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

I seek leave to move a motion relating to the referral of a bill to a committee, as circulated.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice standing in the name of Senator Waters, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion relating to the referral of a bill to a committee.

We are seeking to suspend standing orders today to bring forward a motion to ensure that in this place, here in the Senate, we can get to do our job properly. There's a piece of legislation that's about to be tabled in the House of Representatives that no-one has really seen—no-one has looked at the detail—and it has not been through a proper process, yet the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Peter Dutton, want to have it rammed through this place in under two days.

Why do they want to ram this piece of legislation through this chamber by the end of tomorrow? Because they are doing this under the cover of the federal budget, because it is a bill that guts environmental protection. It's a bill that will condemn wildlife in our country to extinction. It is a bill that will give loopholes to corporations to continue to pollute and trash our natural environment, no questions asked. It is a bill that fundamentally undermines any promises that this government has made to protect Australia's environment in this term of the parliament. It shows that this Labor government cannot be trusted to do the right thing when it comes to caring for and looking after our environment.

It shows that every time the Labor Party is under pressure from the big, foreign corporations who want to continue to trash, pollute and destroy, they go weak. They go weak because they don't have the guts to stand up to them and to stand up for the protection of our natural environment. How are they getting this done? They are entering into a stinking, rotten deal with Peter Dutton. The Liberal Party and the Labor Party are cuddling up together to do the bidding of the big, stinking, rotten corporations.

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young, can I remind you to use proper titles.

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

Mr Dutton and Mr Albanese, the leaders of the Labor and Liberal parties, are showing they've got more care for the stinking, rotten salmon industry in this country than they do for our wildlife or for our environment.

The reason this bill needs to go to a Senate inquiry is that it is written in such a broad way. The Prime Minister will want you to believe that it is only about the rotten salmon washing up on the shores and beaches in Tasmania. He'll want to tell the people on the mainland in Australia, 'It's okay; Tasmanians can deal with the rotten salmon but we will look after you on the mainland.' But this bill has such broad, sweeping powers that it undermines environmental protection across the board. This will allow a carve-out and a loophole not just for the rotten salmon industry but also for the fossil fuel industry, for the logging industry, for the big polluters, for the small polluters and for the environmental wreckers. This bill guts environmental protection in the name of profits for the big corporations, in the name of the stinking, rotten politics that dominates the thinking of the Labor Party and the Liberal Party. On the eve of the election, under the cover of the federal budget, the Labor Party and Mr Dutton are working together in a stinking, rotten deal to cut environmental protection, to ram through legislation in the middle of the night while no-one is watching. The Senate hasn't even had the opportunity to do its job.

We oppose this piece of legislation because it's rotten. It stinks. The Senate should be able to do its job, because the ramifications of this bill for the environment, for other wildlife species, for other parts of nature, for the community and for industry are virtually unknown. This bill was put together in a hasty way so that the Prime Minister had something to sell on his next trip down to Tasmania. This is all about rank, stinking, rotten politics. It is not about policy, it is not about giving the community a voice and it certainly isn't about doing the right thing by the environment. The Prime Minister wants us to chew down on the rotten salmon, and we won't have it.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we have here is a government that is trying to do something it should have done a very long time ago. While we don't support the reference of this bill to an inquiry and we don't agree with some of the points made there, one thing we can all agree on is that this government has handled the situation before us terribly with regard to the salmon industry in Tasmania, which is why we have legislation here.

The only reason there is a bill that has been brought in at the eleventh hour to remedy this terrible, sorry saga is that the Minister for the Environment and Water has not done her job. Salmon workers in the electorate of Braddon in Tasmania have been facing this situation for more than a year—nearly 18 months. For two Christmases, these salmon workers have had no certainty about their employment. Those opposite said: 'We're going to follow process. We're going to follow the laws.' That was until the minister told her party, the government, 'We aren't going to do anything about it.' So the Prime Minister has been forced to bring in legislation relating to this issue. The more bizarre thing about this is who has brought it in. I don't think it's under the minister for environment's name. I don't think it stands in her name; I think it stands in someone else's name, which I find passing strange, given it is a bill to amend the EPBC Act. It does rather speak to some very deep divides within this government.

