree, there was controversy—also supported changes relating to the heritage areas of the legislation a few years ago. Those were changes that even the Democrats were not totally happy with, but I will not go into the detail of that particular saga.

I think that background needs to be emphasised, because it is a missed opportunity to engage with groups that have shown their willingness to work constructively and to seek to work cooperatively. Therefore, perhaps it should be no surprise that there are significant concerns about major parts of this legislation. Certainly not every clause in it is bad. There are components of it that do strengthen and improve the law, but significant loopholes are introduced. To me, the most significant one is the removal of the right of merits review, the removal of the opportunity to appeal the minister’s decision on key areas to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. That is one power that actually predates the EPBC, and that is why it is particularly disappointing that it is being removed.

The bill removes the right to appeal ministerial decisions with regard to threatened species, migratory species, marine species, whales and dolphins, and wildlife trade permits. As I understand it, the right to appeal wildlife trade permits predated the EPBC, going back to the 1980s, so it is a long-entrenched right. It is also a right that the evidence before the committee clearly demonstrated was not being abused or misused. Similarly, the requirement in this legislation to remove the immunity for appellants from potentially being open to putting in place financial commitments before getting injunctions put in place is another right that had not been abused or misused. There is no sign that a legal process had been used in any sort of flippant or non-genuine way, yet this right has been removed.

It was made quite clear to the Senate committee inquiry by the Environmental Defenders Office, by those people who use the legislation—they do not use it maliciously; they use it to ensure that it is enforced—that this will mean that fewer court actions will be undertaken. The example that Senator Siewert gave was one I am very familiar with and very proud of: in my own state of Queensland, local conservationist Dr Carol Booth was able to undertake court action to require compliance with the legislation to protect the monumental slaughter of spectacled flying foxes by a few fruit growers in Far North Queensland. That action may never have been initiated if that initial risk had been there, if that initial financial risk had been put in place.

It is very unfortunate that sufficient resources are not provided to enable adequate enforcement of the act. That is another point that came out very clearly in the committee inquiry. That view was put not just by environmentalists but also by bodies such as the Minerals Council, for example. When you have all of those people across the spectrum saying that more resourcing needs to be put in place to ensure enforcement of the act, then that is a serious problem. It highlights what has been an ongoing concern for the Democrats in supporting legislation, as we did in 1999. Pointing to how strong it is, as I will continue to do, still does not in any way guarantee that you will get ideal outcomes, not least because you can have the best piece of legislation in the world—and the EPBC Act is not the best piece of legislation in the world but it is certainly the strongest national environment law we have ever had by a long way—but, unless there is political will and adequate administrative resourcing to enforce it, then you are not going to get the results on the ground that you should. It should be noted that a lot of the gains that have been made, a lot of the environmental wins that have come through the EPBC, have been as a result of actions by environmental groups working on the ground, particularly by some of the officers of the Environmental Defenders Office.

Again, I point to evidence in my own state of Queensland. The environmental wonders of Queensland are often not given adequate recognition. But, particularly when you get up into the far north of the state, you find the most extraordinary biodiversity—absolutely unique, literally, on a global scale; irreplaceable. Yet that area is under continuing threat from coastal development and other activities. The evidence provided by Ms Kirsty Ruddock, from the Australian Network of Environmental Defenders Offices, was quite clear: the EPBC Act has been of very significant assistance in areas of Far North Queensland. She pointed to the example of the False Cape development, where pursuing the avenues of the EPBC led to an outcome where mariners and boating developments in that area were banned. There have been conditions put on a lot of the mariner developments around the Whitsundays. We have had specific wins with regard to the slaughter of the spectacled flying fox, for example. None of these would have happened without the EPBC Act.

It is worth noting, given the very current and immediate controversy over the Queensland government’s plans to build two megadams in south-east Queensland, particularly the one on the Mary River—the so-called Traverston Dam—that, if the EPBC Act had not been brought into being by the Democrats, there would be no debate; there would be no prospect of federal intervention in that dam. Whether the minister will actually intervene in that issue is something that is still a long way off. Obviously, he has to go through the process with regard to that. But at least there is the opportunity there for the community to make the argument, for the evidence to be put and for some sort of process to be followed that is not just the total sham that applies under Queensland environmental laws.

