Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

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

This is a disgraceful piece of legislation—

Honourable Senators:

Honourable senators interjecting—

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

Government and opposition members who are catcalling on that ought to understand that this legislation is going to debase the Australian environment for a long, long time to come. We have just seen an amendment pass the Senate which will enable the Gunns pulp mill, for example, in Tasmania to proceed.

Honourable Senators:

Honourable senators interjecting—

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

‘That’s good,’ say Labor members opposite—

Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Very good!

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

including Tasmanian Labor members. But let me say why it is not. The problem is that there is huge dishonesty in what is happening with this legislation, backed by the Labor Party. ‘Good,’ says Senator Polley. The dishonesty is that, through this legislation, this federal government has washed its hands of its obligation to look at the environmental impact of that mega pulp mill on some of the most precious forests on the face of the planet, along with the wildlife they contain. The minister said, ‘Well, I will be able to look at that wildlife,’ then he retreated—because he knows he will not look at the wildlife, including endangered species in those forests.

The minister trotted out the Beeton State of the Environment report. The author of that report, with his performance in the public arena, should hang his head in shame. The minister cited the regional forest agreement as having been a good instrument for conserving forests. What the minister did not say is that, under the regional forest agreement, nearly 20,000 hectares of these great forests in Tasmania alone, and thousands more hectares in Victoria and southern New South Wales, are being destroyed every year. This is happening in an age of climate change, in an age of mega species loss on the planet, in an age where world scientists are saying that we must change direction because we threaten the very fabric of life on this planet upon which all humanity in the future depends. That is coming from Nobel laureates, from thousands of scientists. This legislation flies in the face of that science.

This legislation is in effect an environmental inquisition, because it says that those people who want to stand for the environment are the ones who need to be punished. In recent weeks we have seen them in Tasmania being carted off by the dozen in paddy wagons for defending the natural amenity in this country which we as elected representatives should be defending.

This legislation is a low point in the Howard government’s dereliction of its obligation to protect this nation’s heritage now and into the future. It is a breach of contract and obligation. It is a failure of the guardianship which governments owe to the voteless millions coming after us: our children, our grandchildren and their grandchildren 1,000 times into the future. This legislation would disgrace some of the dictatorships which are indifferent to human and natural values elsewhere on the planet. This legislation says we bind our own hands in the face of a monumental environmental onslaught. This legislation says we will not necessarily contract ourselves to look at the impact of uranium mines and the nuclear industry on this country in the future. This legislation says we will prevent from going to the courts people who under the old legislation might have been able to take court action against government indifference and failure; we will close that avenue as well.

The minister says this legislation is good for the environment, yet he knows it is going to make environmental indifference the hallmark of this government instituted through the law in this place. This legislation was written by the logging and resource extraction industries and over the last two years was readied for this moment when the Labor Party would join the government in the way that we just saw in this place to sell out the environment.

Let me say this, Mr President: if we cannot stand for the wild creatures with which we share this planet and for their habitat in an age of escalating extinction and five years after 1,500 of the world’s top scientists warned of a species cataclysm which threatens our own existence on this planet, then we are selling out the future of our country and we are selling out the future of this planet.

The threat of climate change has broken like a wave of reality on this country in the last few months. With it has come inherently a more rapid rush to the extinction of the precious natural variety of this nation. Take coral bleaching: the Great Barrier Reef is threatened with total destruction in coming decades due to global warming. Who on the government benches cares? Who over there cares and is going to stand against that in this, the greatest coal-exporting country in the world?

We are one of the few wealthy countries left on the face of the planet—unlike New Zealand and Thailand in our area—which have not prohibited old-growth logging and the logging of high conservation value forest. Here tonight every member opposite voted to allow that process to continue for decades, adding enormously to climate change while on the floor of the forests destroying the ecosystems upon which the variety of life of this nation utterly depends. It has been safe there for millennia, but it is no longer safe because of the attitude of the body politic of this nation, because of this refusal by senators, except for the Democrats and the Greens, to give the environment the priority which we must give it this century if for those who come after us this planet is going to be worth living on—and the government sold them out tonight.

This bill sells them out. It cheats them. It does so because there are sectoral interests—money-making, profiteering greedy businesses—which want this legislation to complement other legislation which punishes environmentalists if they move peacefully to protect the very thing this government is neglecting and turning its back on. What a disgraceful attitude by this government! What a disgraceful attitude by the opposition towards this nation’s future and towards its natural amenity, the wealth of nature which inspires us, gives us adventure, gives us spiritual fulfilment and gives us beauty in an age when those things are at a premium in life.

What a lot of sell-outs you people are! How could you do this to the coming generations of this country? You might do it to yourself, but how could you do it to the Australians yet to come? Why do you not have in here legislation taking the reins of protecting this environment? You are prepared to do it for workplaces in this country, to short-change workers, but you are not prepared to do it for the environment. Where is your use of the Corporations Law to stop the destruction of this nation’s heritage at Burrup, a World Heritage site? Where is the use of the Corporations Law to ensure that if we have a pulp mill it is based on plantation timber and not on the further destruction of the natural forests of this country? Where is your use of the Corporations Law to wind back climate change and the release of greenhouse gases which threaten the Great Barrier Reef, all the rangelands and all the inland waterways which, as Senator Siewert has been trying to point out in recent days, threatens the Ramsar sites, the wetlands of this nation? You are not using it for the environment, because those big business interests which want to make money out of marauding this nation’s environment have sway over you. All I can say is I hope you are not here this time next year. But if we look to the Labor Party, there is going to have to be a monumental change of philosophy which says that we put Australia’s future first, not the interests of those who want to make money out of doing the wrong thing, out of doing further injury.

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

I rise on a point of order, Mr Acting Deputy President. Seeing as Senator Brown has consumed the entire debating time allocated for the third reading debate, the Democrats will not get a chance to put our view on this legislation on the record, about which I am disappointed.

Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What is your point of order?

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

I guess my time has run out, so I cannot make it, can I?

The Acting Deputy President:

Yes, you are accurate in that remark. The time allotted for the consideration of the remaining stages of this bill has expired. The question now is that the third reading be agreed to.

Question put.