Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes:

(a) in the words of the First Nations Heritage Protection Alliance, the current approach is 'largely focused on regulating the destruction of First Nations Cultural Heritage, rather than its protection'; and

(b) that decision makers have prioritised the profits of gas cartels and climate wrecking projects at great cost to the world's oldest continuous culture, including the entirely legal destruction of 46,000-year-old caves at Juukan Gorge by Rio Tinto in May 2020 under outdated laws; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) deliver on the long overdue cultural heritage reforms that support and empower the traditional owners and communities to preserve their connection to their ancestors and protect their rich, historic and vibrant culture from inappropriate developments; and

(b) ensure that First Nations communities have autonomy and control over decisions concerning their own heritage by guaranteeing free, prior, informed consent is a fundamental element of all EPBC decisions".

The appalling destruction of the Juukan Gorge site in 2020 by Rio Tinto was all the more shocking because it was entirely legal and it was not an isolated event. First Nations cultural heritage is being destroyed, damaged, degraded and displaced every day across this country. Rio Tinto was widely condemned after it was legally allowed to blow up the 46,000-year-old caves in May 2020 under WA's outdated Aboriginal Heritage Act. The Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura peoples were left devastated, while Rio Tinto tried to save face by overhauling its executive team and admitting it had breached traditional owners' trust.

The inquiry into the destruction of Juukan Gorge recommended stronger overarching heritage legislation, co-designed with Indigenous people, that provides minimum standards for all states and territories. Australian legislation to protect First Nations cultural heritage is failing; it is just not working to support the rights of First Nations people. Many sacred First Nations sites across the country are currently under real and serious threat, like the sacred rock art at Murujuga and in Darwin, sacred forests in the Pilliga, caves along the Great Australian Bight and burial grounds and songlines in the Tiwi Islands. Rather than keeping First Nations cultural heritage safe, our laws are enabling its destruction. Current cultural heritage protection arrangements are creating real uncertainty for First Nations people and for proponents. Cultural heritage is considered way too late in assessment and approval processes, often even after those processes have been basically completed.

Labor committed to strengthening cultural heritage protection laws nationally. Tragically, rather than doing that, they have so far been complicit in the destruction of cultural heritage, by prioritising the profits of the gas cartels and their climate-wrecking projects. This comes at a great cost to traditional owners and is an affront to First Nations people around the country. We are talking here about the destruction of some of the world's oldest rock art, created by members of the world's oldest continuous culture—and our laws allow it! It is legal!

Labor must deliver long-overdue cultural heritage reforms that support and empower traditional owners and communities to preserve their connection to their ancestors and to protect their rich, historic and vibrant culture from inappropriate developments. We must ensure First Nations communities have autonomy and control over decisions concerning their own heritage by guaranteeing free, prior and informed consent as a fundamental element of all EPBC decisions. The fight for better protection of cultural heritage is one that all Australians can get behind. First Nations cultural heritage is Australian cultural heritage. We need real reforms to the EPBC Act that protect First Nations cultural heritage, our forests, our seas and our animals for future generations.

But we have a deforestation crisis on our hands! Congratulations to us! Here in Australia, we are responsible for more deforestation than almost any other country on earth. And the Labor government wants to make it worse.

Australia is a major global deforestation—shame, shame, shame—rivalled only by Brazil and Indonesia. Every year, hundreds of thousands of hectares of Australia's unique forests and bushland are bulldozed. In Queensland alone, shamefully, analysis from the Wilderness Society shows that every four minutes threatened species habitat the scale of the Sydney Harbour Bridge area is bulldozed for beef. When allowed to thrive, Australia's precious forests and bushlands provide habitat for threatened species like the koala, the greater glider and the red goshawk and serve as water filters and carbon sinks. My electorate of Ryan is absolutely blessed with large areas of bushland, beautiful creekways and wildlife, and many active volunteer environmental groups working tirelessly, in a volunteering capacity, to preserve, nurture and restore our precious natural environments.

But, as usual, the Albanese government is kowtowing to vested interests and lobby groups to further trash nature protections. As usual, they're trying to rush a deal through without addressing the deforestation crisis, and it is a very serious crisis in Australia. The Albanese government must strengthen federal environmental protections and close damaging deforestation loopholes that have allowed this terrible destruction to go on for way too long.

A report released just today showed that Australia's natural environment contributes half a trillion dollars to our economy annually. That's as much as the mining and finance sectors combined. But this huge contribution to our economy is under threat from climate change, of course, and other environmental damage. The report recommends that the government adopt Greens policy to spend one per cent of GDP, which is around $3.4 billion, on protecting nature so that it can still be enjoyed by generations to come.

We also got shocking revelations this week about just how much environmental damage big corporations are getting away with under the current laws—yes, legally. Is that a leak I smell? A gas leak? No, sorry; it's Santos again. Their LNG storage facility in Darwin has been leaking methane for 20 years, and they've been covering it up for 20 years with the help of the very regulators who are supposed to stop this from happening. This is an environmental disaster. No-one knows how much methane has leaked from this facility, but conservative estimates say that it's the emissions equivalent of adding 8,000 cars to the road.

And here's the worst part: the tank is currently sitting empty, but it's about to be used again as part of the huge climate-wrecking Barossa gas project. Even though it's empty, the environmental regulators are just not forcing Santos to replace or even repair it. They're also not forced to measure the actual scale of the leak, because that would be such an inconvenience for poor old Santos. How is this legal? It is absolutely outrageous. The Australian state is completely captured by the gas industry. By the way, Santos also gets away with paying no corporate income tax most years, and they pay no royalties on all of the offshore gas that they export overseas, reaping enormous profits for themselves. No matter how you look at it, ordinary Australians lose from this crazy deal.

And I'm sorry to keep bringing bad news stories this evening, but there's another really bad news story for the environment that we just found out about this morning. Labor has just approved another coal mine—a thermal coal mine, the Ulan mine in New South Wales. This is going to allow the extraction of another 18.8 million tonnes of coal. That's around 50 million tonnes of emissions that will result from that. What an absolute joke! What a slap in the face of all Australians for this government to do that while congratulating itself, while patting itself on the back for acting on climate! And, to add further insult to injury, this is also going to clear up to 37 hectares of precious native vegetation, putting threatened species like koalas and swift parrots further at risk.

Labor approved over 30 new coal and gas projects last term, and they're showing no signs of slowing down. They already approved the extension to Woodside's North West Shelf project within 15 days of winning re-election. That project will produce equivalent emissions to all of Australia's coal-fired power plants. This is criminal. The government keeps talking about believing in science. We know the consequences of climate change. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is endangering lives. Labor knows this; they're well aware of the science, but they continue to approve new coal and gas while being absolutely fully aware of the dangers of the dire consequences. Really, are these the acts of a responsible government that should be looking after all Australians?

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