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

I'd like to speak tonight reflecting on a couple of things, triggered by some recent visits to Central and North Queensland, the state I have the honour of representing on behalf of the Greens, and also some of the debates in this place, just in the last couple of days, and some media reports as well, all of which go to the state of our environmental protection laws, both at national level and in my own state of Queensland.

It's often hard not to reminisce, if that's quite the right word, about past decisions of this chamber, when you're in the circumstance I'm in of coming back after a 10-year break. I was in this place literally last century. It was well over two decades ago that I first got involved in Senate related activities and work, and it is just over 20 years since I first came into this chamber. It's always frustrating to see some of the failures of the past continue to be unresolved. But it's also useful sometimes to look at some of the key decisions that were made, that have managed to set benchmarks and to at least hold some ground, preventing things declining further—what times those benchmarks have managed to hold firm to protect more negative things being done and, in the case of the environment, more damage being done.

Just recently I was in Far North Queensland, meeting with community organisations, fighting to protect not just the natural environment in their area, but also the quality of life and the future of their communities. From the Gold Coast on the southern border, right up into the far north, and particularly on the coast, there is case after case of ridiculous, overblown, inappropriate property developments of the type that we are unfortunately all too familiar with in Queensland, often with a thin veneer, a tinge of fake green, about them. I was meeting with local residents at Kuranda just last week at a place that calls itself an eco-tourism venture. It's quite extraordinary. It's clearly just a massive attempt to make a quick buck out of a completely inappropriate, oversized residential property development. It shows the inadequacy of the environmental protection laws in Queensland.

It certainly shows why we need to have the Queensland government act as quickly as possible on their pre-election pledge to legislate to ban donations from property developers, because time and time again we're seeing completely inappropriate use of land—clearly at the behest of developers trying to make quick bucks. This is not just a risk for local environmental values but often it is about the ability of other people already in the community, people who have been there for long periods of time, even to be able to protect the quality of their drinking water—their own water resources, their own ongoing small businesses and their own economic activity, which are all part of the sustainability of a community fabric. Those are put at risk by inappropriate developments.

Another one, again, is something people are trying to push onto the community at Mission Beach. I met with some people there about an attempt to expand a few boat ramps in Clump Point at Mission Beach into a small marina. I remember having people concerned about that when I was in the Senate last time, over 10 years ago. People managed to stop that type of inappropriate development then, but the proponent just goes away, comes back, rebadges it and then it's back again. They just keep coming back and back, trying to find ways to override the interests and the will of the local community, often with the support of a local council, or a person from one of the establishment parties in key positions of power, or a minister who is giving favourable treatment and who is able to find their way around the inadequacies in the state laws.

That is why it's so important that we have strong national environment laws. Of course, there is a role for states to have an environmental protection regime, but we need to have an overarching consistent environmental framework that ensures that matters of national environmental significance are properly regulated, properly assessed and properly protected. We need to make sure that the community is able to have a say in what happens in their own area and that their will is not overridden by corporations.

Seeing a string of articles just recently in The Guardian has given me cause to reflect about the inadequacies in our national environment laws. I guess it's particularly interesting from my point of view, having been a person from the last century—literally 1999—who was part of the bringing into being of those national environment laws in the early days, as it turned out, of the Howard Liberal government and when Senator Robert Hill was the environment minister. I guess that it's particularly ironic for me, because at that time it was a contentious decision due to the vagaries of the politics at the time. The Labor Party were opposing the changes, apart from the desire to lock in the inadequate regional forest agreements. They were very keen to do that but they weren't supporting changes to broaden the environment laws because they didn't think they were strong enough.

The Greens at the time, especially ironic for me at the moment, were also opposed to it for not going far enough, and I copped a bit of a spray from the Greens leader at the time. The environment movement itself was split. The peak environment conservation bodies in my own state in Queensland, the one in Tasmania and a couple of national environmental organisations were supportive of the attempts at least to modernise the previous almost non-existent national environment laws. But, again, other environment groups were strongly concerned that they needed to go further.

From my point of view, it makes it all the more interesting to see how those laws are now being administered. We have seen what happens when there are areas of law that are actually quite strong in theory but where there are governments that are not interested in ensuring that they are administered: it is very difficult to get them properly applied. When you add to that deliberate underfunding of sections of the department so that they can't monitor activities, deliberate politicisation of decisions so that there is no independent assessment of the criteria and repeated attempts to lock the community out of ensuring that our own laws are being enforced, then you can see why we need to have a strong upgrading of our national environment laws.

As was stated in one of The Guardian articles, when the laws were passed in 1999 they were a significant advance on what was there before. There was almost no environmental protection, apart from the World Heritage laws, and even those—it's worth saying that the very first World Heritage bill put in this place was in the very early 1980s. Senator Colin Mason, who was an Australian Democrat senator from New South Wales, brought laws that were then taken up by the Hawke government when it came in under the pledge to protect the Franklin River and stop the dam. But they only applied to World Heritage areas.

The ability to expand those laws led to key areas being protected, such as Mission Beach in Queensland. While I was there, people pointed out the areas of vegetation, key cassowary habitat and wildlife corridors that were outside the World Heritage area but which were able to be protected because of the expanded environmental laws that then environment minister Peter Garrett protected using those expanded environmental powers. Of course, in South-East Queensland, the Traveston Crossing Dam was able to be protected from the desire of the Beattie Labor government to build what would've been a terrible dam, I might say. It would have destroyed not only some threatened species but some very valuable prime agricultural land, and it would have damaged the local community as well. So, it's worked here and there, but clearly it's failed in significant areas.

It's pleasing to see reports that a range of Labor Party branches are passing motions, encouraging the Labor Party leader to put stronger national environment laws in place and to introduce an independent watchdog. I certainly hope the Labor leader takes that on board. It's actually one part of a much more comprehensive policy that the Greens announced before the last federal election and it's certainly something we'll be pushing further over the course of this year, leading into the next federal election. We already outlined, a number of years ago, all of the areas where our national environment laws need to be strengthened, particularly with regard to ensuring the community has a say. This is an area where the Abbott government in particular sought to remove the community's powers time and time again. But it's also worth saying that over that period, despite opposing the environment laws coming in in 1999, Labor had six years in government in which they could've strengthened those environment laws and done all the things that they're now being urged to do, but they didn't. We hope this time around they take on board the Greens' and others' suggestions to dramatically expand national environment law powers. That's something the Greens will be pushing further over the course of this year.

Senate adjourned at 21:11