Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, pursuant to standing order 74(5), I ask Senator Conroy, the Minister representing the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, for an explanation as to why an answer has not been provided to question on notice No. 2980, asked on 16 May 2013, relating to the Point Peron canal development in the Perth metropolitan area.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have no advice at this point in time, Senator Ludlam. I am happy to take that on notice to see what I can find for you. I have not received any information.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the minister's failure to provide either an answer or explanation.

Obviously, it is not Senator Conroy's fault if the minister that he represents in here has not sent across a brief. But we have been in touch with the minister for environment; we gave them plenty of notice that I was going to put this matter to the chamber. As everyone in this chamber knows, answers to questions on notice are due within 30 days and the clock is running down on this parliament, and I am very keen for an answer to this question because it pertains to events occurring right now in my home state of Western Australia. This question, having been asked on 16 May 2013, should actually have been answered last week. It concerns a recommendation in April by the Western Australian EPA that the unwanted and obsolete Point Peron canal development should proceed so long as it meets certain conditions.

I would like to categorically emphasise the absolute rejection of this approval by the scientific community and the broader community of the region. Three hundred and eighty individual questions and matters have been submitted as part of the EPA appeal process. It is not just me who is keen for an answer; there are at least 8,000 people in Rockingham also waiting on an answer about the future of their backyard.

Point Peron is a place that they consider and we in the Greens consider is too precious to lose. This is a place that they and we will fight ferociously to defend from Premier Barnett's absolutely preposterous and obsolete 1980s-style canal housing development, which nobody in the region wants. If it is allowed to proceed, it will see the regional park on Point Peron bulldozed; the seagrass meadows and marine habitat of penguins, dolphins, fisheries and countless species in Mangles Bay dredged; and the adjoining freshwater Lake Richmond, which is home to one of just two surviving ancient thrombolite communities in WA, impacted very severely upon.

Question 2980 has several components, on all of these issues, and environmental vandalism is part and parcel of the Barnett government's unhappy reign. These issues are raised every day by the Greens across Australia as the only voice in parliament that is actually standing up for our precious environment.

This particular case is very different. The land in question was transferred from the Commonwealth to the state of Western Australia in 1964 on the strict condition that its future use be restricted to a reserve for recreation and/or parklands. The Commonwealth in 1968 then confirmed that the land must not be used for private industrial, commercial or residential development—a good commitment. Will the Commonwealth require the Western Australian government to honour these commitments—these commitments that were signed? The minister for finance in 2011 indicated in written correspondence, which I will quote: 'The Federal government has an expectation that the WA government will acknowledge the undertakings previously given in relation to the site.'

So it is a very simple question: will a written agreement signed between the state of Western Australia and the Commonwealth be honoured or not? Is a signed agreement an agreement or not? I expect an answer to my question 2980 very soon, and I ask that the government treat this particular development with the utmost caution. I would particularly commend Senator Conroy to bring a brief from the environment minister while this parliament still stands. It is not good enough for the campaigners, led by the inexhaustible Dawn Jecks, who has been pursuing state and federal governments on this matter for years; or my state Greens colleague Lynn MacLaren MLC, who has been working on this issue for years, representing the broad interests of the community of that part of the Perth metro area who do not want an unwanted and obsolete eighties-style canal development rammed into the coastline that they treat with such respect and regard.

This is a matter that the Commonwealth environment minister could put to rest very, very easily by simply noting that the Commonwealth will expect the Western Australian government to honour its agreement that was signed so many years ago when these agreements were exchanged. That is something that we believe should be clarified and resolved in this parliament and set to rest. Otherwise, we will continue to run the campaign all the way through and out the other side of the federal election, until this place is given the regard and the protection that it so richly deserves.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to speak on the motion to take note as well. I say to the previous speaker—

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, Senator Macdonald; I will just clarify. It is not a motion to take note; it is a motion that the minister has failed to supply an answer.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought the senator moved that they take note of the minister's lack of answer.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it is failure to supply. In the standing orders, there are two distinct motions. This one is not taking note of the answer.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whatever the motion, that is the one I want to speak to.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can speak to it.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, thank you for that guidance. I say to the previous speaker that the arrogance shown by Minister Conroy and Minister Burke just shows the contempt in which this government holds the Australian public, and yet this is a government that Senator Ludlam and his team have kept in power for the last three years. Fancy the hypocrisy of the Greens political party in complaining about Senator Conroy and Mr Burke, when they have kept them in power in the last three years!

This refusal, the cavalier way in which ministers in this chamber simply ignore the rules of the Senate and ignore senators who ask questions and expect answers and the way in which they simply do not follow the forms of a democratic parliament—that contempt is typical of the contempt with which the Labor Party have treated Australians in the last three years, from the time when the Prime Minister promised solemnly, hand on heart, that she would never introduce a carbon tax, and then immediately and capriciously and knowingly broke that solemn promise, until today, when ministers completely ignore the processes of democracy by refusing to answer questions. When Senator Ludlam, as a Greens senator, as part of the Labor-Greens alliance, gives notice to the minister that he is going to raise this, does the minister do anything about it at all? Absolutely nothing. The contempt and the arrogance with which the Labor Party treat this parliament is palpable.

If the people of Australia need any other reason, any other evidence, of how poor this government is, they only have to look at the way in which the Labor Party treat with contempt the people of Australia in the way they run this parliament.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was not intending to contribute on Senator Ludlam's motion regarding Senator Conroy, but I was inspired by Senator Macdonald to do so and indeed inspired out of deep concern about the pattern of behaviour that Senator Ludlam's motion highlights with regard to Senator Conroy and the approach that he and his office take to the answering of questions.

Senator Ludlam may come into this chamber today and complain that Senator Conroy's office and Senator Conroy have failed to answer questions in a timely manner, but this is hardly the first occasion on which such a failure has occurred. We have had countless instances, both through the chamber and in particular through the Senate estimates process, where Senator Conroy has proven himself to be a serial offender in failing to answer questions in a timely manner or within the time limit set by the standing orders for this chamber or by the committees with regard to the return of questions on notice.

I can recall sitting in Senate estimates committees where Senator Conroy has provided answers to questions that had been asked three, four or five months previously—and he has done so not weeks, not days, not even hours before the committee is to meet again but while the committee is meeting. While the committee is meeting, some months after the preceding Senate estimates, we get answers to questions asked at the previous Senate estimates. It is a completely contemptuous approach, a terrible precedent that this minister sets as the Leader of the Government in the Senate for all his fellow ministers in terms of the standards that they should be adhering to in being accountable to the parliament. That is what questions are for—a level of accountability, accountability through questions without notice and questions on notice in this chamber and of course accountability through the Senate estimates processes.

On all of these levels, Senator Conroy is a demonstrated failure. He fails in this place to give answers to the questions that are asked of him, he fails to answer questions on notice in any sort of timely way and he fails abysmally to provide any type of answer in relation to Senate estimates proceedings. I am pleased that Senator Ludlam has called Senator Conroy out today and brought attention to this one instance, but I would hate for anybody to leave here thinking it is just one instance. There are many other instances that Senator Conroy and other ministers in this government are guilty of, and it is to their shame, just as it is to the shame of the Australian Greens that it is only now, in the dying days of this government, that they have started to highlight such failures on the government's part.

Question agreed to.