It cannot be said often enough that, were it not for the fact that the EPBC Act was brought into being by the Democrats, there would be no opportunity to try and ensure that there is protection of the threatened species in the Mary River, to protect against that dam being built. There would not be the opportunity to have the proper assessment of all of the downstream impacts—the impacts on the World Heritage areas, on the Ramsar Wetlands. If the EPBC Act were not there then the debate would not be there. I suppose in one sense Senator Campbell would welcome that because it would mean he would not have that difficult decision to make, but I am sure he will enjoy the intellectual exercise over the coming months. But, if the EPBC Act were not there then, under the previous law, there would be no power for the federal government to act. That in itself is a demonstration of the value of the legislation, because quite clearly there would be no protection provided by the Queensland government.

It has to be repeated that those groups that have used the act, that have been quite prepared to point to its positives, have in some respects actually been more critical than other environment groups. Unfortunately, I think one of the by-products of the ferocity of the disputes over the passage of the EPBC Act back in 1999 was that the vilification of the act led to some groups and some individuals adopting the view or the assumption that the act was as bad as had been pointed out and there was no point in even bothering to use it. That has led to it being underutilised, I think, by people at the community level, which is unfortunate. I am not saying that everybody had to agree with the decision that was made to pass it back in 1999, but the level of animosity that surrounded that I think coloured some people’s views about the merits of the act. But, as I said, the evidence shows that it is a quite meritorious piece of legislation. Indeed, even some of those who did strongly criticise it back at its passage in 1999 now have sought to use it to protect important parts of our natural environment.

The biggest concern that I have is the removal of the appeal right—the merits review under the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. I think that is a very serious reduction in the accountability mechanism of the act. The argument, such as the department has made, that, ‘Well, these are balanced decisions and you’ve got to weigh up a lot of things; therefore, it should be an elected official, a minister, rather than an unelected body like the Administrative Appeals Tribunal,’ is frankly, a very thin one. Indeed, I think it is a very dangerous precedent. All of our courts, whether they are tribunals, magistrates courts or the High Court, are unelected. Frankly, I am one of those who think they should definitely stay that way. To say that a decision made by an elected official is somehow automatically more meritorious than a review by an unelected official is a curious reading of the rule of law in Australia over many years.

The concerns the Democrats expressed about the strict liability provisions in the act are ones that I also want to repeat. I have spoken about these already in this chamber, in speaking to the Scrutiny of Bills Committee reports that have come down, so I will not go into them in detail again now. I followed personally the steps through when some of the seizure powers, search powers and strip-search powers were first put into the Migration Act, and they were opposed by the Democrats at that time—partly because we believed they were not meritorious in their own right but also because of the precedent that they set. This is a perfect example of why it is dangerous to let those precedents be set. It was agreed to by the Senate, without the support of the Democrats, that these powers should be adopted for migration detainees in certain circumstances. Once they were adopted we then saw, in the middle of last year, moves by the government to also adopt them in the Fisheries Management Act for fisheries detainees. The reason was used that we need to have powers parallel with the Migration Act powers. Now we are seeing a further step where, under our environment laws, we are being told that we have to have consistency with the Fisheries Management Act and the Migration Act. We have this curious new term called ‘environmental detainees’. I appreciate that we need enforcement out in the marine environment against people who are damaging the ecosystems, but I do not think these sorts of powers are appropriate in any of those circumstances. I can certainly say that the Democrats will be consistent in saying that they should not be applying in these circumstances. Indeed, the minister’s reply to the Scrutiny of Bills Committee said that he did not envisage them being used very frequently, if at all. If that is the case then let us not put them in there. I think that is a much safer move.

The other point I wanted to emphasise is in regard to the absence of the greenhouse trigger. I was very disappointed to hear Minister Campbell yesterday rule out categorically the greenhouse trigger and say it would be a bad thing. That goes completely against his predecessor, Senator Hill, who in 1999-2000 put a lot of effort into exploring the possibility of putting a greenhouse trigger into the EPBC Act. Indeed, it is not inaccurate to say that there was a clear commitment from the minister at the time that he would work towards putting that greenhouse trigger into the act. It is extraordinary that the Democrats provided an opportunity as long ago as 1999 to ensure that our environment laws enabled assessment of the climate change impacts of development. Seven years later we still have not seen it, and now we have had it categorically rejected. Even Senator Hill seven years ago said that introducing a greenhouse trigger would provide another measure for addressing our international responsibilities in relation to climate change. What has changed? The only thing that has changed is that we know the problem is even worse now than it was then.

