Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I continue now my contribution on the changes to the EPBC Act. I reiterate that I am opposed to these changes. They are fundamentally unfair. I have already expressed the concerns of my community in my electorate of Richmond on the Far North Coast of New South Wales. They have concerns about the national perspective and the local perspective as well. We have the threat of harmful coal seam gas mining in our area. I have outlined our concerns in relation to this bill and also the pro-CSG agenda of the Liberal Party and the National Party.

Since the election of the Abbott government we have seen constant attacks upon our very precious environment and those who work to protect it. The government completely lacks any environmental credibility. In fact, they have a litany of past environmental attacks. These include actively pursuing the destruction of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, abolishing the Climate Change Authority and removing the Marine Reserves Network. They have very harshly cut funding from many grassroots environmental programs. They have made harsh cuts to Landcare programs and also groups like the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. We have seen a whole series of harsh cuts.

We have also seen the government use quite offensive language when they refer to people who wish to defend the environment. They refer to them as vigilantes and saboteurs. I think that was the terminology the Prime Minister and another minister used recently. Quite frankly, that is insulting and it is not fair. People have a right to object and to be part of the process, and that is what is wrong with this bill—it is taking away the right of people to protest. It is insulting that the government continues to use such derogatory language about people of goodwill who wish to just make a point about how concerned they are about the environment. I certainly request that the government stops doing that.

Labor have a very proud tradition of protecting the environment. In fact, it was the Hawke Labor government which first moved to protect the Franklin River from being dammed, it was a Labor government that stopped mining in Antarctica and it was a Labor government that explained how important it was that we take action on climate change though pricing carbon. We were very clear about that. We have a very proud record right across the board when it comes to our action on the environment. Certainly, in my area I have spoken previously about the impacts of harmful coal seam gas mining. New South Wales Labor has a very proud record there as well. In fact, we went to the last state election with a very clear policy of ensuring that the North Coast be kept gas field free because New South Wales Labor understood the concerns of people in the area.

In contrast to all that, we have the Liberal-National party, who at every level, whether it be federal, state or even local government, are absolute and complete environmental vandals. This amendment proves that. The last time the government moved to amend the EPBC Act it was to hand approval controls over to their mates in the state government—another disastrous act and another attack on environmental protections. Now the government want to stop any kind of opposition to inappropriate environmental approvals by essentially barring access to the courts. The Abbott government intend to change the EPBC Act to stop third-party interventions on developments affecting the environment, and that is plainly wrong and unfair. It is yet another attack in the Prime Minister's relentless war on the environment and those very important groups who seek to protect it—groups like Greenpeace and Lock the Gate that work very hard to protect the environment. In my area, I have seen firsthand the remarkable work that groups like Lock the Gate do in protecting the New South Wales North Coast from harmful CSG mining, so I do find it offensive when derogatory terms are used against them. They are essentially hardworking individuals—and it is not just Lock the Gate; there are many similar groups and I use this opportunity to commend them on the work they do to protect our environment.

We all know that the EPBC Act has been the overriding national environmental protection law for the past 15 years. The approval of thousands of projects was managed perfectly well under this system by the Howard government and then by two terms of the Labor government. Since the EPBC Act commenced in July 2000, approximately 5½ thousand projects have been through the EPBC process. Of these, there have been 33 Federal Court challenges by third parties against only 22 projects. This equates to only 0.4 per cent of projects referred under the EPBC Act—hardly the avalanche that we hear many on the other side referring to. Standing provisions under section 487 of the current EPBC Act are already sufficiently rigorous. Removing effective appeal rights will result in less scrutiny and rigour in the assessment process and will most likely result in poorer environmental outcomes at a time when Australia's natural environment is under greater threat than ever. Ultimately, if this bill is successful, the only entities that will be able to challenge the approval of a development with high environmental impact will be those individuals who, firstly, can prove they will be directly affected, secondly, have the funds to be able to go to court and, thirdly, have the courage to risk a massive cost order against them which would probably bankrupt them if they lose. So it really does prohibit so many people from pursuing that avenue.

This amendment to the EPBC Act is a foolhardy response. The government's own incompetence and failures are being borne out in the courts, and that is why they are responding in this way. This bill has been written by and for environmental vandals—as I said, that is what we see across the chamber. It is very disappointing and we see it at federal, state and local levels. What I do find concerning are some of the claims we hear from across the chamber that the EPBC Act is costing jobs. That is simply not true. The only thing costing jobs is the government's mismanagement of the economy. Indeed, under the government more than 800,000 people are now unemployed, the first time the unemployment rate has been this high in 20 years. So, in fact, they are the problem and it is quite wrong when they try to cast blame into other areas.

Let us be clear. When it comes to the environment, Labor will always support a common-sense approach to our environmental regulatory systems such as some of the streamlining of assessment processes. Labor will not, however, support the weakening of environmental protections by limiting a community's right to challenge government decisions in the courts. Labor supports the environment but also the fundamentals that underpin our democracy. Fundamentally, individual and community objection rights are very important and need to be protected in legislation. They have to be protected because they assist in building strong community confidence in our planning systems and they do result in much better environmental assessment processes and much better environmental outcomes right across the country.

Effectively, this amendment will put an end to any legal challenges against federal approvals and major developments with high environmental impacts. That is so disappointing. This is a foolish amendment by a desperate, chaotic government. Instead of focusing on good governance, they are playing distraction politics and are seeking to rip the heart out of the environmental protection in the EPBC Act, which has been the bedrock of sensible environmental approval in this country for the last 15 years. The fact is that the threat of third-party appeals does create a stronger incentive for proponents and the government to adhere to the law, improving the quality of the environmental assessment of many major projects. Our environmental laws are vitally important for the future of our nation. I stand in condemnation of the government for their continued environmental vandalism and I oppose their changes to the EPBC Act.

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade and Investment) Share this | Link to 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.

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

That's not what they said in court.

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

Even if it was 5,000 jobs, it is serious. Here is the Labor Party, not worried about jobs. They are disputing the fact that this creates any jobs. Are you real? This is serious business. This is not to be thrown away. These are people's lives that are being junked on the altar of paying up to the Greens. That is what you have done for years, and you have trashed the economy as a consequence.

India has been keen to conclude a bilateral comprehensive economic cooperation agreement with Australia because, among other things, India seeks reliable access to the food and mineral resources its economy needs to grow, and Australia, as a stable and secure country, offers the potential to be a long-term partner in that growth. Endless delays to India's biggest investment project in Australia will and are being noted by Indian businesses and the government and may well affect India's appetite to finalise this agreement this year. This is a major agreement. We cannot put all our eggs in a North Asian basket. We have to develop a much stronger relationship with India. The opportunities are there, for all sorts of reasons. India is 25 or 20 years behind China. It is going to be the next China, and we as a country need to develop these relationships.

This lawfare that is being engaged in by a bunch of activist Greens members is seriously undermining the prospects for concluding this agreement in a satisfactory manner. Normalising section 487 of the EPBC Act in line with the standing provisions of the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act will ensure that aggrieved persons retain the right to make an application for judicial review. At the same time, it will prevent activist groups from using the EPBC Act to disrupt nationally important economic projects. This strikes the right balance—on both sides of the parliament, I suggest, over the years. For that reason, I support the amendment and I urge those opposite to do the same.

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, this is—

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The question is that this bill be now read a second time. I call the honourable member for Perth.

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And I do apologise for jumping the gun, but I was just so appalled by the contribution of the minister. Let's look at what has actually happened here. A month ago a court ruled, after an admission had been made by the minister, that he had made a fundamental mistake in his—

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

It is a consent order.

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know it is a consent order. But it was a court order, based on consent, that the minister had made an error—and not just a technical error; he had failed to take into account, in making a judgement on granting an environmental approval under the EPBC Act, that there were various endangered species. He had not taken those into account in coming to his decision. It was an error made by the minister, an acknowledged error in his process, and I think his explanation was that the advice that was given to him by the department was not with the materials he used to make the assessment. So, a minister makes a mistake, a project is put on hold and the minister thrashes around like a snake with his back broken and decides: 'It's a problem with the activists. It's a problem with the people who drew the court's attention to my error. I made the mistake, but it's the fault of those people who took this to the court and then pointed it out, so we're going to have to change the legislation to prevent people like that whistleblowing on ministers who get it wrong.'

It is an extraordinary proposition. I think it is very much in the same league as the proposal to amend section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. And their mate Andrew Bolt goes out and publishes an article that names various Aboriginal people and accuses them of inappropriately and disingenuously claiming identification with their Aboriginal heritage without ever seeking comment from them. On those very limited grounds, Andrew Bolt was found to have defamed these individuals. So, we can't have that! We have to go and change the legislation, because this is not right! Of course, that legislation foundered on strong community sentiment. People actually understood that what was being proposed was most unfair and that it would be sending out a very dangerous signal to the people of our country that somehow or other a speech that was disrespectful of people on the basis of their race was acceptable. Now we have the same thing here. We have a complete and utter overreaction to a ministerial error. Just look at the facts. During the period of the Labor government, during the entire time that this legislation was in place, we saw $280 billion worth of projects in the resource area approved.

Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What happened to the Browse Basin in the Kimberley?

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, the Browse Basin in the Kimberley—sorry, can I just explain that to you? The company, Woodside, decided that it did not want to proceed on that basis. It wanted to embrace the FLNG technology that had been successfully established by Shell on the Prelude project. In fact, to a very large extent, the thing was kept on life support to enhance the prospects of Premier Colin Barnett, who had, as per usual, nailed his mast to a sinking ship of the gas hub. In order to help him out, that project was kept on life support until after the state election and very shortly thereafter was ditched. There was nothing whatsoever to do with the EPBC Act. It was just completely and utterly irrelevant to that process. It was a case of moving on—

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

Three strikes today for him!

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's right! Now we have $280 billion worth of projects. My friend and colleague Gary Gray just reminded me that the scale of those projects, which included much of the investment in the gas fields of Australia, is larger than the entire Marshall Plan, which transformed Western Europe after the Second World War.

We have seen under this regime that, far from us being unable to progress projects, when we have had confident ministers and when we have had ministers who did not lose bits of paper and who did get all of their documentation together before they made a decision we were able to live with this piece of legislation. We were able to live with a limited right of third-party appeals. It is only a limited right of third-party appeals and it is quite clear, as my colleagues who have spoken before me have set out time and time again, that only 0.4 per cent of these referrals under this legislation have ever been taken to court. It is a very restricted right to a judicial review.

I think it is quite appalling that we should say that this is inappropriate and that we want to peel back that jurisdiction. Much is made of the fact that the Environmental Defenders Office NSW was involved in this but, as has been pointed out, it was in fact the Mackay Conservation Group who were indeed the applicants. Of course you cannot expect that a group like that would have the legal skills or the financial resources to take on such a project. So of course they will go to an NGO that has the capacity to take this matter forward. I do not think anybody reflected negatively on the fact that the lawyers who were used by Adani in this matter did not come from the Galilee Basin. You go where the expertise is, so it is a fairly puerile point

It caused a little flutter, for some unknown reason, in question time today that I was reading this fabulous book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which is a book I have been delving into not just over the last six months but indeed over the last year. It is really showing us what is going on in society. Basically, there was a major reset of our economies and the distribution of wealth after the First World War. Between the First World War and probably the end of the 1970s, there was an increasing equalisation of the spread of wealth and income within the community. But from that time on, basically from the early eighties to now, that whole process has reversed and we are now back to the same record levels of inequality of power, influence and capital that we saw during the Belle Epoch in the 1890s.

