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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Payne) and the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment (Senator Birmingham) to questions without notice asked by Senators Steele-John and Rice today relating to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability and to Regional Forest Agreements.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let us be very, very clear: the government have known for no less than nine months that there exists an impediment to disabled people, to organisations and to other individuals wishing to give evidence to our royal commission into disability abuse. The chair of the royal commission flagged this as an issue at the hearings in November. The chair subsequently wrote to the government, in February of this year, stating clearly that the absence of appropriate privacy protections—the absence of legislative amendments to the Royal Commission Act that would protect the confidentiality of people's submissions beyond the life of the royal commission—was an impediment to the commission's ability to do its job.

Let us be absolutely clear what the impact of the failure to act that we have seen from the government is upon people. Disabled people, having been through trauma, having been through abuse, having been subject to discrimination by their employer or by individuals, now wish to come before their royal commission and tell their story. And yet, in this very moment when they should be able to feel supported to do it, they are afraid. They are afraid that, should they speak, they will never work again. They are afraid that, should they speak, their families will be impacted. They are afraid that, should they speak, the situation that they find themselves in will get worse. And they are not telling their stories. They are calling hotlines run by the royal commission to be told: 'Do not tell your story, because in the absence of these amendments it is not safe.' The minister says this is under consideration, that they've been looking into it: that is the same answer you gave me in estimates in February. It is not good enough for you to have been looking at this issue for this long and to have failed to act. If you do not introduce this legislation into the parliament, then we Greens will.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister's answers to my questions about illegal logging fill me with despair, and I know the people of Australia share that despair with me—or, more than despair, anger, real anger: anger at the denial by this government and by the minister that there's an issue with protecting our precious wildlife from logging—the critically endangered Leadbeater's possums and greater gliders; and in Tasmania we've got critically endangered swift parrots, wedge-tailed eagles and Tasmanian devils. And the backbench are just laughing at the issue, laughing at illegal logging, and laughing at our precious wildlife hurtling towards extinction. The minister's claims that our laws protect the environment fly in the face of reality. They fly in the face of the Federal Court finding that logging is damaging and destroying habitat critical to the survival of the critically endangered Leadbeater's possum.

And so what are they going to do? Rather than taking action, rather than actually listening to the interim report that they commissioned from Graeme Samuel into our environment laws—who has told us that Australia's environment is in an unstable state of decline and under increasing threat and that our environment laws are ineffective—and rather than strengthening our laws, no, they've moved legislation in the House today that is taking a chainsaw to environment laws. It is going to hand over more powers to the states, who have proved themselves totally incapable of protecting our environment.

We need a government that's actually going to stand up for our environment, our precious forests and our precious wildlife that the people of Australia really want to see protected. And this government is not doing it. I say to the people of Australia: if you're as angry as me, then we need to take action, and we need to take it fast. We cannot let the government get away with it. We cannot just allow our wildlife to become extinct. This government needs to hear from you and it needs from hear from you loud and clear about this trashing of our environment laws. And if they don't listen then we need to get these environmental vandals out of office.

Question agreed to.