Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The remarks of the member for Leichhardt were very interesting, and I have taken note of them, but I wish to direct my remarks to a different section of the Environment Legislation Amendment Bill 2013. The House will be aware that bill amends the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The purpose of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is, unsurprisingly, the conservation of Australia's biodiversity—our unique and beautiful birds, plants, and animals.

It is therefore timely to ask: how well is the act performing in achieving this outcome? Sadly, it is failing badly. According to BirdLife Australia, there are currently 392 different kinds of fauna listed as threatened under the act, including no fewer than 112 different types of birds. Nineteen of these species are listed as critically endangered. There are many different examples of how Australian wildlife is in decline, but one of the most striking was covered in a report in Australian Birdlife magazine in September this year by Sean Dooley and Samantha Vine titled 'Parrots in Peril'. It reports that no fewer than 12 of Australia's around 60 parrots and cockatoos are listed as either endangered or critically endangered. That is around 20 per cent of our most loved and highest profile fauna at imminent risk of extinction.

The Norfolk Island green parrot has a current population of between 50 and 100, with possibly as few as 11 breeding females. The western ground parrot population is around 100 birds, in two separate populations in Western Australia. That population has declined by over 80 per cent in the last three generations. The orange-bellied parrot migrates between coastal Victoria and Tasmania. They are now down to around 45 birds. The night parrot population is unknown—it is an inland Australian species—but the best guess is that it is around 250 birds.

The Coxen's fig-parrot, which is a rainforest bird of Southern Queensland, has been estimated at 100 breeding birds, but there are surveys that suggest that fewer than 50 may remain. The eastern regent parrot of inland Victoria and South Australia comprises around 1,500 adult birds. The population has declined in some parts of South Australia by 66 per cent in the last 20 years. The golden-shouldered parrot of Cape York Peninsula nests in tunnels that it excavates into termite mounds. Its current population is probably about 2,500 birds—1,500 around the Morehead River and around 1,000 around the Staaten River. The swift parrot migrates between Tasmania and Victoria and New South Wales. There are approximately 1,000 breeding pairs of this bird, with a maximum of 2,500 individuals.

Four types of black cockatoo are also endangered. The Kangaroo Island glossy black cockatoo adult population is 350 birds. The south-eastern red-tailed black cockatoo population is approximately 1,500, and that is declining. The Baudin's black cockatoo of south-west Western Australia has a current population of 10,000 to 15,000. The Carnaby's black cockatoo has a population of approximately 40,000, and that is also declining.

Penny Olsen had a lengthy report on the sad history of the orange-bellied parrot in the Australian Birdlife publication. She writes that conservationists have struggled to keep the orange-bellied parrot going. It is precarious to say the least to maintain a species once it has sunk to such low numbers. There is no resilience left in the population to combat the inevitable challenges nature throws at it: fire, flood, famine and other upheavals, not to mention inbreeding. As a final blow, climate change may be shifting the bird's climatic envelope south and off the southern edge of the continent, carrying with it the unfortunate parrot. Orange-bellied parrots are breeding in captivity, so, instead of a thriving wild population, we may be left with institutionalised orange-bellied birds. Extinction in the wild, I think, is a very dreary prospect. As Penny Olsen laments, there was a time when politicians feared an extinction on their watch, but that seems to have lapsed over the years.

What does BirdLife Australia say needs to be done? They say that we need to have a national threatened bird recovery fund to implement recovery plans for critically endangered birds, supported by federal funding of $25 million per annum. They also say that the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act requires strengthening. In particular, they say the act requires a mechanism to account for cumulative impact and the ongoing loss of threatened species habitat. I think they are 100 per cent right.

The Australian Conservation Foundation also urges that the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act be strengthened. They say that the act needs to be changed so that Commonwealth decision powers under environmental law can never be devolved to the states. They also express concern that the act allows the federal minister a wide discretion as to how the EPBC Act is implemented. This can lead to decisions based on political expediency rather than environmental standards.

The Australian Conservation Foundation says that the EPBC Act should specify objective, science based, mandatory standards by which ministerial decisions under the act are made, and impose a duty on the minister to protect the environment. Improving third-party access to merits reviews of decisions taken under the act is critical, allowing civil society to help enforce compliance and increase public confidence in the act.

What does the bill before the House do? It takes us in exactly the opposite direction. This amendment marks the beginning of efforts by the Liberal government to deconstruct all the good work done by previous governments, both Labor and Liberal, in protecting the environment, which the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act helps ensure. For this Liberal government it is all about paving paradise to put up a parking lot—whether on issues such as reversing action on climate change and protecting the Great Barrier Reef or this amendment, they have nailed their colours to the mast of environmental vandalism and the trashing of this country's beautiful and unique national heritage.

