Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2014, which we are debating today, is part of a commitment to a more streamlined and efficient environmental assessment process. That is a well-documented thing and it is part of Labor's election commitments, so we are supporting this bill that is before us. But it is important in this context, because of how the government has framed this debate, to note that Labor on the other hand does not support in any way the other processes put in train by this government to delegate the approval of environmental powers to both state and local governments.

We acknowledge that the principle of this bill—in terms of cost recovery—is sound, because it allows for proponents of developments to contribute to the cost of assessment and to the development of the application process by the Commonwealth. We think that is a good thing. What we do object to, though, is the fact that the minister has presented this bill as part of the government's overall agenda to hand over the Commonwealth's important responsibility to protect matters of national environmental significance to state governments. As we have recently discovered, this also includes local councils.

As we know, the government has begun the process of handing over environmental approval powers to the states. I really object to the fact that this will give people like Campbell Newman control over the Great Barrier Reef and, indeed, it will give Colin Barnett control over our wonderful Ningaloo Reef. It is important today that I emphasise that our attitude to this bill is very separate to our overall attitude to those ministerial intentions, even though the government has sought to present them together as a package. That is, the government wants to broadly hand over our responsibilities under the EPBC Act to the states. We believe that these should be packaged very separately.

The delineation between us and the coalition on these matters should be very clear from the outset. We should be able to do streamlining, as this bill does, and save taxpayer money without attacking standards. Environmental standards have been under demonstrable attack right around the country time and time again. I will highlight some of those for the chamber today. The government went against all reason in handing over—quite sneakily, in my view—the world's largest marine reserve system by reproclaiming it and undoing the very management plans that gave those marine protections effect.

The government has also, in my view, all but abandoned efforts to have Queensland's Cape York added to the World Heritage List. It has also approved every request for development in the Great Barrier Reef that has landed on the minister's desk. This is despite the fact that UNESCO has threatened to list the reef as endangered. We have seen some of those issues play out before the World Heritage Committee this week.

Sharks have been on the hit list, with the minister approving an exemption to the WA government to allow drum lining to take place off the WA coast. That is a completely illogical process, because it has been reeling in shark species that are not even the ones that are implicated in the shark attacks that have been taking place against West Australians. There is a huge amount of environmental cost being wreaked against animals that actually have not been implicated in any of the shark attacks that have taken place.

We know that this government has also been taking us backwards on climate change. We are the laughing stock on the world stage. In Warsaw this year, during the last climate change talks, we were awarded an unprecedented five fossil awards. As we have seen just today, the attempt of the government to approach the World Heritage Committee to delist 74,000 hectares of Tasmanian wilderness has very fortunately been completely rejected by the World Heritage Committee. I cannot begin to tell you how relieved I am that that is the case. We are now resorting to international fora to protect our important World Heritage listed sites, as the government itself has abandoned them. All these issues truly expose the government's lack of environmental credentials, which have been on display time and time again. These kinds of environmental standards are under attack in the other bill that is before this place, which the government claims is packaged up with this one. The EPBC Act deals with bilateral assessments and approvals but that other bill would allow state and local governments to approve developments in what are, in my view, some of the nation's most iconic and significant environmental assets.

I want to reflect very briefly on the parts of this bill which are important and which we do not object to. There is a fee structure for cost recovery within this bill for environmental assessments. This fee structure will be put within regulation and ministerial determinations and will have a formula to ensure appropriate cost recovery for the assessments. Environmental assessment activities are, in Labor's view, appropriate for cost recovery as the activities provide a clear benefit for particular proponents to undertake developments that may impact on the environment. I think this is a clear and important objective. We note that exemptions and waivers are also going to be part of this system, which will ensure that public entities providing a public benefit will not be burdened by additional fees. You can see where cost recovery is appropriate. Where we have resources that are going to be economically exploited, the cost recovery for those environmental assessments should take place but we should distinguish them from things that require assessment for the public benefit. We want to see cost recovery encourage proponents to think about engaging early and in a very strategic way in how to manage their costs within the environmental assessment process. We have seen in the past that there can be a cost blow-out for government as these processes drag on. So this measure is a good thing, because we think it will contribute to a more streamlined assessment process as proponents seek to manage their costs in the most efficient way possible.