So we do know that money and capital, and with that, power and influence are concentrating more and more into the hands of fewer and fewer. So the gap not only in wealth but also in influence and power is growing. For us to be looking at this David and Goliath situation, where this poor little Mackay Conservation Group—

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

is up against, as you said, one of the biggest coal companies in India, and is somehow unfair—somehow it has to be stopped. They have to be crushed; they have to be moved out of the way. As I said, let us get back to the heart of what the problem was here. The problem was that the minister made a mistake. The minister did not have the documents before him. He did not take into account all of the things that he was required to do by law. He did not examine critical material that he should have taken into account in making his decision. If it had not been for this courageous and vigilant group, that error of law would never have been brought to our attention.

This is very important. It is very important that we have environmental laws—and everyone has acknowledged that in this place. But these laws are worth nothing if there is no mechanisms by which they can be tested. Seeking to move these groups out and seeking to reduce and diminish the standing provisions, or strengthen the standing provisions, to make it harder and harder for these groups to ensure that proper legal process has been followed by the minister in making those approvals, is incredibly unfortunate. This is truly a David and Goliath situation, and the government are reacting in a completely inappropriate way. Instead of being prepared to say, 'Oh, I'm very sorry; the minister made a mistake,' they say: 'We've got to change this legislation, because this is really embarrassing. The minister has made a mistake. That's embarrassing, so let's pretend that the problem is the law.' We know the problem is not the law. I go back to that fact: $280 billion worth of projects were approved in one sector of the economy, the resource sector, under Labor's watch, without any problem from this provision. We were able to work with this provision.

I have been a minister building things—a Minister for Planning and Infrastructure. I was building railways and roads, and there was one little orchid that used to always pop up whenever I had a project. I always thought the Caladenia huegelii was the bane of my life. Wherever I wanted to build something, there it was. It would pop up every spring. It would be found, and we had to work around that. We had to redesign projects. We had to make environmental offsets. I know it is frustrating, but you have to do it. You work within the law. It is very important that we have these environmental protections, and it is very important that we ensure that those environmental groups are empowered to be the watchdogs to ensure that this legislation is honoured not just in the spirit but in the letter.

I am very confident that this piece of legislation will founder in the Senate. It certainly will founder in the forum of public opinion. I say to the people of Canning: next Saturday, you have an opportunity to show Mr Abbott that you do not like the direction he is taking the country in and to show the Liberal Party that you do not like the person they have as their leader or the far right agenda that has been prosecuted. Vote for Matt Keogh and ensure that we do not have ridiculous pieces of legislation like this coming before this parliament again.

Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to make a contribution on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Amendment (Standing) Bill 2015 and strongly support its intent in restoring greater certainty to the EPBC Act. Let me begin by saying that my home state of Tasmania is undoubtedly a world-renowned environmental jewel. A commitment to its protection is not the exclusive domain of any group or political party. All sensible Tasmanians are conservationists at heart. But, regrettably, Tasmania's environmental virtues are not matched by its economic health. After 16 years of Labor government in Hobart and a disastrous six years of Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government here in Canberra, Tasmania lags behind the nation in far too many economic benchmarks. Too many of our local communities have been impacted by both unemployment and underemployment.

With this reality in mind, my contribution on this bill recognises the inextricable link between the environment and the economy. Finding an appropriate balance between these two important priorities informs the future of every Australian. To focus inordinately on one—either the environment or the economy in isolation—without equivalent and serious consideration of the other is both short-sighted and costly.

So there is no doubt in my mind that we must act when some choose to game or exploit the legal system to disrupt and delay infrastructure that is so vital for Tasmania's and Australia's future prosperity. We must act. The disastrous Labor-Green partnership in the last parliament did nothing to stop these legal shenanigans, and, judging by the contributions of those opposite that I have heard this afternoon, that symbiotic relationship between the Labor and Greens parties remains, sadly, into the current parliament. They are united in supporting measures that continue to damage my home state of Tasmania, and it beggars belief that Labor has learned nothing from its poisonous relationship with the Greens in the last parliament, which the Australian people so explicitly repudiated with the lowest Labor vote in 100 years. The people can see that the only reason why Labor supports the ideological excesses of the Greens party is Greens preferences. Almost every Greens preference in Bass in the last election and previous elections went to the Labor Party, demonstrating quite clearly that a vote for the Greens is in fact a vote for the Labor Party, and vice versa.

But I ask you this, Deputy Speaker: how can the Labor Party with any conscience, on any reasonable assessment of the national interest, put their political ambitions ahead of the hardworking people of our country? How can they justify helping the Greens and their litigious activist mates damage our forestry industry, our mining industry, and our fishing and aquaculture industries? It is abundantly clear on all of the evidence—the speeches that I have heard on this bill, including the one by the member for Moreton earlier today and others—that Labor put their relationship with the Greens and militant unions like the CFMEU ahead of Tasmanian businesses, particularly when it—

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, on a point of order, the member is completely misrepresenting what I was saying. At the first opportunity, I would like to ask him to correct his account of what I said in my speech.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are other mechanisms—

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

I made no mention of the CFMEU at all in my speech.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are other mechanisms for addressing that.

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

At the first available opportunity, I thought I was asked to correct the record.

Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, my time is—

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. There are other methods for the member for Moreton to address this issue, but the member for Bass has the call and he will be heard in silence.

Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. The member for Moreton knows that I was talking about the Labor Party generally, but I will take much more of an interest in his speeches from now on and make sure that I call him to account for many of the things that he says that many on this side of the House find unconscionable.

But, when I say that Labor puts the interests of the CFMEU ahead of Australian workers when it comes to issues like the free trade agreement, consider that CFMEU campaign at the moment which is disavowing the clear benefits that would come from the China-Australia free trade deal. Here we are, astride the Asian century, between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, with the middle class in that region growing from 500 million to 1.7 billion people. Tremendous opportunities will arise, and what we get is Labor pushing against those benefits by backing this mendacious CFMEU campaign.

There is no doubt Labor also puts its relationship with the Maritime Union of Australia ahead of measures that would help to revitalise coastal shipping. At every turn it blocks our efforts to roll back Labor's 2012 coastal shipping laws. You may have heard the Deputy Prime Minister say yesterday that the fleet of major Australian registered ships over 2,000 deadweight tonnes with coastal licences has halved during six years of Labor. The carrying capacity of the major coastal trading fleet declined by 60 per cent, and there are other statistics I can provide there.

That is why I am saying with confidence that the Labor-Green partnership endures in opposing not only this bill but also our efforts to pass the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2014, which would better protect workers and the hard-earned union dues they pay. This demonstrates that the Labor-Greens partners would rather back the worst excesses of the union movement and those who mishandle and misuse members' funds—not the low-paid workers whose funds are squandered. By contrast, we will back the trifecta of free trade deals negotiated by Minister Robb in the last year. We will stand with the hardworking businesses of Australia who have the most to gain from enhanced access to growing Asian markets. We will stand for better protecting Australian workers and their union dues from corrupt unions who use their hard-earned money so inappropriately. We will stand for rolling back Labor's coastal shipping laws which have so badly damaged states like Tasmania. We stand for this bill, which provides a sensible legal framework that protects our environment but finds a more appropriate balance in fostering sustainable development. Our intent must be to ensure that we not only protect the environment but provide certainty to those projects that have satisfied our high environmental standards. We have worked hard since coming to government to act on that laudable objective.

I congratulate the member for Flinders, Minister for the Environment Greg Hunt, for establishing a one-stop shop for environmental assessments with all states and territories which has had the outstanding effect of reducing the approval time for projects by 50 per cent. I also congratulate the member for Flinders for presiding over the environmental approval of projects valued at $1 trillion and for clearing the backlog of projects that had been deferred or delayed by the previous Labor-Greens government. I particularly congratulate my ministerial colleagues for addressing the threat of activist gaming of the legal system which inappropriately threatens investment in jobs. There is no doubt that these legal tactics are designed to disrupt and delay and to increase investor risk, to make potential investors think twice about Australia as a destination for their hard-earned capital.

Even when investors have satisfied our world-class environmental standards, these tactics are designed to wear them down and to make them worry about endless legal process. In my home state of Tasmania, federal environment ministers—both Labor and Liberal, I might say—have been constantly challenged by green groups on their approval decisions relating to forestry and mining in particular. That is why I am so flabbergasted that Labor's speakers today back the Greens and their litigious activist mates by acting against the intent of this bill.

Sadly, in this parliament it is not only in this place that parliamentarians cheer on the activists. Consider the actions of Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson in the other place, who, with Labor's support, launched a Senate inquiry into the Tasmanian salmon industry. What a pointless waste of taxpayers' money and parliamentary resources! Senator Whish-Wilson called for the inquiry and then refused to accept its evidence-based report because it did not support his deeply flawed perspectives. The inquiry did not find anything wrong with Tasmania's salmon industry—the most valuable primary industry in my state, based on value of production. It is an industry that turns over $1 billion, is looking to double production, and currently employs over 5,000 Tasmanians either directly or indirectly. The committee found:

The Committee acknowledges the more-than-adequate management systems, and effective industry proactivity, in the sustainable management and continuous improvement of the Tasmanian fin-fish aquaculture industry.

In essence, this was a clean bill of health for the Tasmanian salmon industry, which did not align with Senator Whish-Wilson's misconceived, minority, ideological views. So, having put the taxpayer to all that expense, Senator Whish-Wilson chose to write his own dissenting report. He could have saved the community a great deal of time and money by simply publishing his own unsupported views on the industry. I am staggered that any Tasmanian—even a Greens senator like Senator Whish-Wilson—should seek to damage what is a vital, growing and environmentally sustainable industry that benefits Tasmanian workers and the Tasmanian economy.

In Queensland, we have heard similar examples of endless legal process being used to stop three major Galilee Basin projects. Former Labor Treasurer Keith De Lacy has said in the Brisbane Courier-Mail:

… green activism had increased the costs of developing a mine by up to 10 times.

… a development that took just over a year in 2008 would now take up to five years as companies get weighed down by litigation.

It was never the intent of the EPBC Act to be used to disrupt and delay much-needed infrastructure developments across our great country. And, as we know, the intent of this legal activism is not to help but to hinder. In 2011, the people behind this deplorable legal tactic boasted about their goal of 'increasing investor risk' in Australia.

These are groups, by the way, that often receive considerable taxpayer-funded charitable status and taxpayer funding. Think about that for a moment—taxpayer funds being used to make Australia a much riskier place to invest. It just beggars belief. Groups involved include Greenpeace, the New South Wales and Queensland Environmental Defenders Offices, Lock the Gate, Beyond Zero Emissions, GetUp and a range of other organisations, including The Australia Institute.