The first part of this bill effectively removes any need for the minister to consider certain environmental advice when approving things such as ports, mines and housing developments. With many of our most loved species on the brink of extinction—including the Leadbeater's possum, the Tasmanian devil and bilbies—we should be strengthening their protection, not undermining it. The bill before the House adds a clause to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act which states that a decision to approve a development will not be invalid merely because the minister failed to receive relevant approved conservation advice. This bill effectively removes the legal requirement for the minister to consider threatened and endangered species when approving projects. It is not just about the federal minister, though. If and when plans to delegate environmental approval powers to Queensland and New South Wales come into effect, the Newman and O'Farrell governments will also be relieved of the duty of considering conservation advice before approving projects.

Labor is opposed to weakening approval powers and, like many in the community, we simply do not trust Queensland Premier Campbell Newman to protect environmental assets such as the Great Barrier Reef. This bill drastically weakens the EPBC Act's protection of threatened and endangered species. Although the minister is still notionally expected to consider formal advice about how to protect these species—the so-called 'conservation advice'—the bill removes any capacity to legally challenge an approval on the basis that advice was not properly considered. Even worse, it does this retrospectively. Current legislation ensures that the minister takes into account all the relevant advice before approving a decision on a new mine, on a port expansion or on a significant new housing development. Depending on the type and location of a project, this advice could include information about a native species that is threatened or endangered. So what we have here is a bill that, on the one hand, weakens protection for threatened species such as the Tasmanian devil whilst, on the other hand, increases penalties for illegal hunting of turtles and dugongs. Weakening environmental laws is environmental vandalism. It is regrettable, but I think the Newman government will never protect the environment and cannot be trusted to protect our natural heritage, including the Great Barrier Reef.

The changes in the first part of this bill will not only mean that the federal minister does not have to consider expert advice but also that state ministers will not have to consider this advice. There is a serious question around our international obligations that needs to be posed in this debate. As a good global citizen Australia has signed a number of treaties. Those treaties include: the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, especially as Waterfowl Habitat; the Convention for the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage; the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals; the International Tropical Timber Agreement; and the Convention on Biodiversity.

Schedule 1 of this bill seems to have been precipitated by the recent Tarkine case, which saw an approval decision overturned because advice was not provided to the then minister by the department. In that case the court found that the decision to approve the mine was invalid because the minister had failed to consider the approved conservation advice for the Tasmanian devil, a threatened species under the act. Unlike the previous Labor government, which did not seek to change the law as a result of this challenge, the Liberal government have apparently decided that if the law does not suit their agenda they will simply change it—take their bat and ball and go home.

This change would mean that legal challenges such as this one would fail. There are now ten mines proposed for the Tarkine over the next five years. I understand that nine of these mines are Pilbara-style, open cut mines. The Tarkine is home to the last disease-free population of the Tasmanian devil. The Tasmanian devil, as the House would be aware, is being pushed to extinction by the fatal devil facial tumour disease. This disease has been estimated to have killed 80 per cent of the Tasmanian devil population in the past decade. As such, the habitat of the Tarkine is critical to the survival of this iconic species in the wild.

The Tarkine contains an extraordinary expanse of temperate rainforest—one of the world's greatest remaining tracts of temperate rainforest. Running continuously for more than 70 kilometres and reaching beyond the Arthur and Pieman rivers, this magnificent rainforest includes the Rapid, Keith, Donaldson and Savage river systems. This tract of rainforest is Australia's largest single tract of rainforest wilderness. Globally, it is one of the most significant remaining tracts of temperate rainforest left on the planet. Given that more than three-quarters of Australia's rainforest have already been permanently destroyed, I believe that it is critical that we protect the fragments that are left.

This bill is just further evidence of a government that quashes debate and refuses to listen to the experts. They have been shutting down bodies providing advice on climate change, and now they want to ignore conservation advice as well. The conservationists have also said that the amendment before the House would stymie a challenge to the Maules Creek mine in NSW, which they say was approved based on erroneous information.

Whitehaven Coal, the mine's developer, was allowed to clear 544 hectares of endangered box gum woodland as well as further habitat that contains threatened species such as the swift parrot, which I mentioned earlier in my remarks, and the greater long-eared bat. The Minister for the Environment is being urged by conservation groups to revoke the approval. Jess Abrahams, the healthy ecosystems campaigner at the Australian Conservation Foundation, has said:

Review and recourse from third parties to government decisions is an essential part of democracy, so it's very worrying this is being removed.

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Environmental protection is suffering a death by a thousand cuts at the moment. Laws are being weakened and approvals are being handed over to the states, which have a questionable record of protecting the environment.

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We should be strengthening laws but instead we are watering them down.

She is absolutely right. Conservation advice is fundamental to making the best decisions on projects that have potentially harmful impacts on listed species. The objective of the act is to protect the environment. This amendment removes ministerial accountability and weakens environmental protection.

The government is already in the process of attempting to devolve federal approval powers to state governments, a move that would see state conservative premiers in charge of some of our country's greatest natural assets. The laws that protect Australia's most significant environmental assets—our World Heritage areas, precious water resources, internationally significant wetlands and threatened species—are not 'green tape'. The areas are priceless assets for all of us to find tranquillity and enrichment of the soul—much more important than wealth foregone for miners and developers. I urge the House to support the amendment moved by the shadow minister for the environment.

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