To conclude, Labor support the streamlining of environmental assessments for major projects but final approval of matters of national environmental significance should, in our view, remain with the national government—but that is a separate issue to the matters before us in this bill which pertain to cost recovery for environmental assessment and which we are prepared to support.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2014, and I do so for several reasons. The crux of this bill is to say that the Department of the Environment can only get properly funded if it is prepared to tick off on myriad destructive proposals. I think that is perverse logic and, sadly, we have seen over many years a consistent imposition of an efficiency dividend. We have seen staff cut after staff cut at the environment department. The department is chronically underresourced, such that it is not able to perform its functions adequately. Now we have this dangerous proposal to say: 'That's all right. You can take money from the developers because you won't have your independence compromised. It's not like you're starved of funds and you need to approve these development applications to get the money that you need'! So this is a very dangerous course of action. The inability to manage those risks is the very reason why the Greens are opposing this bill.

There is obviously well-documented literature on regulatory capture, and I raised this issue in Senate estimates. Much to my surprise, the department had not engaged very deeply with the concept and nor were they able to reassure me that they had these mechanisms in place to manage the inappropriate influence that was being put on them by the industries which they are meant to be regulating as opposed to facilitating. Sadly, what we see is that there is no political will to ever refuse development. There has been literally 10 refusals in the 14 years that we have had the EPBC on foot. This just makes a mockery of our environmental approval system. It just makes it a tick-and-flick process—which brings me to the ANAO audit that was issued last week in which this point was highlighted.

The ANAO report said, in fact, that chronic underresourcing of the department is why it has an inability or perhaps a lack of political will to enforce conditions. The ANAO report was incredibly damning. It found that the staffing in the department was so low that compliance was simply not happening to the level that the public would expect it to happen. This has been an open secret for a long time. Everybody knows that the developers can get away with blue murder because the department is simply not enforcing its own conditions. Evidently from this government there is no political will to do that, but certainly those public servants themselves do not lack the political will; they lack the resources to do their jobs properly. Despite this and despite the regular reports finding that compliance is poor—we had the Gladstone inquiry report just a few weeks and the ANAO report last week—this government is going to increase the staff cuts to that department and to many others. There are going to be 129 staff cut from the section that includes compliance. Again, in estimates, I asked: 'Are you serious? Are you really going to cut more people from compliance?' They were not able to give me the figures for how many will come from that subset, but 129 people will be sacked from the division that includes compliance. This is incredibly concerning to the Greens. This is just the latest assault on the environment from this government.

Sadly, in the short period that this government has been at the helm, we have seen a litany of attacks and assaults on Australia's environment. We have this crazy and dangerous proposal to give away the Commonwealth's powers to protect the environment to state governments. That is obviously coming to us in a separate bill, which I hope this place kicks out on its rear-end for the dangerous and dodgy proposal that it is.

This plan to say that the Commonwealth could no longer stop development in World Heritage areas, that it could no longer save the last remaining habitat of a federally threatened species—what planet are we on? We have had 30 years of increasing involvement of the Commonwealth government in protecting the environment, and rightly so. The national environment is not just nationally significant; we have told the world that it is internationally significant when we protect it with something like a World Heritage listing. The notion that you could put the state governments in charge of that—and even, as this government wants, the local governments in charge of that—just boggles the mind. You seriously could not think of a worse proposal for the environment. And it comes at the worst possible time in history, when we are in a climate crisis, when we are in a biodiversity crisis and when all of our environmental indicators on soil health, land health and marine are going down.

Sadly, that is just the first assault. There have been so many others. We do not have a minister for science anymore. We do not have a stand-alone minister for climate change, because of course climate change is crap, according to this Prime Minister. We do not have funding for the Environmental Defender's Offices anymore—the only independent, public-interest community legal centre that helps the community enforce environmental laws. Senator George Brandis decides that, no, he does not like the fact that the community can enforce the law, so he has abolished the funding to the EDO.

We have got the attempt to roll back our climate laws, which, again, I hope this place stands firm on and sends packing, because we desperately need to do something about climate change. The system we have got in place is the best system that we can have. It is designed to be improved and it is designed to set this country and our grandchildren up for a liveable future. This government is trying to abolish the Climate Commission, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA. Again, it is economic lunacy to not invest in renewable energy, to not invest in the future, with the clean energy and the job creation those bodies have facilitated, along with the fact that the CEFC is making us money when we are in this so-called budget crisis. Where on earth is the rationale for abolishing that body?