And Labor continues to back them today, as we heard from their speeches. What a disgrace! Even the Labor Party unions like United Voice were involved in this document's production. Think about that for a moment: union dues from hardworking union members are being applied to a strategy that makes investment harder and stops the creation of new jobs for new workers. It is scandalous. If we look at the stated intent of these groups on page 3 of their so-called strategic document, it is to:

… 'disrupt and delay' key projects and infrastructure while gradually eroding public and political support for the industry …

In section 4.1 of their document, they say:

Legal challenges can stop projects outright, or can delay them in order to buy time to build a much stronger movement and powerful public campaigns. They can also expose the impacts, increase costs, raise investor uncertainty, and create a powerful platform for public campaigning.

They are all about running legal challenges that delay, limit or stop major infrastructure projects that create jobs for people in our country. It is little wonder that, in the correspondence that I have received on this issue, many people use words like 'disgusting', 'sabotage,' 'treason' and 'un-Australian' to describe what it is going on.

It is an intent that is also entirely at odds with the EPBC Act, which says that, if you meet our high environmental standards, you will certainly be able to proceed with your investment. Nowhere in the conception of the EPBC Act did they say that its intention was to increase investor risk and to make Australia a less desirable place to invest. The people behind this lawfare, these jobs-destroying tactics, are not community based grassroots campaigners. They are engaged in a US style approach—and we know that Australians hate that 'sue at the drop of a hat' mentality that they are often exposed to in the United States. So we will act to amend these provisions to ensure that only those with a genuine, direct interest in a matter, like landowners or farmers, have legal standing. We will not allow those who are often far removed from these environmentally-cleared projects to retain their current freedom of action to frustrate, undermine and increase costs and uncertainty for ideological reasons and green zealotry. We will not let them undermine the core intention of the EPBC Act. It is important to note that nothing in this bill prevents those who may be affected by an EPBC decision from seeking judicial review. This right will be maintained and protected.

Through this bill, the government wants to achieve a pragmatic balance between harmonious environmental and economic compatibility, and efficiency. In a real, practical sense, it seeks to be the strongest champion of both. The bill supports not only our environment values but also a revised regulatory framework that protects investment, innovation and sensible risk-taking, which is so essential to the future economic prosperity of my state and our country. The dovetailing of these two imperatives protects the environment and grows the economy. On that basis, I strongly commend this bill to the House.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can always tell when members opposite are feeling vulnerable on any given issue, because the temptation to lunge into the ideological overreach is always there and on open display. The amount of ideological rhetoric that was trotted out in that last contribution to this debate was truly astonishing. I am very pleased to be here tonight to speak in the debate on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standing) Bill 2015 and to join with my Labor colleagues in opposing the proposed changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

To outline the situation before us today, I would like to start by quoting the words of a man who is renowned for not mincing his swords—indeed, quite often with direct barbs aimed at those of us on this side of the House. This man said about this bill that is before the House today:

I may live nowhere near the Liverpool Plains or the Great Barrier Reef, but I sure as hell am concerned that they are protected.

The latest move by the Abbott Government puts at risk not just our environment but our very democracy and is quite simply unbelievable.

The move I'm talking about is an attempt to remove a section of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

He continued:

So what does this change mean? Well if pushed through, only people who are directly affected by development will be allowed to challenge the approval. So what about the Great Barrier Reef? Well, unless the Great Barrier Reef happens to be in your backyard, you won't have any legal grounds to oppose irresponsible action of others.

This legislative restriction is divisive, it isolates us and it means we're not allowed to care.

They are not my words. They are not Labor's words, and they are not the words of some green activist. They are the words of well-known conservative broadcaster Alan Jones—the former speechwriter for Malcolm Fraser and serial Liberal Party candidate.

The Prime Minister's intention to change the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to stop third-party interventions on developments affecting the environment is unconscionable. It does not make sense. It is not in the best interests of business or the environment. It is just another attack in the Prime Minister's relentless war on the environment and the groups and individuals who take it upon themselves to protect it. The intention to repeal section 487 of the EPBC Act, as outlined in this bill, is nothing but a rash reaction to this government's complete incompetence and its failures that were borne out in the courts for all to see. The government's claim that the act is costing jobs is outrageous. The only thing costing jobs is this government's incompetence and the Prime Minister's determination to fight for his own job but no one else's. The EPBC Act is not the reason that unemployment has risen to its highest level in 20 years. It is this government and their poor economic management that sees more than 800,000 Australians unable to get a job.

The EPBC Act has been the overriding national environmental protection law for the past 15 years, including through the mining boom, and has posed absolutely no problem for our economy. Indeed, as members before me have noted—for example, the member for Perth—there have been some $280 billion of investment made in a range of projects under this act. The approval of thousands of projects was managed perfectly well under this system by the Howard government and during the two terms of Labor government that followed. Let us be very clear: the act is not the problem; the problem is this government.

In the context of this debate, I think it is very important that we reflect on the intentions of the act and recognise the important role it has played in the sustainable development of our nation. As the Department of the Environment sets out very clearly, the objectives of the EPBC Act are to provide for the protection of the environment, especially matters of national environmental significance; conserve Australian biodiversity; provide a streamlined national environmental assessment and approvals process; enhance the protection and management of important natural and cultural places; control the international movement of plants and animals, wildlife specimens and products made or derived from wildlife; promote ecologically sustainable development through the conservation and ecologically sustainable use of natural resources; recognise the role of Indigenous people in the conservation and ecologically sustainable use of Australia's biodiversity; and promote the use of Indigenous peoples' knowledge of biodiversity with the involvement of, and in cooperation with, the owners of the knowledge.

Protecting matters of national environmental significance is the very legitimate work of the federal government, and the EPBC Act is a vital part of this work—it is an act of collaboration and an act of sustainability. Legislation that is designed to protect matters of national environmental significance cannot be applied to just those in the immediate vicinity. Concerns are no less genuine because their point of origin may be further from development than others. Landholders have rights to appeal decisions where a project impacts on their land as they should. But where the legislation is intended to protect the environment for, say, a threatened species, you cannot have a threatened species, like the green and golden bell frog in my electorate of Newcastle, lob up to the court and take legal action, because a proposed development is threatening their habitat.

That is why there is a representative standing for environmental organisations. I am sure the green and golden bell frog did not appreciate the industrial development on Kooragang Island in Newcastle but, because of the EPBC Act, they have been protected. There was a great compromise worked out between the developer and the people acting on behalf of the conservation interests in that region as is often the case in my part of the world.

I am part of the Newcastle-Hunter region, home to the world's largest port exporting coal. We have mining activity up and down throughout the Hunter Valley, but do we try to overreach and silence any dissenting voices in that activity? No. That is not the way we do things or should be doing things in Australia. We are more than capable of being able to work collaboratively to get the best outcomes for not only resource development and the employment options that come with that but also the protection of vital tracts of our environmental land and the flora and fauna that is associated with that land.

The propensity in this debate to pit the environment against jobs is really disappointing—and it is a point I will come back to later in the debate. The point that I am trying to make is that community objection rights are vital to the process of not just environmental protection but the sustainable development of our communities and indeed our nation. They help build community confidence in the planning system. Community objection rights also guard against corruption—a very important role—and they result in better environmental assessments and outcomes.

The threat of third-party appeals creates a stronger incentive for proponents and the government to adhere to the law improving the quality of environmental assessments of major projects. It is not the actual exercise of the power to enforce public rights that matters most but the possibility that they may be exercised already brings improved accountability to an approval system that we know can be plagued by vested interests. It has been mentioned here before that some of these contests are real David and Goliath issues where you have small local community groups pitted against massive multinational corporations at times. Let's not kid ourselves that everybody is operating on a level playing field here.

When announcing their plans, however, to amend the EPBC Act, the Attorney-General asserted that the act 'provides a red carpet for radical activists' who engaged in 'sabotage' and 'vigilante litigation'. This supposed red carpet is hardly worn, I would suggest, and any actions that have been undertaken have been rare in number and success.

Since the EPBC Act commenced in July 2000, there have been approximately 5,500 projects referred to the minister under the environmental impact assessment provisions. Of the 5,500 referred, around 1,500 have been assessed as requiring formal assessment and approval. There have been just 33 actions commenced in the Federal Court by third parties in relation to 22 of these projects.

Third-party appeals to the Federal Court have only affected 0.4 per cent of all projects referred under the legislation. Of the 33 actions, just six were legally successful and, of these six, in only two cases did the third-party applicant achieve their apparent desired substantive environmental outcome. Already one of these projects has gone back for reconsideration of approval.

This is not an act that kills jobs or savagely wounds our economy as the government would have you believe; it is an act that is doing what it is meant to do and is already targeted. The scope of appeal rights with the act is already restricted only to judicial review rights—that is, only reviewing whether or not a legal error has been made. No other consideration is taken into account here; it is just a matter of reviewing whether a legal error has been made.

As it currently stands, communities do not have the right to challenge the merits of a project approval under the EPBC Act—only the legal validity of it. This is a major limitation in the current system; Standing provisions under section 487 that the government is attempting to repeal are already sufficiently rigorous.

As interesting as this debate is and deserving as it is of more time given to it, I will move on because I am going to run out of time. Really what we have before us is a set of proposed changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act that are nothing more than a pathetic attempt by the Abbott government to distract from its existing political woes. When these proposed changes were announced, the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General could not even agree on what the announcement actually was. The Prime Minister said the government will repeal parts of section 487, and the Attorney-General said the whole section would go. It is a rash reaction to the government's incompetence and failures being borne out in the courts and, true to form, this government respond in the only way it knows: it goes on the attack and executes massive ideological overreach rather than deal with any of the substantive issues at hand.

The government has been caught out for not properly managing the approval process for the Adani mine under the act. This is a massive overreach of a response. Rather than deal with their own incompetence, they want the whole nation to have to pay the price. (Time expired)

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Contrary to what has mostly been said through this debate from the other side, Australia continues to have some of the most stringent and effective environmental laws in the world. Once projects have met these tough requirements, they should be able to proceed without being subjected to legal sabotage. The proposed amendments that we are discussing this afternoon do not change environmental standards.

Tasmanians have borne the brunt of the decades-long battle between the extreme Greens and left governments and the business community. While much of the focus in the media has been on a recent case in Queensland, Tasmania has been fighting this battle for years. It is a battle that has cost jobs, hurt communities, made people move away from the state of Tasmania to the mainland states—the bottom line is it has hit the Tasmanian economy very hard.

This legislation will remove the right of politico-environmentalists to ignore the needs and wishes of the local community and challenge projects approved under one of the world's most stringent environmental approvals regimes. Importantly, local agricultural producers, farmers, local residents and communities with legitimate proprietary, economic, financial or other direct interests will not be affected by this amendment. They can be assured that their voices under these amendments will continue to be heard and the courts will still be available for the protection of their rights. Furthermore, this amendment will maintain the stringent environmental laws and regulations that Australia is known for. It does not weaken environmental law but protects jobs and gives businesses, workers and communities the assurance that, if a development stacks up environmentally and has the support of the community, ratbag environmental political organisations from around the country will not be able to pull it out from under them.

