Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade and Investment) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to speak on a very significant bill, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standing) Bill 2015. Development of Australia's energy resources is important for our economy—everyone knows that. The last 15 or 20 years have confirmed its great significance. We have been blessed with these resources and to develop these resources is very important. In the case of the development of the Galilee Basin, it is important for increasing access to electricity for millions of people in India. In fact, there are very high quality coal deposits in the Galilee Basin. They are sufficient in the Adani project alone to light up the homes of 100 million people in India for 100 years. This is not only an economic benefit; this is a huge humanitarian benefit. There are 300 million people in India who, at the moment, live below the poverty line. They do not have electricity. If you look anywhere in the developing world, no-one has come out of poverty if they do not have access to electricity. There are other things needed, but access to electricity is a precondition for communities to come out of poverty, to start to stand on their own two feet and to have opportunities to start to enjoy something like the prosperity and life that all of us in Australia enjoy.

Of course large resource projects such as Adani's Carmichael project need to be developed and operated in a way that is sustainable and consistent with the protection of local flora and fauna. Australia's Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is a world-class framework that balances nationally significant project development with environmental outcomes. Both sides of politics, over many years, have worked very hard to get that balance right between making sure we protect our very valuable environment and, at the same time, ensuring we continue to develop the resources that this country has been blessed with. We should not be concerned or hang our head in any way. We are rated as the third-best country in the world for effective environmental regulation. So here we are, a resource and energy-based economy, an agricultural economy, and yet we have been successful in developing regulations, approaches and approvals that have led us to be the country ranked third-best in the world for environmental regulation.

As the minister for investment, I understand, and I continually hear about, the importance attached around the world to not only our environmental regulation but so much of our other regulation. It is seen to be world-class. It is seen to be among the best in the developed world. It is very important from an investment point of view that we have not only strong but predictable regulation in this area and other areas, and we have been seen as having strong but predictable environmental regulation and legislation.

Then along comes a bunch of activists. I do not question their intent. But governments are there to balance the interest of all sorts of groups in a community. These groups have a right to test and to challenge and to have a view about a whole lot of environmental interests. But we have in place the legislation which has sought to balance their interests. Now there are a number of activist groups that have set out quite deliberately—three years ago a whole lot of them got together, and they printed and articulated their strategy—to stop any development of our resources and energy projects. That is their ambition. They have it stated in black and white. They have stated their tactics. They are going to do anything possible to undermine the regulation and the approval processes in this country. They have found a quirk in the regulations in the environmental area. They have now resorted to 'lawfare' to progress their own agenda of preventing production of fossil fuels in this country.

The group are really anti-growth. They are quite entitled to have that view, but it is not the view of millions of Australians. The overwhelming majority of Australians believe and understand that their own circumstance will not only not be maintained but will not be improved if we do have zero growth in this country. The no-growth group hold a view not shared, I think, by very many people in this community. Yet they are the ones that make up much of the membership of these activist groups. They are using procedural grounds to challenge EPBC approvals. This will unnecessarily delay projects, increase uncertainty for investors and stain our reputation. It is starting to stain our reputation as an attractive investment destination—attractive because we have strong but predictable legislation.

If you take a project like the Adani project, it has been seven years and they have spent $1 billion. They have received state, local government and federal government approvals. They have every approval imaginable. They have done the work. Now they are being stopped from progressing this project for no good reason but because these activist groups have found a way to almost endlessly challenge the decisions. They have said that they have endless opportunities now because of the technique that they have identified. It is a case of good legislation having an unwitting soft spot which enables people with this sort of intent to stop growth in the country, stop sensible regulation, upset our reputation as an attractive investment destination and to succeed in that process.

With new investment in Australia and the mining industry drying up, we will need to work much harder to attract investment. The boom is over. We all know that. That is the nature of resources and energy—it goes up and it comes down. Australia's endowment of resources will not attract investment if we have no regard for what costs or obstacles are put in the path of investment, as sometimes appeared to be the case during the boom years of 2008-13. The easy years are behind us. As has actually been the norm through most of the history of our minerals industry, Australia has to work very hard again to ensure that our investment environment is as attractive as those of our resource-rich peers, such as Canada, the United States, Brazil and South Africa.

The use of 'lawfare' by activist groups has the potential to create adverse consequences for Australia's bilateral relations. In the case of the Adani Carmichael project, here we have the largest Indian investor in Australia, carefully and patiently following the EPBC framework over a period of now seven years, only to have prior approvals overturned on purely technical, procedural grounds. They have spent, as I said, $1 billion. The project in the end would involve $21 billion being spent. That is a serious amount of money. It is 7,000 jobs on a continuing basis. It is up to 10,000 jobs while the project is being developed and while the railway is being developed—10,000 jobs.

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