The approval of the world's largest coal port in the Great Barrier Reef comes in at No. 7 on my list of the Abbott government's assault on the environment. I do not know in what universe that is considered acceptable, given the hundreds of scientists and the many thousands of community members who have spoken out about it, along with the international condemnation of the World Heritage Committee. They have come out saying not only that climate change is a huge threat to the reef on top of crown-of-thorns and water quality from run-off but that dredging and dumping is the latest threat to the reef. Yet we have the world's biggest coal port approved by the Abbott government at Abbot Point. Perhaps he just liked the synergy there with his name.

Reef Rescue is a fantastic program where work has been going on with farmers. Sadly, $40 million has been cut out of that successful program. The Water Commission too has been abolished. Again, that was an independent body that was doing excellent work and providing independent scientific advice. This government is not so keen on science; it prefers to listen to—I don't know—the IPA.

There has been an attempt to delist the Tassie forests. Thank goodness overnight that was roundly rejected by the international community and the World Heritage Committee, with one country even calling the attempt feeble. Thank heavens we still have protection for those beautiful and important forests. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister thinks we have got too much forest locked up in national parks. Apparently he does not realise that, actually, half of Australians like to visit national parks on a regular basis and that tourists kind of like to visit them too. So it is not just good for biodiversity; it is actually also good for our economy. But, no, we have got too much forest locked up. The government is dismantling world-leading marine protection laws. Again, these are not only attacks on the environment but an assault on economic profitability and the tourism sector.

All of the megamines proposed for the Galilee Basin in my home state of Queensland would be a climate disaster should they proceed, including for the likes of Mr Clive Palmer and Ms Gina Rinehart. If we open up the Galilee Basin and mine all of that coal it would make that region, that basin, the seventh largest carbon emitter in the world—right when we are in a climate emergency and right when we should be, at every moment, thinking of the lives that we will leave for our grandchildren.

The list goes on, unfortunately. The government is refusing to give landholders the right to say no to coal-seam gas or coal on their land because of the huge threats to groundwater—and to surface water, for that matter—and to the very farming operations themselves. So much for standing up for the farmers. I have brought bills and motions before this place. We have not received support for those actions to try to protect land and water from the rapacious fossil fuel industry, which is thankfully coming to its end. Do we want to fix the mining tax and raise some revenue in this so-called budget crisis? Nah. We just want to give the big miners what they want, so this government wants to abolish the mining tax.

The government are already seeking to abolish the Biodiversity Fund, one of the few measures that has actually been helping to rehabilitate land and has been available to land managers to access support for the good land management that they do and could have been funded to do. No—they want to abolish that as well. Cape York World Heritage nomination: where did that go? It got delayed and now we find out in estimates that the staff have been slashed to progress that nomination. There used to be 5.7 people and now there are only 1½ people progressing that. The traditional owners want that listing. They were so close to finalising the consultation—they were about to put the lines on the maps—and the government have pulled the rug out from underneath them because they are not committed to World Heritage. And almost half a billion dollars has been slashed from Landcare over five years.

It is against that backdrop and against that most heinous assault of giving the powers to protect Australia's national environment to states or councils—they don't care who; anyone will do—that we have this bill to seek to recover the costs of assessing development applications that would have a significant impact on a matter of national environmental significance. It is somewhat ironic that we are seeing this bill now given that the Abbott government soon will not have many applications to assess anyway, precisely because they are giving away those powers to the states and local councils. Frankly, one wonders why they are bothering. Indeed, one wonders why they are bothering when they have not set up a structure that will enable the conflict of interest to be managed.

A year or more ago we saw a similar proposal mooted for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority so that they would be able to increase their fees for offshore dumping. We opposed that as well, because you simply cannot have a regulator hooked on funds from the damaging activity that they are meant to be regulating rather than facilitating. So there is no mechanism to manage the conflict of interest there, nor to manage the threat to the independence of the department. Given the chronic under-resourcing and chronic understaffing, it is a slap in the face to say, 'The department does not deserve to be funded and well-resourced; we are going to make the developers do the work that the government should be doing.'

