Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Wentworth and the member for Indi for their contributions. Once again, I absolutely understand where these contributions are coming from. I of course also support greater transparency, and I will make sure that is clear to Environment Protection Australia through my statement of expectations.

The functions and powers of the minister are routinely delegated to officials within the department to ensure the efficient administration of the act. Quite often that is for very routine matters that can most easily be dealt with by senior executives in the Public Service, and they include examples like a delegation to publish notices on the departmental website. Regardless of whether the function or power has been delegated, the minister continues to retain the right to make a decision where they consider it appropriate to do so. The delegations are managed through an instrument of delegation, as the member for Wentworth has explained. These are legal documents. The instrument itself is generally not published, though it could be provided on request, but the department publishes information about the decision that's been made under delegation on its website every time. Whenever a decision is made, that decision notice specifies the name of the person who made the decision and includes whether they are a delegate of the minister. The decisions also include the position of the delegate.

I'm going to table a copy of one of these decisions, which shows the name of the person and their position in the department, just for the interest of members. It shows the action; the controlling provision—what it is that triggered the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act referral; who made the decision, the date of the decision; how long the decision is in effect for; and so on. My argument for not accepting the amendments as proposed is that providing the instrument that allows this does not give you more information than is currently available, which is who made the decision and under what circumstances. As for requiring a quarterly report which shows the delegated decisions—it's all available on the website. It just requires someone to sit there and do the work. I don't think doing that is a particularly good use of public servants' time, but I understand why the member wishes for that information to be public, and I assure her that it is.

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