The government has decided to protect Tasmanian and Australian jobs by removing from the EPBC Act 1999 the provision that allows radical green activists to engage in vigilante litigation to stop important economic projects. You only have to refer to the recent report Stopping the Australian coal export boom to understand what is at play here. You only have to turn to the first few pages, where it says:

The Need:

Australia is on the verge of a coal boom that is unprecedented in both scale and speed

and so on. It goes on to say we need to stop tens of billions of dollars of investment being locked in.

This country needs to grow up. We need to move to a balanced position. We need jobs. Australian families need incomes. They need jobs to be able to feed their families, stop living off the benefits provided by government and have a fulfilling life as a part of a working community. We need to have balance. We cannot simply, as the Greens and those opposite that are of the left would like, have us hanging from trees and drinking mung bean soup. We have to find the balance. Jobs are important and the environment is important, but we can have both. But I fear that we have groups within our community across this great country that cannot see the wood for the trees. They are more than happy to drive people out of their jobs and into the hands of the welfare mentality that this country is becoming known for.

While mainland Australians old enough may recall the infamous Franklin River protests and environmental fights, it did not stop there for Tasmanians. Over the decades since, green groups and even Tasmania's own government in coalition with the Greens party constantly attacked our industries. They shut down forestry and made it difficult to open new mines. Ultimately that cost 10,000 Tasmanian jobs. In recent years extreme green groups have latched onto this provision in the EPBC Act to launch their campaigns against development, against jobs, against business and against our communities. Some of these groups pride themselves on destroying businesses, skiting about how low they have been able to drive the share price on the back of legal action. They delay and oppose mines and any other development, they destroy jobs in my state and they have hurt our communities—often in the most remote parts of Tasmania and Australia. Call it 'lawfare', call it 'economic terrorism by judiciary'—whatever it is, it has got to stop. Tasmania cannot afford it, and Australia certainly cannot afford it.

Save the Tarkine is a group in my electorate that is notorious for this very action. It tries to bludgeon projects out of existence, and it does not care what damage it causes along the way. Last year I revealed in this very spot that Save the Tarkine's membership was a mere 20 members. They make a noise and they market themselves as a group of thousands of people when in fact there are only 20, half of which are directors. I revealed in this place that this group scarcely spent a cent for hands-on environmental projects, with all of its money basically funding wages, legal bills and travel. I also accused Save the Tarkine of running up legal bills with the full knowledge that it was not in any position to pay the costs if it lost. Only a matter of weeks ago Save the Tarkine lost yet another appeal, this time to the full bench of the Federal Court against a mining project on the west coast of Tasmania, which would have created 60 full-time ongoing jobs in a small venture and many more in the construction phase. People opposite who live in the big cities must say, 'Oh, 60 jobs—what's that?' But 60 families benefiting from this job in this particular company makes a huge difference in my electorate and in my state. Costs, of course, will be eventually awarded against Save the Tarkine, as they were last time and the time before that. But today the question remains: will they be in existence to pay back the taxpayers, to pay back the mining company? And will they provide compensation to the communities that have forgone much-needed employment?

This is not the only action this group has on the go, and this gets to the heart of this amendment. Save the Tarkine has taken it upon itself to challenge another two projects—this time the granting of a mining lease over Mount Lindsay and Mount Livingstone. These mines have the potential to create hundreds of jobs for the west coast and north-west. The west coast region of Tasmania is historically a mining region—it is not beachfront property; it is not the place where you would think anyone would have a genuine need to protest. This is a mining region that is dependent on mining projects for people to live and to have their lives and their families' lives intact. Save the Tarkine is nothing but a professional litigant that exists only to stop projects regardless of what environmental standard they meet. It is ideological for Save the Tarkine, and this legislation will stop them in their tracks.

These tactics have been replicated nationally and on a grand scale, not only bringing together large environmental groups but also movements like GetUp, individuals such as Graeme Wood, and even the unions. The very people who say they stick up for Australian jobs are the ones funding campaigns to destroy those jobs. These groups have come together to produce the document I referred to earlier, called Stopping the Australian coal export boomthat is, stopping all mining and stopping jobs. This document—this document right here—calls for the creation of a million-dollar fighting fund to shut down any potential mine before it even starts or goes through the process, and a further $180,000 to create investor uncertainty. This is straight out of the Save the Tarkine playbook. Knowing these projects stack up environmentally, the strategy is now to simply 'disrupt and delay'. What a low act. What an un-Australian act to dispose of projects before they have even got a chance to go through the development process and spoil it for hundreds, if not tens of thousands, of Australians who could do with a job and could come off the welfare benefits the country needs to provide to them at the moment.

This group that I am referring to in this document, just like Save the Tarkine, knows that Australia has the most stringent environmental laws in the world and that, to operate here, those laws need to be met. They know that these companies are hit with heavy regulation to ensure the environment is not unreasonably impacted by a project, but that is not enough for them. For these groups it is simply ideological.

It is astonishing that United Voice has joined up to this campaign. Perhaps delegates from United Voice even voted for Bill Shorten as Labor leader; maybe they did not. My guess is that they do not know who they voted for, if you believe what you read in the papers. But no doubt they turned up to Labor's conference while the Leader of the Opposition spoke about jobs; yet here is United Voice throwing money at a scheme to destroy investor confidence in the very companies that employ its members. What a disgrace! What a low act—but it is not surprising. Those in the opposition like to talk about jobs; they like to get their mates into the unions to shout about jobs. But when it comes to voting in the parliament to protect jobs, to create jobs and to give life to struggling remote communities, they always oppose.

Since coming to office, the federal Liberal and National government has established one-stop-shop environmental assessment agreements with all states and territories. We have managed to cut approval times by 50 per cent, and we could do even better if these guys on the other side were to get out of the way and allow the full implementation of this policy. We have before the Senate legislation to remove duplication in the environmental approvals process, but those opposite are opposing it. When we get it approved it will get projects off the ground sooner and get more people in jobs sooner, and Labor is opposing it. Labor members in Tasmania—senators who represent the electorate of Braddon and all the other electorates—are standing in the way of it. This is unbelievable at a time when we need many, many more job opportunities.

I know that many in my electorate are weary of the battle. They are weary of this battle of having a vision for jobs through a mine or any other development cast before them and then cast aside by the litigants of green activists and left-wing members of parliament. But I am resolute in my passion to see Tasmania working again, doing what it does well. I am resolute in my willingness to stand up to those who oppose legislation like this and like the one-stop-shop legislation, and against those who think we should go soft on organisations that take pride in destroying our jobs.

In summary, let me make very clear what these amendments do. This legislation, once amended, will maintain property rights. It will maintain the community's rights. Anyone with legitimate proprietary, economic, financial or other direct interests will not be affected in any way, shape or form by this amendment bill. Those who will be affected are the radical green groups that have established a fighting fund to disrupt and delay projects, with the full knowledge that they meet the world's most stringent environmental laws.

I can stand before this parliament tonight and say with absolute confidence that the overwhelming number of people in my electorate and in Tasmania have an environmental sensitivity. They are not in the business of wanting to trash our environment. We have 52 per cent of our state's landmass locked up. But we need jobs. We need to find a balance and a sustainable future that provide the opportunity for companies and businesses to invest in mining, forestry developments or other developments—whatever it is—to provide jobs.

Some might be happy for many in our community who depend on these sorts of jobs to eventually just hang from trees like something out of prehistory and eat nothing but mung bean soup. But, at the end of the day, we cannot continue to live on the teat of the Australian government welfare program. We need jobs. We need people with good jobs in environmentally sensitive and sustainable projects, and they are available.

As I said, these litigants are only interested in finding the loopholes. They are not interested in anything else but stopping, disrupting and delaying. Even the most radical of green groups still have the opportunity to contribute through the developmental process. They can make their case. They can put in their submissions. They can go and speak at hearings. They can do all that. But what this amendment seeks to do is take away the capacity of anyone without a direct proprietary, economic, financial or community interest to just see it as some sort of game, when at the end of the day the only losers in the game are normal Tasmanians, ordinary Australians, who end up losing their jobs.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not know whether to applaud that comedy show that we saw from the member for Braddon. He certainly cannot be serious about what he said in relation to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standing) Bill 2015—hyperbole heaped upon hyperbole, accusing the court process and judiciary of terrorism. That is what he did. It was extraordinary even by its own standards. The Abbott government has emitted plenty of purple prose, and we certainly heard that from the member for Braddon tonight. We heard ridiculous talk from him and from various ministers. I wondered what his attitude would have been in relation to the Franklin, Fraser Island or the Great Barrier Reef and to people who were interested in all of those great environmental causes.

But let us have a bit of a calm and rational look at the bill itself and see what it means and why we are discussing this. I have heard many speeches from those opposite but not much about the legislation or what it actually says. Put simply, through this bill, the Abbott government seeks to repeal section 487 of the EPBC Act. That act has been the Australian government's central environmental protection law for the last 15 years, for the Rudd government, the Gillard government and the Howard government. The first stated object of the act is:

… to provide for the protection of the environment, especially those aspects of the environment that are matters of national environmental significance …

Section 487 of the act deals with standing—that is, locus standi: what is required for an individual or a group to be considered a 'person aggrieved' under the act. Individuals or groups who satisfy section 487 may then seek a judicial review of a decision or a failure to make a decision, or conduct engaged in or for the purpose of making a decision, under the EPBC Act or the regulations.

It is clear that a person aggrieved may only seek a judicial review of the legal validity of an administrative decision, not the merits of the project itself. It is not a merit review such as under the AAT. That is important to note, given some of the government's sillier rhetoric and that of those opposite in relation to this particular bill. At present, sections 487(2) and 487(3) of the act extend the meaning of a 'person aggrieved' found in the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977. Section 487(2) extends the meaning of a 'person aggrieved' to an Australian citizen or resident who has:

(b) at any time in the 2 years immediately before the decision, failure or conduct … engaged in a series of activities in Australia or an external Territory for protection or conservation of, or research into, the environment.

Section 487(3) extends the meaning of a 'person aggrieved' to an organisation or association incorporated or established in Australia, provided that:

(b) at any time in the 2 years immediately before the decision, failure or conduct, the organisation or association has engaged in a series of activities in Australia or an external Territory for protection or conservation of, or research into, the environment; and

(c) at the time of the decision, failure or conduct, the objects or purposes of the organisation or association included protection or conservation of, or research into, the environment.

Sounds like a bunch of terrorists to me—doesn't it, Deputy Speaker! Certainly not!

The government has made it clear that it seeks to repeal section 487 to prevent third parties from seeking judicial review of an EPBC Act decision unless those parties meet the strictest standing test found in the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977. By repealing section 487, the Abbott government will simply make it far harder for ordinary Australians—or normal Tasmanians, as the member for Braddon talked about—to appeal projects that have significant impact on the environment. People and organisations will need to prove that they will be directly and adversely affected by the project. Few will clear that hurdle. Even if they do, they must have the financial means to make the complaint to the court and the capacity to withstand substantial costs orders awarded against them if they lose.