We read reports yesterday with regard to how long the Labor Party's caucus meeting to deal with this issue went on. There are people who are not happy within the government, which makes me wonder whether they are going to stick to their guns with this promise they're making, these laws that they've brought before the parliament. The Prime Minister promised these laws on 15 February—over a month ago—and on that day we wrote to the Prime Minister and said: 'We'd like to see these laws. This is urgent. We've been calling on you to fix this now for the better part of 18 months.' We didn't get a reply, so we chased up with phone calls, we sought briefings and we said we would make ourselves available at any time, anywhere, to understand the legislation they intended to bring in. We got our briefing and the copy of the bill yesterday afternoon, the day before parliament sat and the bill was introduced into the other place. I dare say it was the same for the crossbench as well. That is not good government; that is not good process.

I understand why the Australian Greens are frustrated, because this has been rushed in here in the hopes that they can fix a political issue. Rather, it highlights how desperate they're becoming, when, in order to get this thing through the Labor caucus, the Prime Minister has to commit to reintroducing legislation he promised would not come back in the form of the environment protection authority. We were told that in the state of Western Australia. The Prime Minister himself flew over there and took the entire cabinet to assure the mining industry that it was going to be okay. He said: 'There'll be no EPA under me. We will not be legislating to establish a new federal EPA. Don't worry about it.' Then, of course, we learned that secret deals were done between the crossbench and the minister for the environment. We had those big pages of black ink where the details of the deals were redacted. We still don't know what was in them, but here is the Prime Minister saying to his party room: 'Look, I know this is a bitter pill to swallow. We have to pass these laws to win the seats of Braddon and Lyons, and, as a sweetener, we're going to give you an EPA.' It is an EPA we oppose. We say it is bad for jobs and for the economy. In fact, we'll probably unpick anything that the legislation which is the subject of this motion will establish.

You have a minister for the environment who has refused to act for 18 months, even at the request of the Prime Minister—so much so that he has been forced to bring in legislation to work around his minister. How is that for good, stable government or good process? It's not in her name. It rather alarms me that this is the situation we're in. We are not even 100 per cent sure that we have a bill that does what it needs to, so we'll see whether amendments need to be made. We have a government going into an election that, if the polls are to be believed, will probably see them end up in a minority government with our good friends down here the Australian Greens. How do you think this little set-up is going to withstand a partnership arrangement? Not very well at all, I would argue. I dare say the people of Braddon and of Lyons whose livelihoods depend on this industry that we're supposed to be protecting here at the eleventh hour would not survive.

So I say to the government that we will be opposing this motion, but this government has handled this entire issue appallingly. It is clearly a political fix—not a proper one that should be afforded to the people of Tasmania.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it's budget day, so the non-government parties are doing their thing, which is a bit of political grandstanding to try to desperately get themselves into a media cycle.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is actually you colluding with them!

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I listened to her in silence. I listened to Senator Hanson-Young in silence. Thank you. We had Senator Cash trying to bring forward a private senator's bill to talk about the CFMEU, because you don't want us to talk about anything other than the cost of living and health or anything other than Medicare and the secret cuts that we know the coalition is planning. Now we have Senator Hanson-Young, who wants to have a debate that she knows she can have tomorrow, but she just wants to have two goes at it. Meanwhile, we know that on the program for the Senate to debate is the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Bill 2024. I'd say to Senator Waters that you are very keen to pass this but not so keen that you would say to Senator Hanson-Young, 'Maybe we won't do the stunt today, because we've got plenty of time to have this argument after we've dealt with the women's gender equality amendment.' It's a bill that could have been passed in February, a bill which is about women's economic security and a bill which the opposition previously supported but now has backflipped on.

I would encourage the Senate to get to that legislation which this government wants passed. With that, I move:

That the motion be now put.

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Minister Wong to put the question be agreed to.

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion to suspend standing orders be agreed to.