Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Attorney-General, Australia's first law officer, has decided in his wisdom that organisations whose purpose includes protection or conservation of the environment or research into the environment should not be allowed to take any legal action if they notice the government failing to do its job. Senator Brandis wants to amend a law that allowed an environmental group, the Mackay Conservation Group, to bring a successful application before the Federal Court in Sydney to have set aside the decision of the Minister for the Environment to allow the development of a coalmine in Central Queensland. The legal application by the group has been described by the Prime Minister as 'sabotage', and Senator Brandis has been reported as saying he was appalled by the decision. I will come to that word 'decision' in a minute.

What seems to have slipped the grasp of the government is that their minister did not properly make the decision, the job that he is paid to do. He did not properly consider the two threatened species, the yakka skink and the ornamental snake, that would be affected by the proposed coalmine. It was imperative that he consider that fact before he made the decision, as per the law—the law that John Howard introduced.

The comments from the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General are even more bizarre given that the minister's decision was not set aside by the decision of the Federal Court judge in this case. This was a consent order. The respondents in this case—the Commonwealth of Australia, the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment and Adani Mining Pty Ltd—decided themselves that proper ministerial processes had not occurred and that the decision should be set aside. So it was not a decision; it was a consent order. This is simply the result of an incompetent government.

The Attorney-General saw this as a horrendous miscarriage of justice so now wishes to amend the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act so that similar organisations to the Mackay Conservation Group cannot again hold the government to account and ensure that they make decisions properly, as they are required to do by the law—John Howard's law. They propose to amend the EPBC's extended standing provisions, which currently allow environmental organisations to bring these challenges. Let's think this through logically. If that conservation group did not have standing to bring the action, who would? Would it be the ornamental snake? Would it be the yakka skink? I have been studying law or a lawyer for over 20 years and I have seen a few snakes around the place, but I have never actually seen a legally qualified snake or skink.

The mischief that the application was brought to correct was that a threatened species may become extinct by the development and the minister had not properly considered that. Certainly the yakka skink and the ornamental snake would not have standing, nor any legal training, as I have said. That is the very reason that the Howard government brought in the extended standing provisions. Those conservation groups are the only groups who have standing to protect these endangered species.

This is simply another scaremongering campaign by a desperate, disorganised government. Since July 2000, there have been 5,500 projects that have gone through the same approval process that the Adani coalmining project went through. Out of those 5,500 projects, how many challenges were successful? Six out of 5,500. It is a complete overstatement by the Attorney-General when he said:

… the provision that allows radical green activists to engage in vigilante litigation to stop important economic projects.

Six out of 5,500—do the maths. It is an outrageous statement completely without merit. In 15 years there have only been six successful challenges to these projects. The most recent challenge could have been avoided altogether if Mr Hunt, the so-called environment minister, were doing his job properly.

This is not about Australian jobs; this is about the jobs of the Prime Minister, the Attorney-General and the environment minister. This is political opportunism and wedge politics seen at the extreme. For the Prime Minister of the land, the guy that is supposed to provide us with a bit of vision, the Attorney-General, the nation's first law officer, and the environment minister—that is his title, the environment minister—to engage in such behaviour, they obviously must be lower than the belly of a Denisonia maculata to not think of what this piece of legislation was introduced for. John Howard—'not exactly a radical green activist', to quote the Attorney-General—brought in this safeguard.

This is all about creating a fear campaign and a straw man to target, because the government has run out of ideas. We have seen it with its legislative agenda this week and last week here in parliament. If we look at the cabinet agenda, a blank piece of paper, this is a government that has run out of ideas and is now trying to create fear and division in the Australian community, and it should be condemned for it.