Through this bill, the Abbott government is deliberately, wantonly and fatally weakening environmental protections at a time when our environment is under greater threat than ever.

It is a retrograde step, that severely limits the community's long standing right to challenge the legality of a mine or major industrial development. There is an eerie reminder, as a Queenslander, in this bill of the former Queensland Campbell Newman LNP state government's dead of the night, legislative changes that stripped landowners and communities of the right to object to mining projects. Under Campbell Newman's government, appeals were restricted to landowners who would be on the mining lease, immediate neighbours and local councillors. I am pleased that the newly elected Palaszczuk Labor government, recently delivered on its election promise, and overturned these LNP government restrictions and restored the right of community appeal. Unfortunately, the Abbott government seems to be going the way of the former Campbell Newman LNP government in terms of both the legislative response and—we hope that at the next election—the political outcome.

The government wants to prevent people, say, in Ipswich in my electorate from having a right to appeal a major mining development just outside the city limits. It wants to stop famers in the Somerset region in my electorate from seeking judicial review of a decision to allow a nearby development that threatens a habitat. It wants to prohibit any Australian from protesting a development that threatens endangered flora or fauna. It is not just Labor who is raising concerns. We have had notable Australians in the last few days commenting in relation to it. Someone who does not normally support the Labor Party is Alan Jones. In The Guardianon 7 September 2015, he said:

The latest move by the Abbott government puts at risk not just our environment but our very democracy. It is quite simply unbelievable.

This legislative restriction is divisive, it isolates us. It means we are not allowed to care.

Alan Jones is not normally a friend to the Labor Party, but he is far better friend to the environment than the Prime Minister. Other mutterings of discontent have emerged from the government in the last few weeks. It is not a surprise that the government's radical plan to weaken the environmental protections and limit the community's right to challenge decisions has caused disquiet within the coalition ranks.

It is certainly no surprise when we learnt of another leak from the coalition party room. While the government may have nobbled the NBN, it has accelerated the release of confidential information from its party room to lightning speed. We read about that online and in the national media all the time. On 19 August, The Guardian Australia reported that these concerns were raised by none other than the father of the House, member for Berowra, who was a Howard government minister and former Chief Government Whip. He was until the Prime Minister's brush with political mortality in February, was the Chief Government Whip in the current parliament. The Guardian reported him as voicing concerns in the coalition party room after the Attorney-General discussed repealing section 487 to combat what he described as green vigilantism. According to the leak, the member for Berowra was not buying that and argued that the problem was an abuse of legal process, as the Attorney claimed, and that problem should be resolved in the courts.

We believe the community should retain its rights to valid concerns about major environmental projects and have the validity of the minister's decision tested in court. Remember, as it stands, communities only have the right to challenge when the decision was not lawfully made—not on the merits of the project under legislation. This right, even if not exercised against a particular decision, increases public confidence in the planning process. It builds accountability and transparency in the system. It acts as a bulwark against corruption. It encourages governments and developers to adhere to the law. It provides a strong incentive for better environmental assessments and outcomes.

Let us talk about the real reason the government wants to repeal section 487: the Federal Court's decision in August this year to set aside the government's approval of Adani Carmichael coalmine project in central Queensland. There is plenty of bluster and blatant misleading from the government about its decision. A lot of sound and fury and it is really quite confected.

Here are the facts. According to a statement released by the Federal Court on 4 August 2015, a judge of the court made the following orders setting aside the minister's decision: 'The orders were not made after hearing. There was no judgement. There were no findings. The orders were made by consent—that is, with the agreement of the parties to the litigation.' So the decision to set aside the minister's decision was made by consent between the Australian Government Solicitor, representing the minister representing the Minister for the Environment, Adani Mining Pty Ltd and the Mackay Conservation Group.

Why was the decision set aside? It was simply and only because the minister made an error. Again, in the words of the Federal Court: 'The minister found the proposed action would have significant impact on two threatened species. There were conservation advices provided to the minister in relation to these species. Under terms of section 139(2) of the act, it was mandatory to have regard to the approved conservation advices. The minister did not have regard to the approved conservation advices because they were not included in the material that was before him at the time he made his decision.' There you have it.

The Minister for the Environment in the Abbott government failed to follow the rules—rules that have been in operation for 15 years, legislative rules introduced by the Howard government. All the minister had to do to get it right was follow his own rules. Instead, he fluffed it and his incompetence was caught out in the court process. His own botch-up has left proponents of the mine more than a little unhappy. Adani said in its statement:

It is regrettable that a technical legal error from the Federal Environment Department has exposed the approval to an adverse decision.

And in case you were wondering about the skink and the ornamental snake, the threatened species, Adani added: 'It should be noted the approval did include appropriate conditions to manage the species protection of those two threatened species. However, we'—Adani—'have been advised that, because certain documents were not presented by the department in finalising the approval, it created a technical legal vulnerability that is better to address now.' The minister bungled it; that is what happened. And they are trying to cook up a confected faux crisis because the minister fumbled it in the litigation. There is no crisis in the Australian environmental regulation system but the Prime Minister, never shy of a leap of logic, even claimed that the EPBC Act is threatening jobs when the only threat is from the minister, his own minister's inability to follow the rules.

The minister's second reading speech is peppered with references to the Americanisation of the Australian judicial system. It is a delicious and unmissable irony when you consider that the Abbott government wants to bring in an Americanisation of our higher education system by introducing up to $100,000 degrees. This is a government that seems hell-bent on Americanising our health system but all of a sudden thinks that our environmental system and our legal system is Americanised and so has to put shields up to protect the Australian community against it.

Across the 15 years of the legislation, from July 2000 to now, about 5,500 projects were assessed under the EPBC Act. Of those 5,500 projects, there were just 33 Federal Court judicial challenges against 22 projects and that works out to a judicial referral rate of 0.4 per cent across 15 years. That is all it was, 0.4 per cent across 15 years. Why are we here in this place now? Why are we here? Because the Abbott government seems content to talk about nothing concerning its record of government economically in which it has failed. It wants to deflect the crisis that it created in its own litigation by the minister and his department's own decisions.

The Labor government in Queensland supports this project. But the minister could not get himself together to sort out the legal process and do the right thing. The Abbott government has failed. Today we have got legislation that is trying to avoid the real information that the public needs to know—that the Minister for the Environment is incompetent and the Abbott government has totally fluffed it.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standing) Bill 2015. Australia has some of the most stringent and effective environmental laws in the world. The proposed amendments do not change these high environmental standards. However, a major threat to the administration of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 has emerged recently—the Americanisation of the Australian justice system through the use of litigation to disrupt and delay key projects and infrastructure and to deliberately increase investor risk. This is an unprecedented new development in Australia, drawing the worst features of the American litigation industry into Australia. This is not a community based grassroots campaign. This is a well funded and coordinated strategy to frustrate the environmental approval process, which is by any measure one of the most stringent in the world.

In 2011 a number of organisations produced a document expressly setting out a plan to 'disrupt and delay key projects and infrastructure'. It expressly set the goal of 'increasing investor risk in Australia'. The document's strategy was simple as outlined on page 3—to disrupt and delay key projects and infrastructure while gradually eroding public and political support for the industry. These express objectives include: (1) mount legal challenges to the approval of several key ports, mines and rail lines; (2) run legal challenges that delay, limit or stop all of the major infrastructure projects—mines, rail and ports—that have been identified as a high priority in this strategy.

Therefore, we are seeking to bring the EPBC Act standing provision in line with the broad standing provisions in other Commonwealth legislation. Changing the EPBC Act will not prevent those who may be affected by a project seeking judicial review. It will maintain and protect their rights. Farmers and landowners who are affected by a project have the right to standing and to protect their interests under section 5 of the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977.

The government will not allow jobs, investment and our economy to be threatened and held hostage by American style litigation. A question for Labor is whether they support these tactics or they support Australian jobs and workers. The government has decided to protect Australian jobs by removing from the EPBC Act 1999 the provision that allows radical green activists to engage in vigilante litigation to stop important economic projects. Section 487 of the act provides a red carpet to radical activists who have a political not a legal interest in development to use aggressive litigation tactics to disrupt and sabotage important projects. The government will repeal this provision to return the law to the usual position, where somebody with a legitimate interest in commencing legal action has standing to do so but somebody who merely wants to prosecute a political cause does not. Repealing section 487 means that the test for standing to bring judicial review proceedings will be section 5 of the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977.

The government is concerned about the emerging trend by green groups and other organisations using the court system to sabotage important economic projects, sacrificing the jobs of tens of thousands of Australians in the process. The activists themselves have declared that that is their objective—to use the courts, not for the proper purpose of resolving a dispute between citizens but for the political purpose of bringing developments to a standstill.

An assembly of green activist groups, in their documents stopping the Australian coal export boom, declared as a strategy to delay and disrupt, and to reduce the financial liability of key infrastructure projects, including ports, rail and mines through litigation. The member for Maribyrnong and the Labor Party must stand-up for the workers who they claim to represent and not side with the inner-city greens and the Australian Greens at the expense of the jobs of tens of thousands of Australians. The EPBC Act should not become a watchword for wrecking and stopping.

I would like to comment on some of the things that have been coming to light in some of my research over the years. I remember doing a speech in 2006 at a conference where I was speaking on nuclear energy, and I was quite interested in the speech by the then head of the environmental section of BP. She made the point that in 1972 she had to go to the University of New England because it was the only university in Australia that offered an environmental science degree. In 2006, by contrast, and this is nearly 10 years ago, there were 28 separate environmental science degrees in Western Australia alone. Extrapolate that out and you would have 300 environmental science degrees Australia-wide in 2006. No doubt it is more now. Clearly, there is a need for environmental science and environmental protection, but do we really need 300 to 500 times the number?

Is this legitimate or are we seeing rent-seeking behaviour, where people start creating all sorts of things that need to be investigated, hence loading us up with red tape and hence requiring an incredible amount of time to go through an environmental approval process where you may have not just one environmental approval process but, in some cases, hundreds for one project? Is this artificial creation of additional places a good policy to have for our universities, where you build it up and the people then have to create the work? Are we becoming, in some ways, overeducated? I think, for example of journalism.

When I was young, the traditional means to become a journalist was to become a cadet reporter at a newspaper. There, they would have the grizzled old editor rapping them over the knuckles when they did not use the correct grammar or terminology. It was predominantly a 'he' in those days and he would also castigate those cadet reporters if they put their personal points of view. Now, we have a proliferation of university trained journalists, who appear to think that it is more important to have their own opinion expressed all over the place with their by-lines than to report the facts. Is this actually to the benefit of our society? Are we the richer for having changed the training from, in effect, workplace based training to one where you actually have a degree where they have been taught fine theory? I would argue that the standard of journalism has gone down.