The Department of the Environment needs to be properly resourced to do its job independently without scrimping and saving, and ticking and flicking. They should not be in a position where they do not have the people, the expertise, the time or the money to properly scrutinise these most damaging of applications. They are not assessing people's carports or a house going up; they are assessing significant impacts on matters of national environmental significance. This is the worst of the worst, and we are chronically underfunding and understaffing the regulatory folk who are meant to be doing that job. It simply demonstrates that there is no political will in the government to stand up for the environment, and there is simply a mentality of tick and flick, and of continuing to slash staff.

That is why the Greens will be opposing this bill, as we will oppose those other assaults on the environment that I mentioned earlier, and as we will oppose, with every fibre of our being, this plan to put state governments or local councils—anyone will do—in charge of the national environment. It is a recipe for destruction, and we will fight it with everything we have.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2014. On this side we have been asked to confine our remarks because we are keen to get these bills through, but it is important to enter the debate, particularly after hearing a Greens political party speaker speak. Some people do listen to these broadcasts, and if you listened to the previous speech you would be appalled at where it said Australia is going. The Greens political party and their friends—the Wilderness Society, the WWF, I regret to say, and the Marine Conservation Society—work on the basis that any lie, any misrepresentation, will justify the means. That is why the Greens and all those other groups are spending literally tens of millions of dollars on a glossy brochure campaign full of misrepresentations and inconsistencies to try and shut down the Australian coal industry that gives this country the standard of living it currently has and many of the jobs that are currently provided for fellow Australians.

I am conscious of time, but I cannot let the previous speech go without addressing some of outrageous claims the previous speaker made. For example, we are being told that the Commonwealth EPBC Act is being thrown out the door and that the laws will no longer apply because we are getting a one-stop shop for the states to administer. The same laws will apply. Nothing is happening with the EPBC Act except the process of the state governments assessing a project and then, when they have finished, having another group of Commonwealth bureaucrats going through the same process, doubling the time to obtain an environmental approval.

I have not had a chance to get the figures—if someone wants to correct me they can—but as I recall under Labor, when someone made an application for an EPBC Act approval, the average number of days to get an approval, subject to conditions, or a knock-back I think was over 700 days. Under the current government, as I recall, the same applications are averaging something like 87 days. Those figures may not be accurate, but they are in the ballpark. That is because the Labor Party has always relied on the Greens in order to retain government. The Labor Party knows that the Greens want to stop every development in Australia, so they have a deliberate go-slow policy federally and they do that on top of the state regimes, who have already assessed most applications.

What this range of bills will do is ensure that all of the applications can be dealt with by one set of bureaucrats, using two sets of laws, Commonwealth and state, but assessing almost the same things. If you listened to the previous speaker, you would think that the Commonwealth EPBC Act has been thrown away. I often say to my friend Robert Hill, who introduced that act—a Liberal minister—'Look, a lot of people are unhappy about the way that act delays everything.' He says to me, quite rightly, 'It is not the act that is the problem; it is the way it is administered.' Under Liberal governments it is administered properly, efficiently and quickly, and you either get a no or a yes, and away you go. Under Labor you have to wait something like years to get these approvals.

I relate an instance up my way in North Queensland: an aquaculture prawn farm—we like aquaculture as it saves the wild-caught fishing industry—spent something like $15 million over about five years trying to get approval for one prawn farm. They eventually got the state approval but they then had to turn around and start all over again for a federal approval. No wonder we cannot afford the price of prawns in Australia at the present time.

Senator Walters complained that we had stopped funding for certain purposes only for the Environmental Defenders Offices. She says that that means now the public cannot stop anything and cannot enter into any contest with the Commonwealth. Yes, they can, Senator Walters. If they feel so strongly about it, some of these groups that are spending millions on this glossy brochure campaign to stop the coal industry could actually put some of that funding into paying their own lawyers.

If you listen to Senator Walters, you would think we have taken away the ability to contest these things. What we have done is redirect funding for much-needed legal aid to those places where legal aid is desperately needed. The senator could not resist her ongoing campaign on global warming. I recommend that she read a very thoughtful and well-developed argument in the papers recently from Maurice Newman, who, unfortunately for the senator and her cohorts, points out that, under any evidence at all, there has been no global warming for more than 20 years. But I will not enter into that. She then said the Abbot Point decision was an assault on the environment and an assault on the Barrier Reef. Senator Walters is always very careful with the words she chooses, but the dredging at Abbot Point is nowhere near the Great Barrier Reef—nowhere near it; 40 or 50 kilometres away. She talked about the dredging and dumping on the Great Barrier Reef. As she knows, it is nowhere near the Great Barrier Reef; Abbot Point is in the lagoon a little way out from the mainland. It is near where I live and I enjoy that part of the Barrier Reef. I am not worried about it, and neither is the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority—the scientific, well-funded group that looks at these things. The Institute of Marine Science does not get directly involved but lends support to various elements.