I just do not understand why there is this intransigence. I think it really is a backward step and I ask the minister to reconsider his attitude in response to that. A greenhouse trigger would not stop developments happening automatically; all it would mean is that the impacts would be properly assessed so that we know what it is we are doing in regard to climate change. Surely, that is something we should be doing. I will be talking about other matters when we get to the committee stage of the debate. There will be a number of amendments circulated.

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a brief contribution to this second reading debate on the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006. I start from the premise that I have always thought that you cannot make bad legislation less bad. Most of the 136 submissions to the inquiry expressed very deep and extensive concerns about this bill and what it was looking to achieve. For that reason Labor has taken the decision not to support the bill.

We really believe that, if passed, this bill will weaken the protections of the current EPBC Act that currently provide some support for Australia’s biodiversity and heritage. As Senator Bartlett said, the bill is a lost opportunity to deal with the issue of climate change. Everyone expected that there would be some climate change triggers or some kind of signals in this bill. For them not to be there was a glaring omission that beggars belief.

It is very interesting that there are no government senators prepared to speak in this debate and defend this legislation. I think we got a good indication of why that is the case from the comments made by Senator Johnston about the explanatory memorandum and how pathetic and basically disrespectful the explanatory memorandum was in what was being asked of senators.

The bill is quite extraordinary. It is 400-odd pages long. It is incomprehensible. The additional amendments that have been provided make it almost impossible to understand. I certainly do not have any kind of legal training. I spent my time trying to work out what amendments to the proposals might actually mean and I gave up. That is why I do not intend to speak too long except to express my real concerns about what is going to be achieved here.

We know—the explanatory memorandum actually tells us—that this is about improving the circumstances for developers. They are going to be the major beneficiaries. The bill, as it stands, provides greatly enhanced discretionary power for the Minister for the Environment and Heritage. I am sure that he is going to tell us why he needs those powers.

The bill certainly curtails third-party appeal rights and we heard from Senator Bartlett and Senator Siewert just what the implications of that are for people who act in the public interest and have a right to represent the public interest and concerns about the environmental impacts of major developments.

The bill reduces transparency and accountability, and many examples of that have been provided to the committee through the submissions. Some of the submissions have taken extraordinary steps to explain what the implications are for the kinds of representations that they make on behalf of their constituency groups and how significantly they will be affected by the bill.

The bill certainly undermines the public consultation process. Surely a bill of this magnitude and this import requires that there be genuine and appropriate public consultation. Senator Siewert made the point so clearly about the issue of threatened species and heritage-listing processes. That was the part of the bill that I was flabbergasted by. I have found this whole process pretty instructive in the sense that it shows how a government that has control of both houses of the parliament can move so quickly and in such an extraordinary number of ways all at one time.

There were parts of the bill that really concerned most people who made submissions. As I read their submissions I started to understand just what was on their minds. They were concerned about this business about undertakings as to damage protections for those who seek to enforce the act by way of injunctions, and the fact that that has been removed from the bill. It is obviously targeted at active environmental groups, but there are a lot of community organisations and community activists who might be concerned about a major project being considered under the EPBC Act. They would not be able to have their voice heard under this legislation. I think that is truly a disservice to those communities and is grossly unfair.

We had quite significant and learned evidence from Dr Lee Godden and Ms Jacqueline Peel from the Faculty of Law at the University of Melbourne. In their submission they argued:

An important enforcement tool currently provided by the EPBC Act is the capacity for any ‘interested person’, including environmental civil society groups, to seek an injunction to prevent breaches of the Act—

under section 475—

Such applications supplement the enforcement activity carried out by the Department of Environment and Heritage, and play an important role in ensuring the accountability of developers for the environmental consequences of their actions ...

They went on to say that the changes were ‘likely to affect, adversely, the enforcement strength of the legislation’ because ‘environmental groups and other community members rarely have the necessary resources to meet demands for an undertaking as to damages’. That point was taken up by several key representative organisations: the National Trust, the Humane Society International, the Tasmanian Conservation Trust and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. All these people were arguing against the repeal of section 478. The submission from those peak organisations stated:

It is instructive to note that third parties have used the court system very judiciously, and given the Australian Government has such poor surveillance arrangements in place to ensure compliance, enabling individuals and organisations to ensure the objects of the Act are achieved should be encouraged not dissuaded.

Isn’t that what we want? We want an active democracy. We do not want to clamp down and we do not want to say that we are not prepared to listen to dissenting voices, but that will actually be the outcome of this legislation. Where do the public interest tests ever get to have their chance in the legislation as it is proposed?