In future, I will be dealing in greater detail with the EPBCA legislation issues relating to nuclear power. I want to facilitate a broader and more mature conversation about nuclear power in parliament and across the community. I want this to be a starting point not an endpoint in the journey to making potentially nuclear a part of the energy mix in Australia. The debate must be based on facts not fear, fantasy, fallacy or fabrication. But the issue being debated here today is whether environmental busybodies should be allowed to delay, disrupt or destroy commercial investment. That is why I was speaking about the issue of environmental science and the proliferation there, because some of this is causing delays in our approvals process which is doing significant damage to our economy.

Whether the wreckers should be allowed to deprive communities right across Australia of the infrastructure and jobs that they are so badly want and so richly deserve, the Abbott government believes in due process. The Abbott government believes in natural justice, but it is never right, proper or fair that environmental warriors and bleeding hearts anywhere can disrupt progress everywhere. That is the crux of this issue. Our government is aware of the economic challenge ahead. This piece of legislation is just one part of the bigger plan to get Australia back on track.

On 7 September 2013, the Prime Minister said that Australia is 'open for business' and he meant it. Ever since then, the Abbott government has been getting on with the plan of getting Australia back on track economically, bit by bit. This one piece of pro-progress, pro-jobs and pro-growth legislation sits in the catalogue beside the two red tape repeal days, and the numerous other pieces of legislation that seek to put jobs first. The coalition government knows the natural environment is a wonderful resource and amenity, but a job is a necessity. Australian families want more and better jobs. They want more and cheaper access to oil, coal and gas. Labor and the Greens do not have a plan to create wealth. They have a plan to spend, spend, spend. But at some point someone has to earn it, and someone has to pay it back.

The coalition is building a strong and prosperous economy for a safe and secure Australia. Only the Abbott government has a responsible, long-term economic plan that will grow the economy and fix Labor's mess. Labor's legacy to Australians is gross debt projected to rise to $667 billion—$123 billion in cumulative deficits; more than 50,000 illegal arrivals by boat; and the world's biggest carbon tax. The difference is clear-cut. After delivering gross debt projected to rise to $667 billion and six record deficits with a legacy of $123 billion in cumulative deficits, Labor still has no plan to fix its own mess, let alone manage previous taxpayers' dollars in the future.

Almost two years into this term, Labor still hankers for a carbon tax. They still have no policies to stop the boats and they are still addicted to taxes and spending. The choice is clear. They are for a carbon tax; we are for lower tax. They are for taxes; we are for jobs. They do the unions' bidding; we stand for the workers of Australia. This EPBC amendment bill is proof that the Abbott government is as good as its word, and is honouring its commitment to the Australian people to get Australia back on track.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was entertaining to listen to the member for Tangney talk about deficit and debt when under this government deficit and debt have been on the rise. It was also entertaining to hear him shed some crocodile tears about Australian jobs and workers when day after day this government has been championing the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement which would put an end to labour market testing for nurses, engineers, motor mechanics, electricians—some 200 occupations in all—with very great detriment to Australian workers and Australian jobs.

There is a context to this bill and, frankly, we do not talk about it anywhere near enough in this House—that is, the state of our environment. The environment has never been more fragile, never been under more pressure and never been more in need of governments and political leaders who will care for it and protect it. It has never been more in need of inspired amateurs and environmental groups who will hold businesses and governments to account where they fail.

We have a precarious environment, one in which many birds, animals and plants are threatened with extinction. We have very serious problems in relation to salinity. We have the declining health of many of our waterways including the Murray-Darling Basin. We have the Great Barrier Reef having been the subject of United Nations concern for some years now.

I have spoken in the House about the threats faced by seabirds and shorebirds—and other species, such as the Mallee emu-wren and the Gouldian finch, victims of inappropriate fire regimes—and the way in which species like the regent honeyeater and the swift parrot are now down to a few hundred individuals and are at risk of becoming extinct in the wild. We have an environment which is in need of protection, in need of tender loving care and in need of the support of volunteer groups and environmental organisations.

The history of environmental law and in particular the question of 'standing'—that is, the capacity to launch a legal action—has been set out in correspondence from Murray Wilcox AO QC, who has had a distinguished career in this field. He points out that, in his early days:

… there was often a real question about whether the applicant had standing to sue; that is, whether he or she was an appropriate person to bring the case. The question always turned on whether the applicant had a personal financial or property interest in the administrative decision, the legal validity of which the court was asked to review. This test was inherited by Australian courts from 19th century English cases.

As time went on, Australian judges came to think this test too narrow. They recognised that people sometimes felt deeply about an administrative decision, including a decision regarding land use or development, even though it did not adversely affect their pockets; but the person thought the decision contrary to the public interest. Over a series of cases, judges gradually decided it was reasonable to allow such people to test the legal validity of the decision that gave rise to their concern. Consequently, they accorded standing to applicants able to demonstrate a genuine interest, not necessarily financial, in the issue or place under consideration. The significant cases commence with the High Court decision in Onus v Alcoa …

The problem about this approach was that its application was uncertain. How much concern was necessary? Judges found themselves examining the minutiae of the applicant's involvement in the problem, instead of getting on with the legal issue about the validity of the administrative decision. It was in order to end the expensive side-issue about standing, that section 487 was inserted into the EPBC Act. A clear test was laid down in that section. Henceforth the court would rarely need to spend any time on standing; it could get on with the case itself.

Section 487 has worked well. As anticipated, the section has eliminated arguments about standing, with consequential savings in cost and time. … [It] has not opened any floodgates; only about one-half of one per cent of decisions under the EPBC Act have been subjected to an application for judicial review.

He also observes—and I agree with him 100 per cent—that species extinctions are important; and, if they are not, 'the biodiversity provisions should be removed from the EPBC Act'. He also expresses the view that the bill before the House is 'futile'. He states:

The Minister apparently assumes the court will apply the standing rule laid down in section 5 of the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 (the ADJR Act). That section allows a 'person aggrieved' to seek review of a decision. The ADJR Act does not define this term and there is no reason to read it as being limited to a person with a financial interest in the decision.

He concludes:

The only change from the present situation will be that the parties, and so the courts, will spend time examining the details of the applicant's association with the relevant issue or place. And people wonder why litigation is so expensive.

This bill aims to repeal section 487 of the EPBC Act and to remove extended standing for community members to seek judicial review of decisions made under the EPBC Act. The removal of these standing provisions would severely limit the access that communities have to ensure that the Australian government effectively and legally administers our national environmental law.

Such a move would likely limit a range of community groups and organisations from accessing justice under national environmental law—including: farming and landholder groups, except for those farmers who are directly adjacent to, or deemed affected by, a development; experts, including water scientists who could identify significant failings in the work or decision making of the government; environmental groups who have legitimate concerns relating to how our laws are working to ensure clear air, clean water and healthy ecosystems; Indigenous communities who have strong cultural heritage connections to country; and local Landcare and wildlife rehabilitation groups who work to protect local and regional environments.

The bill would limit standing to a person 'whose interests are adversely affected by the decision, based on federal administrative law'. The extent of standing for a particular individual or group would need to be considered on a case-by-case basis with reference to common law cases. So it is far from clear that the bill would reduce delay in projects as a result of legal proceedings; rather, it would require additional time and resources for the courts and legal parties to initially resolve the issue of standing before proceeding to substantive environmental issues.

There is a strong rationale for retaining broad standing provisions for judicial review. Having sufficiently open standing and access to justice has numerous benefits—including, providing an important check against corrupt behaviour by both government officials and industry. It enables the community to ensure that government is implementing the rule of law effectively, and it helps to stop bad decisions that threaten the health and wellbeing of communities and damage our environment.

Given all of that, you really would wonder why the government is bringing this bill before the House. The government has brought the bill on following a decision by the Federal Court to set aside the environment minister's approval for Adani's Carmichael coalmine. In that case, the outcome was reached because the government admitted that the approval of Adani's coalmine and rail project under the EPBC Act was legally flawed. The government, through its solicitors, requested that the Federal Court set aside the environment minister's approval of the project, explicitly acknowledging that a practical consequence of the making of this order would be that the minister will be required to reconsider the assessment that was the subject of the decision under review.

After that, it is absolutely outlandish for this government to make claims about 'vigilante litigation'. The legitimate Federal Court action, brought by the Mackay Conservation Group, identified a major error in the approval given by the minister. It was identified that the minister did not account for important conservation advice for two nationally threatened species: the yakka skink and the ornamental snake.

It is important to note that the government's mistake in this process was only highlighted by legitimate legal action taken by an environmental organisation. The government admitted that mistake. It requested that its own decision be set aside. So the claim of 'vigilante litigation' is just ludicrous. That is what the courts are there for: to ensure that the rule of law is followed. It is imperative that projects with large-scale impacts, such as this one, be subject to a thorough and transparent environmental assessment that considers the rights and views of the community, and that the rule of law is followed when issuing an approval.

As others have pointed out to the House, in this legislation's 15-year history some 27 of 5,500 referrals made under the act—that is, approximately half of one per cent—have been brought before the courts for judicial review. Under current arrangements, the Federal Court will only hear cases that have sufficient merit for the grounds being argued. It will not proceed with any litigation that it views to be vexatious or without merit. Under the existing provisions, under national environmental law, the significant cost of legal action and the threat of adverse cost orders remain considerable barriers to litigation.

The move to repeal section 487 and to cast responsible environmental groups as vigilantes or saboteurs is misdirected and slanderous. Responsible environmental organisations use the rule of law to ensure that the government of the day is diligent and effective in its implementation of legislation. If the government fails this test, it has no business seeking now to restrict the rights of Australians to ensure that our environment is appropriately protected.

The government claims that this bill will not affect farmers. That is not true; it will. This bill will restrict the nature of any action brought by any group or individual. It will limit the taking of action in court to a person whose interests are adversely affected by the decision. This limitation will mean that establishing standing will require that farmers and other concerned citizens establish some form of interest in the project occurring through common law processes. Such a move will create a significant financial impost on farmers, especially those already struggling against the might of some of these projects.

Retired Family Court judge Ian Coleman has noted in The Land newspaper that this change would have an 'appalling impact' and would 'just be so unfair to farmers'. He went on to state:

Farmers would incur individually the cost of both lawyers and experts to add some substance to their challenges and once you get experts involved, you cruise past $50,000 very quickly.

… … …

Unless you can prove your financial interests are directly affected then you would likely have no right to object to the decision.

Little wonder then that Alan Jones is opposing this legislation; and more strength to his arm in relation to this.

When we look at what the experts and independent bodies are saying on the notion of standing, we have the Hawke review saying that these provisions ought to be retained. We have the New South Wales ICAC noting the importance of third-party rights to review decisions as an important mechanism to stop corruption, noting:

Merit appeals provide a safeguard against biased decision-making by consent authorities and enhance the accountability of these authorities. The extension of third party merit appeals acts as a disincentive for corrupt decision-making by consent authorities.

The Productivity Commission, in a recent review of major projects approval processes, echoed this view, and the Human Rights Law Centre has also supported this. The case for retaining this legislation is very clear.