Then we got on to the World Heritage Commission. What an outrageous decision it was last night on the Tasmanian forest! Why do we bother being directed by this foreign group? Have a look who is on that, Senator Walters, and have a look at the environmental significance of the countries they come from. And yet they are sitting in judgement of us. As Senator Colbeck has said many a time, this World Heritage forest they are talking about is a forest that has been logged for years. So how come it is a pristine heritage forest, when it has already been logged? For the World Heritage Commission to enter into that is an absolute disgrace; and I might say the same about their deliberations on the Great Barrier Reef. They have given it a temporary reprieve, but the Great Barrier Reef is there; it will continue to exist forever; it will continue to attract tourists from all over the world; and it will continue to do that no matter what the World Heritage Commission says. As an Australian and a Queenslander, I get disgusted when people like the Greens political party and this foreign body try to diminish or shut down Australia's tourism industry by making false accusations on the Great Barrier Reef. There is some recent science which shows, as I have always said, that nature is a wonderful thing, Senator Walters, and the reef will regenerate itself.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, Mr Acting Deputy President. I would like to remind Senator Macdonald that the senator's name is Senator Waters, not Walters.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I apologise to Senator Waters if I have been mispronouncing her name. I do wish that you would also get your facts correct before you enter into these debates. Senator Waters also talked about the marine protected zones which the Abbott government has changed so that decisions are now made on the basis of—heaven forbid—science and scientific advice. That is rather different to relying on some American conservation agency that was set up, I might say, on the back of the profits of the oil industry decades ago. That group was embarrassed by what it had done to the American environment and now it pours millions of dollars into the Pugh Foundation, which then roams the world lecturing everyone else in the world about proper management of marine parks. Fortunately, under the Abbott government, marine parks will be managed according to science.

I am sorry that I have not even got onto my speech yet, but this is a debate and I cannot let the Greens continue to mislead the Australian public. Senator Waters laments the passing of the mining tax, but it was tax that did not make any money. It was a tax that cost more to implement than it ever recovered. Why wouldn't you get rid of it? Senator Waters also talked about the abolition of the Biodiversity Fund. She does not remember that it was the Howard government's Natural Heritage Trust that put all that money into the protection of biodiversity. Senator Waters also laments that a group of Canberra bureaucrats will lose their jobs because they will no longer have work to do in the Commonwealth Department of the Environment. That is because the work they were doing was duplicating work that another set of bureaucrats had done in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth. Why should you employ a group of people to do exactly the same work as another set of bureaucrats? Of course, we will reduce the numbers, because they are not needed. The Commonwealth laws will be addressed by the state bureaucrats when they are doing the state environmental assessments.

The final comment of Senator Waters that I recorded was that local councils would make decisions on the EPBC Act. I would like you to show me where that is provided for, Senator Waters. It sounds good. It will frighten some people who have Labor councils, I guess, in Sydney and elsewhere, to think that they would be left in charge of EPBC Act applications, but the state governments will be administering things, as they should.

I have extended my time to speak but I have not even got on to my speech. The second reading speech does clearly indicate what it is all about. I will not repeat that, except to say: the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2014 will amend the act to allow for cost recovery for environmental impact assessments and approvals. And who could argue with that? That is the way things are these days. Cost recovery will help to ensure that the Department of the Environment is adequately resourced to undertake efficient environmental assessments.

In a nutshell, that is what this bill is all about. I welcome the support of the Labor Party for the bill. It would be too much to expect that the Greens would support anything that the Howard or Abbott governments brought forward, and so I, to a degree, disregard their mismatch of reasons for not supporting this. But this is an appropriate step on the way through to bring some sense and good process to the protection of our environment, which this government is so keen to do and enhance.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a short contribution to the debate on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2014. I note that this bill was referred to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee together with the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Bilateral Agreement Implementation) Bill 2014, and the committee reported yesterday. That inquiry found serious shortcomings with the bilateral agreement amendment bill and, unfortunately, that bill has not yet been brought on for debate.