Senator Bartlett referred to the changes to collecting evidence and the way in which evidence and dealing with offenders would actually be incorporated into the act. He talked about marrying the Migration Act and the Fisheries Management Act, and now this environment and heritage act. In a way, that is a pretty insidious process to bring in quite punitive action against individuals on the basis of aligning legislation. These offensive kinds of processes are all part of this insulting legislation.

The majority report from the committee made what I thought was the most offensive comment of all. It was this clause more than anything else that, I think, would have offended those people who are opposing the report. Paragraph 4.42 states:

The committee notes some concerns raised by the Scrutiny of Bills committee in its Alert Digest No. 12 of 2006 in regard to the provisions above, and hopes that the Minister’s responses to the questions raised by that committee will allay any fears regarding these reforms.

I do not intend to proceed any further because I think that the committee stage of the bill will be very informative. There will be extreme pressure on the minister to actually respond to the many questions that will be raised about the reforms that this bill purports to deliver.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 is a disaster for our nation’s environmental and cultural heritage. That such a bill could be brought before the parliament in the current atmosphere of growing public alarm about the environment, to emasculate the already weak legislation, the one piece of legislation that empowers the government to protect Australia’s environment—that is, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999—is testimony not just to the Howard government’s dereliction and culpability in its handling of Australia’s environment but to the power of the vested interests—that is, the mining corporations, the logging corporations and the other lobbyists from the big end of town. The government does not have an environmental conscience and does not give a tinker’s cuss about the Australian environment, and therefore it is abandoning its responsibility as the custodian of the Australia that the next generation and all future generations will inherit.

That such a horror piece of legislation as this could be before the parliament at this end of the year can only be matched with the cynicism of the minister for the environment, who just walked out of this chamber, having been here for a few minutes. This legislation has been brought before the parliament before the all-important State of the environment report has been brought in—he ought to have had that before the parliament by now—so that this country can get a glimpse, even from the inevitably politically loaded report that it must be, about how rapidly our nation’s environmental heritage is being destroyed.

One only has to look at the loss of species. Amongst all the wealthy nations on earth, we are the worst performer. Regarding the impending loss of species—our Australian wildlife and plant life heritage—amongst all the world’s wealthy nations, we have the biggest list of endangered species. Who would have thought that a Prime Minister, who almost never appears in public without being in front of the flag and uses the Australian idiom time and time again to profess his great fealty to this country, could be so totally derelict about what makes this nation a nation? Of course, above all things, that is our land, our seas, our waterways, our forests, our mountains, our plains and the diversity of vegetation and wildlife that makes up this country. Indigenous Australia has always known that and Australians all know that, but here we have a piece of legislation which is going to see the current unprecedented rate of destruction of the natural fabric of this planet accelerated.

The Humane Society International and World Wide Fund for Nature Australia have briefly put together a list of their concerns about this tooth-pulling legislation which comes at a time when our environment laws need to be strengthened. They point out that the bill before us will potentially wipe 500 threatened ecological communities from the current waiting list for protection. These are being taken off the list by a derelict government and a failed minister for two reasons. The first reason is self-evident—there is a failure to look at those 500 threatened species, properly assess them and bring into place management plans to protect them. The two national and international environmental organisations point out that these 500 threatened ecological communities involve millions of hectares of endangered habitat across the country. There, Acting Deputy President Moore—as a member of parliament you will know—is the problem. There is no way that this venal, small-minded, materially oriented government which is lacking in the values of heart, warmth and relationship to this planet which gives us life is going to protect millions of hectares of endangered habitat across this country.

The Stern report, which says that climate change threatens the planet but also will come with a $9 trillion a year bill if we do not act on it by mid-century, pointed out that, in protecting the environment, we are in fact protecting the future of the economy. But we have a Prime Minister still so bereft of Australian concerns—those deep-hearted ones that go beyond standing before business groups and talking about cutting tax—that he cannot get the idea that, as a responsible nation to coming generations, we should be protecting our environment, therefore protecting our economy, and also ensuring their life, their happiness and their excitement about diversity on this planet, on which we are one of five million to 30 million species—just one species, dependent on the rest.

He does not get the idea that, if you do not look after the environment, you will not look after the economy. In fact, in his thinking he is so far back into the industrial age that he still believes that it is a case of the environment or the economy. There is no way that he can listen to a Sir Nicholas Stern, an economist, if it cuts across that war of ideas that there is in his 1950s head as he sells out this country through a weak, vacillating and procrastinating person—inevitably, a person of conflicting ideas—such as we have in the Minister for the Environment and Heritage.