There has been discussion about the role of the Mackay Conservation Group. I point out to the House that over the years they have been involved in numerous actions to protect the environment, working with community groups and individuals to get a 20-year moratorium by the Queensland government in 2007 on oil shale mining in areas of the nationally listed Goorganga Wetlands; they have been able to get fine dust continuous monitoring done downwind of the Hay Point coal terminal for coaldust blowing on the community of McEwens Beach; and they have lobbied in relation to numerous environmental questions in the interests of residents and the environment in the Mackay region.

I urge the House to reject this bill. It is a disgrace. It reveals only too clearly the contempt and hostility this government has for the environment and for Australia's unique, beautiful and fragile continent.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise with pleasure to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standing) Bill 2015. I do so because I love the environment and I also love jobs—jobs for my electorate and right around this country.

I want to start by stressing that unemployment in my electorate is, quite frankly, higher than I want it to be. Youth unemployment for the area is also too high. Every day since the last election, our government has been working to ensure that small and large businesses have the environment—no pun intended—that they need to grow and prosper, because we on this side of the House know that it is the private sector businesses that create jobs.

But for some reason some people want to get in the way of jobs and to annihilate any possibility of our country moving forward. The opposition often talk about jobs as well. This helps address the problem, I believe. This bill is a sensible move by the government to ban so-called green activists from using our court system to delay or sabotage key resource developments. We are removing section 487 of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. At the moment, section 487 extends the meaning of the term 'person aggrieved' in the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977. Section 487 states:

An individual is taken to be a person aggrieved by the decision, failure or conduct if:

(a) the individual is an Australian citizen or ordinarily resident in Australia or an external Territory …

So basically you have to be an Australian citizen. It goes on:

(b) at any time in the 2 years immediately before the decision, failure or conduct, the individual has engaged in a series of activities in Australia or an external Territory for protection or conservation of, or research into, the environment.

This definition is shockingly broad. It basically means, for instance, that a 20-year-old young man who has been working on a Green Army project in New South Wales could launch judicial proceedings against a coalmine in Queensland. That is what it basically says: if they are an Australian citizen and they have been working within the environment, doing research or helping the environment in some way that is in no way linked to, say, a coalmine or aquaculture farm in Queensland or whatever the project is, they can proceed with judicial proceedings. So no wonder section 487 has been exploited by politically motivated groups to such an extent that they might as well be throwing grenades at the faces of hardworking Australians. They may as well be doing that.

These are groups of the same calibre as Greenpeace, which was recently caught out falsifying a photo—and when I say 'falsifying' I mean lying—of the Great Barrier Reef to try to get people on board with their financial campaign. For those of you that do not know about that, Greenpeace recently had photos of a reef that they were trying to pass off as the Great Barrier Reef on billboards throughout subways in London, saying: 'Support the reef. Save the reef now. Donate today.' Greenpeace raised who knows how many hundreds of thousands out of that campaign, and what was it? The photo was in fact not of our Great Barrier Reef. The photo was in fact of a reef in the Philippines that had been destroyed by a cyclone, and Greenpeace was trying to pass it off as some sort of coral bleaching or global warming on our reef. It is just absolutely disgraceful.

People in these organisations have no qualms about lying to the kind-hearted Australians who donate money to their causes with genuine concern for the environment. It is these people who are wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars—dollars that taxpayers pay to the government through income tax, company tax and so forth—in our court system, delaying vital economic projects. They pretend to stand for the environment, yet they are really haters of humanity. That is what they are. They somehow justify what they are doing by saying it is going to save us all and without them we would all be stuffed. The fact is that they have absolutely no care for people, for jobs or for our future as a country. To quote the Greenpeace Australia report Stopping the Australian coal export boom:

Our strategy is to 'disrupt and delay' key projects and infrastructure while gradually eroding public and political support for the industry …

That is what they have set out to do. Well, there is political support for coalmines in Queensland, on this side of House, because we know that they create jobs. There is political support for uranium mines in Western Australia, on this side of the House, because we know that every week China is opening up new nuclear power plants that are free of carbon emissions and we have a product that they need. We know that these create jobs. So there is support here on this side of the House, whether it is for coalmining, uranium mining, iron ore mining or perhaps for aquaculture.

We had the member for Melbourne get up earlier today in this place, and all he could go on about was how coal is bad and that we need to switch to renewables. Well that is great. I support renewables too. I have solar on my roof at home and we want to see more solar. We have recently negotiated to ensure that the RET is at an acceptable level so that people's power bills do not go up and that we can achieve it and that we can be involved with town planning to make sure it is laid out properly. So whether it is for aquaculture or solar, or a coalmine that supports people in India that do not have electricity—and keep in mind: our coal is much cleaner than coal from other places—there is support on this side. The member for Melbourne got up and all he talked about was renewable energy and that coal is bad. It had nothing to do with the bill. We are talking about projects and about jobs, because the best thing that we can do is to ensure that Australians, when they get up on a Monday morning, have somewhere to go to work. That is the point.

This delaying tactic by Greenpeace, who say:

Our strategy is to 'disrupt and delay' key projects and infrastructure while gradually eroding public and political support for the industry …

is killing jobs. There are people in my electorate who are desperate to work, right now, and I am happy to stand up here and be counted, and to say: 'I am happy to speak on this bill.' This small change will help jobs, not just in my electorate, but right through the country. Yet we have Labor opposing it again. Labor are opposed to creating jobs, just like they are with the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement. They are opposed to jobs again. This is a sensible change. We are a country with a population that continues to grow. We bring in refugees—and these people need jobs as well. I would urge the opposition and the Independents, in this place and the other place, to support this bill. It is a sensible change, it really is.

I want to say, of course, that not every environmental organisation acts in this way. At a local level, I have had a great time working with conservation groups in the Petrie electorate, like the Mango Hill and North Lakes Environment Group and the Redcliffe Environmental Forum, with the wonderful projects that they have done, with our Green Army, on the ground. I will not go into everything they have done; I have spoken on that issue before. They have done a lot of good for the environment in our local community. Environmental protection does not have to be a war on progress. Developers, projects and conservationists can work well together—they can.

In my electorate we are rolling out some massive infrastructure. The federal government has invested $583 million into the Moreton Bay Rail Link. I also think of the koala monitoring program that is happening there right now which is pioneering the chlamydia vaccine; that has only been able to go ahead because of this construction. The rail link also takes into account the abundance of fauna in the area; there are underpasses for animals to get under it. You know what has been killing koalas in the area? It is not the rail link itself, but the wild dogs. On Monday this week we had endangered species day. It is the wild dogs, the wild cats and those illegal immigrant animals, the cane toads, that kill our snakes and other reptiles. That is what causes a lot of the issues.

I love the environment and I have been lucky enough to caravan right around our great country. I have been to the top of Queensland and up to Thursday Island. I have travelled down to Tasmania and spent a couple of months down in Tassie. None of the boys from Tassie are here today, but it is a wonderful state. I have driven across the Nullarbor, towing my caravan, and have seen the whales out there in the bight. It is a beautiful area. I spent a couple of months in Western Australia, going from Perth up to Broome, and have been to Darwin and Kakadu and the islands north. You know what? I love our environment. I love our freshwater ecosystems. I love fish and the little native turtles. I love all that.

Mr Brendan O'Connor interjecting—

Freshwater fish. I love that—I love the environment. I have three sons and I want to make sure our environment is protected so I can go there in the future with them, but I also believe that we can protect our environment and provide jobs for the millions of Australians that want to work and the hundreds of thousands of Australians that are currently out of work. That is why I am behind this bill.

With the current process, a company—whether it is developing an aquaculture farm, a coalmine or whatever—has an environmental impact assessment that has to look in detail at all of the issues. There is then a public consultation process, for at least one month, for people to make public consultations. It then comes back to the department and of course the minister signs it off. Often the minister has to sign off on it, but so does the state minister. I know they are looking at one-stop shops and things, but right now the state government and the federal government have to agree. There are protections, in place right now, for the environment. Only when this bill passes the House can we be certain that this will improve in some way.

The member for Hunter spoke earlier today in this debate. He spoke about the Shenhua coalmine—and so did the member for Wills—saying that somehow farmers would not be allowed to put in a legitimate claim if section 487 was repealed. Well that is just not true. Farmers have never relied on section 487. The repeal of this section will not affect a farmer's ability to appeal decisions made under national environmental law. What it will do is to remove the ability of extreme groups, as I mentioned before, and of individuals who are nowhere near the project, to hold up—and, as Greenpeace stated before, delay and disrupt, and add a whole lot of cost to—these projects. That is what it will do. So that is why I support this bill. I would encourage others in the House to support it as well, because at the end of the day we can protect our environment and we can also provide jobs.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every morning when parliament resumes we go through an important ceremony where we do an acknowledgement of country. In the case of the federal parliament we acknowledge the Ngunnawal and the Ngambri people, who are the traditional owners of the land. In doing that, we acknowledge the importance of custodianship of country. This is an important recognition that this generation of Australians have an important responsibility to ensure that we look after the land that we walk on, that we look after the land that we own. This is a principle that is acknowledged in ancient law, the law of the first peoples of this great continent. It is also a principle that is acknowledged in European law. The ownership of land is not outright; it comes with certain limitations attached to it. We cannot do whatever we like with our land. The statute of this land has recognised from the very, very beginning that landholders have responsibilities to the environment, they have responsibilities to their neighbours and they have responsibilities to the Crown and to the state.

The stuff that we are talking about today is not about whether or not a coalmine should go ahead. It is not about whether or not a bunch of hippies in trees or people that the member for Petrie finds offensive should have a right to appeal in court. The stuff we are talking about today is about how the Commonwealth government appropriately regulates and protects the heritage and the environmental values of this country so that when my children and your children, Deputy Speaker, reach the same age that we have reached they will enjoy the benefits of the flora and fauna of this great nation. That is the stuff that we are talking about.

When you listen to the heated speeches of the member of Petrie and those who came before him, you could lose grasp of that important fact. It is about how we ensure the important environment and heritage values are protected into the future and how we ensure that, when governments stuff it up, when they make the wrong decisions, there are appropriate protections in place. None of us are perfect. We make mistakes from time to time. The environment minister made a mistake in the Adani case. That is quite clear. We are talking about how we ensure that, when governments make mistakes, there are appropriate checks and balances in place to ensure that those mistakes can be reviewed and reversed. That is what we are talking about.

We heard the member for Petrie talk about haters of humanity. I am sure that popular Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones—no relation—would be very surprised tomorrow morning to see that he has been described as being in the catalogue of the haters of humanity. I am sure the National Farmers Federation—more often on your side in the ledger of political disputes than mine, I have to say to the member for Petrie—would be very, very surprised to find themselves listed in the column of the haters of humanity and those you railed and ranted against as you walked us through your whistle-stop tour of your caravanning around Australia.

This bill, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standing) Bill 2015, is so bad that it has prompted a diverse range of people, from the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, the shadow environment spokesperson and the member for Port Adelaide to Alan Jones—not a group that are normally coupled together in the same brackets—and the National Farmers Federation, to join together in common voice. Indeed, there is a community driven campaign out there crowdsourcing to ensure that this terrible legislation never finds its way through both houses. The reason they are doing this is that they have found common cause in opposition to what is madcap legislation. That is what we are talking about here today.

