Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I have seen the reports in the press today about the pulp mill proposal. I made a statement last night because the reporting has been incredibly inaccurate. Because we have a very strong, internationally recognised environment law in this country of which we should all be proud, the Department of the Environment and Heritage receives about 300 referrals a year. The pulp mill one is one of 300, so we deal with these probably more than once a day. I was told by my department, when I touched down on returning from St Kitts yesterday afternoon, that this was an entirely routine referral, that it would most likely be dealt with on the documentation, as most of them are, that it would not require an environmental impact assessment statement, and that it would normally not even reach my desk. So it seems to me that people are beating this up.

In relation to the Bald Hills proposal, Labor seeks to misrepresent a report about this species, the orange-bellied parrot. There are only 50 breeding pairs left in the world. In fact, it is compared by the Victorian government on their own website to being as endangered as the panda or the Siberian tiger. The Victorian government has either stopped or relocated around a dozen projects as a consequence of that. That is the same Victorian government that stopped a wind farm proposal only 200 kilometres from Bald Hills because of threats to wedge-tailed eagles only nine months ago. We know that the Labor Party firstly have very poor credentials on the environment, and that their environmental policy has not changed in about a decade. They simply do not care about Australian native species, either at the federal level or the Victorian level. The Labor Party really needs to work a little bit harder on environmental policy.

Yes, we have a strong environmental law, but, in relation to this proposal for a pulp mill in Penola, my department advises me—and I correctly put that into the press overnight—that this is an entirely routine matter and one of about 300 we would receive every year. We obviously make sure that Australian wildlife are cared for and that approvals are given in a way that protects Australian wildlife. But we also balance that against the incredibly important role of the Australian government to create strong economic growth and to get fantastic, world-class environmental outcomes. Those outstanding environmental outcomes come from a government that not only manages the economy well but also delivers the best environmental outcomes this nation has ever seen, and from a government that spends more money on the environment and also enforces the environmental law in a way that previous governments could possibly only dream of.