The cost recovery amendment bill before us is supported by the opposition. I note from the inquiry that there are only two groups opposed to the bill: the Greens, and the mining industry together with the Business Council of Australia—an unlikely alliance, of course, for very different reasons.

At the hearing we had the opportunity to question representatives from the Minerals Council and the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies. Despite being the champions of the one-stop shop reform, and despite the hearing being held in their home town of Melbourne, the Business Council refused the committee's offer to appear at the hearing.

At the hearing, when asking the miners about cost recovery, I noted from their submissions that they were opposed for two general reasons: they wanted general government revenue to finance the environmental approvals process, and they did not like that the cost recovery hit a mining company at the early stage of a project. I then put it to the miners that there was currently a super profits tax in place that contributes to general government revenue and only taxes a miner when they are making a super profit, not when they are in the exploration or investment phases. Based on this logic, I put to the miners this question: would this super profits tax be a fairer way of paying for the management of regulations than cost recovery? The answers were entirely predictable. Both organisations did not like cost recovery because it hit their members' bottom line and they already pay enough tax—those were their words. Both organisations were supportive of the abolition of the super profits tax, with the AMEC noting that it does not affect its members as they are exploration companies, but still noting its opposition. The answer was that general government revenue rather than cost recovery should be used to finance the environmental approvals.

What is striking is that almost no-one else agrees. The Liberal and National parties are in support of cost recovery, through their moving of this bill here today. But the Greens political party are opposed to cost recovery. The Greens' brief dissenting report on the bill highlights the principle of 'regulatory capture' where a regulator which is supposed to act in the public interest is compromised because of relationships developed with those it is charged with regulating. In this case, they refer to the regulator relying on the cost recovery fees to sustain their operations. However, I do not believe this principle holds in this instance because no-one is proposing that cost recovery cover all of the costs of running environmental regulation in the Department of the Environment. For a start, the fees have not been set yet, and the fee structure will be specified in regulation and ministerial determinations. Further, a range of exemptions and waivers will be available for small business in particular, and also for other bodies at the discretion of the minister. Of course, we will need to assess this fee structure and formula once it has been developed, to ensure appropriate cost recovery. At that point, it would be appropriate to compare the resources of the department in environmental regulation with the proposed fee intake to ensure that there are sufficient funds for the management of the output.

At this point I just want to note that I am appalled by the job cuts proposed by Minister Hunt for his department and the broken promises of Mr Hunt and Mr Abbott on a range of environmental protection measures.

I urge the Greens to support the bill and work with the opposition when the ministerial determinations and regulations are handed down, to ensure that they are appropriate.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank senators who have contributed to this debate. Cost recovery for environmental assessment activities under the EPBC Act is an important initiative. The introduction of cost recovery is in line with past and present government policy and guidelines on cost recovery. Incredibly, the decision to introduce cost recovery for environmental assessments was taken by the previous government and was included as a measure in the 2012-13 budget—that is, two budgets ago—and of course it comes down yet again to this government to actually progress legislation for the parliament to give effect to a measure that the previous government had banked in their budget two budgets ago.

This bill will allow for the effective implementation of cost recovery for Commonwealth environmental assessment activities, including strategic assessments, by allowing regulations to set fees for environmental assessments and make provision for fee waivers, exemptions and refunds. Cost-recovery will provide incentives to industry to undertake early engagement and incorporate the most environmentally acceptable outcomes into their business planning in order to reduce costs.

The Australian government is committed to delivering a one-stop shop for environmental approvals. That was one of the commitments that we took to the last election. Cost recovery complements the government's commitment to streamlining environmental approvals under the one-stop shop arrangement. It will improve the Department of the Environment's ability to meet statutory time frames by providing a sustainable source of resources to improve the efficiency of the assessment process. Cost recovery arrangements under the EPBC Act will apply only to Commonwealth assessment activities and not to state assessment activities. When an when action is covered by the one-stop shop a person will not have to pay any fees to the Commonwealth for the state assessment. It will be up to the states and territories to decide whether to cost recover for their own environmental impact assessment activities.

In conclusion, the implementation of cost recovery will assist with the government's streamlining agenda by helping to ensure that Commonwealth government environmental assessment activities are carried out as efficiently and as effectively as possible. The bill demonstrates the government's commitment to implementing genuine reform to deliver more effective and efficient regulatory processes while maintaining high environmental standards. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the bill be now read a second time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.