The changes, we have heard, are designed to stop what is described as 'vigilante litigation' from environmental groups. This is the sort of nonsense that we regularly hear from members who have got up to support this legislation. What it really means is that any party—not just dedicated environmental groups but any party—will be forbidden from challenging large developments in court, and not just high-profile mining projects like Adani but any large development. Those representative organisations will be prohibited. This is occurring because the Attorney-General, Senator George Brandis, wants to scrap a section of Australia's environmental laws that allows parties to challenge environment approvals. Under the current laws, anyone 'adversely affected' by a decision or a failure to make a decision has the legal right to challenge it. This includes Australian citizens and residents who have acted 'for the protection or conservation of or research into the environment' at any time in the two years before the decision was made.

I want to make a point which has been lost in the fog of the debate. The appeals that are provided for in this legislation are not merits based appeals; they are judicial appeals. You would understand the difference between a merits based appeal and a judicial appeal, Mr Deputy Speaker. It does not fall to the courts to trawl through the decision of the minister or his delegate, the decision makers, to say, 'Would I have made that decision if I were in the boots of the minister? Would I have made that decision? Do I support this particular development or that particular development?' That is not what the legislation provides, and that is not what judicial appeal provides. All it provides for is the right of an interested person who fits the class of person to go to the Federal Court of Australia and say, 'We believe the law has not been followed. We believe the law of the land has been broken.'

That is exactly what happened in the Adani case. You would think when listening to the debates that you had an unwilling respondent forced to a decision by some feral judge of the Federal Court driven to a position by some equally feral litigant. In fact that is not what happened at all. The orders were consent orders. The orders in the Adani case were consent orders—that is, the respondent themselves acknowledged that the minister had stuffed it up. The minister had not followed the law and had to go back and review the decision and make the decision again.

There is ample opportunity in this situation for the minister to do the right thing: to ensure that he acts upon the advice and considers the advice of the threat to the two endangered species, which prompted the litigants in this matter. You might also infer by listening to some of the heated contributions by members of the coalition that people on a whim lodge a statement of claim or an application to the Federal Court, dragging the poor witless minister or the developer—the applicant—into the court, indifferent to any of the consequences. Deputy Speaker Vasta, you and I both know that is not true because, were that to be the case, then that applicant would be hit with considerable cost orders in the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars.

It is not as if these applications are made on a whim. That is probably why less than one per cent of the applications that have been made have ever gone to court—an absolute minority of any of the applications have ever gone to court under this particular provision of the legislation.

What is clear is that we have a confected debate in the style of this Prime Minister and this government where black has to be black and white has to be white. If there is not an enemy within your view, you had better go out and find one—confect an enemy—to ensure that you can have a fight where there is no fight to be had. For over 15 years this legislation has been operating and operating very well. It was the former Howard government that introduced the legislation and it has been operating very well.

It is not only those of us on the Labor side of the House who have deep concern about what is being proposed in this legislation. Fiona Simpson of the National Farmers' Federation said:

The Adani decision seems to have been caused by either Adani or the department not applying the law properly, but then, suddenly and with no warning or consultation, we get this put forward … we prefer evidence-based policy making.

Those are the words of the National Farmers Federation, and we on the Labor side of the House could not agree more. We find ourselves in common cause with the National Farmers' Federation and the Sydney based broadcaster Alan Jones on this point. This is bad legislation not based on the evidence and it should be resisted. We are deeply concerned about the consequences of legislation such as this.

I come from New South Wales, a state which has an Independent Commission Against Corruption. In its 2012 report, the Independent Commission Against Corruption talked about the importance of third-party appeal rights. It had this to say in that report:

Third party appeal rights have the potential to deter corrupt approaches by minimising the chance that any favouritism sought will succeed. The absence of third party appeals creates an opportunity for corrupt conduct to occur, as an important disincentive for corrupt decision-making is absent from the planning system.

We agree. We think that these are important protections which actually improve the decision-making process, because a minister who knows that his or her decisions will be subject to a judicial review and that, if they get it wrong—if they do not follow the due process—they will be sent back to make that decision again. They will be ordered by a court to go back and make that decision again.

Let's be very, very clear for those on the other side of the House who are railing against the so-called haters of humanity: there is absolutely no proposal before the House to change or challenge the provisions within the legislation which go to the protection of the environment—none whatsoever. There is nothing before the House that says: 'These considerations that the minister must take into account—environmental, heritage or otherwise—should no longer apply.' Nobody is proposing that. All they are doing is proposing to change the rights of members of the public to hold the executive arm of government to account. We on this side of the House think that that is wrong.

I have talked about the experience of the legislation: some 5,500 projects have been referred to the federal environment minister in the 15 years of the operation—

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right: the member for Gorton is surprised about this—5,500 projects have been referred to the federal environment minister since the year 2000 for approval. I can inform you and the member for Gorton that a quarter—10 or 15 per cent would be a substantial number. The actual figure is less than half of one per cent—0.4 per cent; that is right. So where is this emergency?

I know they have precious little legislation to bring before the House. They cannot get it through their cabinet and they cannot get it through the parliament. But, surely, the people of Australia deserve a bit better than this. As the National Farmers' Federation have pointed out: this is not evidence based policy. They implore us as members of this place to reject the legislation. We implore members of the government to reject the legislation, because it is not good policy. It is not good for the government. It is not good for any government and it is certainly not good for the environment. I call on all members of this place to do the right thing and reject this legislation.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I must say it is rare in the House that I get to follow the member for Throsby, and his contribution is spoken just like a lawyer, which I believe is his training. Out in the real world in my electorate, the single biggest issue is unemployment. That is the No. 1 issue for the people that I represent. The median personal income is just $411 a week, and the people in my electorate are doing it tough. I have said it many times before and I will continue to say it until the people on the other side of the House start to listen: governments do not create jobs; businesses do. That is why we need investment in regional areas. If people are employed, it improves their self-esteem. They can care for themselves and their families. They can live a better quality of life.

The Wide Bay-Burnett region's central proximity to the growing markets of Gladstone, South-East Queensland and the Surat Basin presents enormous overflow opportunities for the people of my electorate. Traditionally a farming district with the largest population of any Queensland region outside the South-East Corner, we have the potential for new medium-scale manufacturing to support supply chains in a number of sectors. The Regional Development Australia Wide Bay Burnett has developed a capability document to inform the resource sector and construction companies of the Wide Bay-Burnett's ability to meet key industry requirements in the sourcing, recruiting and mobilising of fly-in fly-out workforces. That is why I find it completely ironic that those on the other side of the House would side with the green groups and allow mining and infrastructure projects in regional Queensland to be strangled by green tape, stifling job creation that is desperately needed.

If a project is stalled, it does not affect just one region; it flows to all of the surrounding areas. If there are no workers, there will be no members of their beloved unions. Most Labor Party MPs and senators have not worked outside on a tough day in a tough environment, and how many of them have actually been tradesmen, farmers or small business owners, the people who are out there building our economy? I would suggest it is very few. If we look at their leader, for example, what does he know about the people he claims to represent? Probably nothing. I think he spent most of his time in an air conditioned office.

Coalition members know what it is like to work in the real world. Labor only serves its own interest and any minority group that will help them score cheap political points, and I find it absolutely extraordinary that Labor is opposing these changes which merely bring the EPBC Act into line with other Commonwealth laws. This government will not stand by and allow jobs, investment and our economy to be threatened by activist litigation.

Courts should not be used to support green groups' political tactics. In the past, people with no connection to a development other than a desire to stop it have been able to use the courts to disrupt and delay key infrastructure even after it has been appropriately considered under the EPBC Act. I would like to focus on that point for a moment. These are people who have no connection with the project. Most have never set foot on the proposed site. They have not even visited the towns nearby. To give you an example of the scale of economic vandalism, I will quote from the Greenpeace Australia report titled Stopping the Australian coal export boom.

Our strategy is to ‘disrupt and delay’ key projects and infrastructure while gradually eroding public and political support for the industry …

…   …   …

Legal challenges can stop projects outright, or can delay them in order to buy time to build a much stronger movement and powerful public campaigns. They can also expose the impacts, increase costs, raise investor uncertainty, and create a powerful platform for public campaigning.

They go on to say they will:

Mount legal challenges to the approval of several key ports, mines and rail lines … that delay, limit or stop all of the major infrastructure projects … that have been identified as a high priority in the strategy …

Many of the mining and infrastructure companies we have in Australia take their social responsibilities very seriously. They donate to schools and community groups, build new roads and community infrastructure and employ local people. For example, the proposed Macmines Austasia China Stone project in the North Galilee Basin has committed to sourcing 60 per cent of the operational workforce from regional Queensland: Townsville, Cairns, Charters Towers and Wide Bay. They undertook a labour market study to identify the labour source locations for the project and, as such, they will recruit some 775 workers—25 per cent of their work force—from the Wide Bay region. That would be a huge boost for my local economy and the region, with almost 800 jobs created, people bringing money into Hinkler communities and spending it at local businesses that employ local people. The cycle of benefits goes around and around.

This legislation will stop green groups from using the courts to delay projects like these. Delays cost jobs in communities that need them most. People do not know whether a project that has gone through all the necessary hoops, sometimes over many years, will continue to be in doubt. Should they stay there or should they look for work elsewhere? Under this government Australia is open for business, and part of that is removing uncertainty for investors. We have halved the time for approvals and cleared Labor's backlog of approvals. We have approved over $1 trillion in projects. It is important to note that Australia continues to have some of the most stringent and effective environmental laws in the world, just as it should. I say as it should because no-one is questioning the fact that there needs to be an appropriate balance between the social, economic, environmental and cultural needs of our communities.

The proposed amendments contained in this legislation do not change environmental standards. Farmers, landowners and any other person whose interests are adversely affected by the decision will continue to have a right to appeal any decision. The EPBC Act standing provisions were always intended to allow the genuine interests of an aggrieved person whose interests are adversely affected to be preserved. This will continue to be the case. Changing the EPBC Act will not prevent those who may be affected by a project from seeking judicial review. It will maintain and protect their rights. This legislation will, however, ensure that environmental activists no longer receive special treatment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

Once projects have met these tough environmental requirements, they should be able to proceed without being subjected to legal sabotage. Environmental groups will still have ample opportunities to put forward evidence and make their cases through our rigorous environmental impact assessment processes. No longer will they be able to delay, limit or stop major projects that this country desperately needs. We are putting an end to the economic vandalism.

To those people who are out there listening to this speech live and to those who might read it after delivery I say: if you get up in the morning and you put on your steel-cap boots and your Hi Vis shirt; if you go to work at a mine as a truck driver, as a diesel fitter, as an electrician or as many of the thousands of other occupations, the changes in this legislation are for you. If you get in your service vehicle first thing in the morning and work on servicing equipment at the local gas plant, the local mine, the local feedlot, the local trawlers, the changes in this bill are for you. If you are one of the thousands of Australians who are up at three in the morning, providing catering services to those men and women who start early and finish late, whether on-site or in transit, making takeaway breakfasts and lunch packs— (Time expired)