Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak in opposition to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Bilateral Agreement Implementation) Bill 2014. As previous speakers have noted, this bill amends the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to facilitate the delegation of environmental approval powers to state and local governments. This delegation would include world heritage sites, wetlands of international importance, migratory species, endangered species in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, nuclear activities and approvals under the water trigger amendment.

I think, for the record, it is worth highlighting the initial purpose of the substantive act, which is aimed at assisting a cooperative implementation of Australia's international environmental responsibilities—responsibilities that I note that this government does not seek us to walk away from formally—to provide for ecologically sustainable development through the protection of the environment. Such a focus is, regrettably, absent in the legislation before the House now. This is focussed on the Commonwealth interest in the nine matters of national environmental significance that are set out in the act.

The act provides that projects which are likely to have a significant impact on a matter of national environmental significance—a controlled action—are subject to an assessment and an approval process by the Commonwealth environment minister. Project proponents must refer their proposals to the minister, who will then decide whether the proposal is a controlled action within the terms of the act. Where this is the case, the minister must choose how the impacts of the proposed action are to be assessed. This is how the Commonwealth performs its vital role in ensuring that Australia's obligations under international environmental treaties are met.

In respect of this bill, the minister baldly asserted:

State and territory governments … have processes in place for evaluating the environmental impacts of development proposals consistent with the principles of ecologically sustainable development, …

The minister offered no evidence then, and no evidence has been offered subsequently in this debate, to substantiate this assertion. I suspect this is so because there is none.

See this speech in context