Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The EPBC Act is very important to me and to my electorate in Townsville and North Queensland. In Townsville we have the Barrier Reef lagoon, in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Of course, that is World Heritage listed but we also have the World Heritage listed tropical rainforest. The interaction between the coastal plain and the reef lagoon gives rise to concerns from time to time in relation to protecting that environment. It is the EPBC Act that comes into play, when it is triggered, to make sure that that special place is protected.

The EPBC Act is also important to me because it may well be that Townsville will be the location for the new alumina refinery in Queensland called the Chalco project. Bauxite will be shipped from Cape York down to Townsville, if that is where the refinery is situated, and it will be refined in our city. Alumina refineries produce copious quantities of what is known in the industry as ‘red mud’. There is some discussion about where the refinery would be located in Townsville and I know that the coordinator general’s department of the Queensland government and the company itself is mindful that this project will trigger the EPBC Act. This act will provide protection for the Great Barrier Reef lagoon and I am very pleased to see that the community leaders in Townsville, to a person, have said that they are not—(Quorum formed) I thank my colleagues for attending. It gives me the opportunity to remind them that the Australian Labor Party intends to vote against these very sensible amendments to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

As I was saying, community leaders in Townsville, to a person, have made it very clear that the Chalco refinery will not proceed unless it satisfies the EPBC Act. This is a vote of confidence in the act by both sides of politics, and I am very pleased to see that the act is operating as intended. The current act has been six years in operation and it has operated very successfully. But from time to time you pick up things in the act where, if there were changes introduced, it would allow a better act and a more sensible operation of the act, and that is why the government has brought these amendments to the House today. The changes basically simplify the processes in the act. They make it easier for all people who are captured by the act, but they do not in any way alter the protections that have been in the act for the last six years.

See this speech in context