The second point that the Humane Society International and World Wide Fund for Nature Australia pointed out that this bill will do is remove the mandatory requirement to develop a recovery plan once a threatened species or ecological community is listed under the law as threatened. That is, if one of the Australian species is listed as rare, vulnerable or critically endangered, under the very moderate—in fact, weak—Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the minister is required to bring in a recovery plan—not just let it go, but do something about rescuing that species from oblivion. This legislation removes that requirement.

If you look at the Mary River that Senator Bartlett referred to, the Beattie Labor government is about to build a dam at Traveston—a travesty of a dam—which will flood the prime breeding places left in a very small range for the threatened Queensland lungfish, which scientists point out is a living link which tells us how vertebrate species like we human beings came ashore from the oceans millions of years ago. It actually tells us about our own history.

If you ask the world expert, Professor Joss from Macquarie University, about this dam, she will tell you that it is going to drive this marvellous Australian species rapidly into extinction. That is what happens when you destroy the breeding ground of a species. Premier Beattie can talk about ladders and lift wells and all sorts of other things, but the breeding ground in the gravel of the river is going to be suffocated under metres of water. The minister for the environment’s advisers know that. The minister for the environment knows that. Premier Beattie and all of his Labor Party apparatchiks know that—one of them, at least, had the conscience, bless her, to resign from the party before the last election and stand against this dam. The Prime Minister knows that. The Prime Minister is fully aware of what that dam will do. But, under this legislation, one fears that the government will give the go-ahead for that destructive and unnecessary dam but the requirement for a recovery plan, of all things, to help that lungfish recover and have a more assured future for the future of this nation is being ripped out of the legislation and thrown into the gutter.

The third point that the key environment groups made was that the bill will remove the mandatory requirement to identify critical habitat for threatened species in any recovery plans that are developed. At the moment, if you are going to have a recovery plan—if the minister decides that there will be one—sensibly, the legislation says, ‘Find the critical habitat upon which that species depends and protect it.’ That is being torn out of this legislation. We will not do that anymore. With the Mary River, for example, we know where the critical habitat is. That is the key river for the survival of the Queensland lungfish, the Mary River turtle, the Mary River cod and other species.

But no longer will this weak and hopeless minister for this anti-environment government have to sensibly look for critical habitats for such species. Now the government will be able to say, ‘What could we do? Build the dam.’ There is nothing in the law to stop it. There is nothing that the minister will have to consider anymore. The two members of the government opposite—so there are 36 missing—might ask their colleagues to consider, when they come to vote for a gag on this bill a little later this week, because the debate on this legislation will not be allowed in full in this parliament, whether they will be able to look their grandchildren in the eye when somebody brings along a copy of this legislation and says, ‘Why did you do it?’

The fourth point that the HSI and WWF list is that, sadly, this bill will make it harder for the public to secure legal protection for threatened species and ecological communities because there is a new requirement in it for public nominations to comply with themes set by the minister or risk having their nomination left off lists for consideration. So you do not look at a species to see whether it is threatened anymore; as Senator Siewert indicated, it has to fit in with a specific theme that the minister will be able to point to that was set for that particular time. If it does not fit in, too bad. We are going to hear: ‘Trust the minister.’ If the minister ever does come back into the chamber we are going to hear him say that. But the minister took up his papers and hightailed it out of here before I got up to speak.

The minister is not going to stand in here and hear what this legislation is about and look anybody on this side of the chamber in the eye, because he knows that he is a disgrace to that ministry. He knows that he is selling out the nation’s environment with this legislation. He knows that he is paving the way for the extinction of a whole host of threatened species which, under the current act, have some chance of surviving. Some greedy proposal will come along which this government will not get in the way of—certainly not to protect Australia’s environmental heritage.

The bill will give the minister arbitrary discretion to remove a publicly nominated species or ecological community from the annual list of species to be assessed for listing. Currently, the minister gives the scientific committee repeated extensions to postpone consideration et cetera. Now the minister will be able to just knock a species off the list. The bill allows the minister to refuse to have reassessed a threatened species that was previously rejected for protection, even if its conservation status has worsened. So the minister may have rejected a species for listing in the past and, if the species heads towards extinction and comes up for listing again, he can just knock it off because he can say, ‘The government looked at that at some previous time.’ I will finish off with a statement from the Humane Society International that I think is so inherently heartfelt and understated—

Debate interrupted.