Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

I suppose the Greens are not interested in that. They are more interested in constructed nonsense. What they are not interested in is helping to better focus on protecting threatened species, ecological communities and heritage places. That is what this bill is going to do, and that is why it is so urgent. That is why it is so important. We want this through in the spring sittings, and the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, is being thoroughly responsible and diligent in seeing the passage of this legislation through. If he did not, those opposite would be the first to complain. They would be the first to say that he was being tardy and was not attending to his ministerial duties. What the minister is doing here is ensuring that a very important piece of legislation is passed, with due scrutiny by a Senate committee over five weeks, and we have had that in many instances before—in fact, it was less time in Labor’s day, when they were in government.

It is important to remember that these amendments will provide the necessary regulatory framework to provide streamlined and certain decision making under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, and that is very important when you consider that it will provide that with more focused environmental protection and an enhanced enforcement regime. That spells good news all round for the Australian community. We are proposing a five-week period for this bill to be scrutinised, and we say that that should be—as it is for normal legislation, important legislation—more than ample time for the committee to address this bill and to address it sufficiently.

I simply dismiss as totally hypocritical Senator Carr’s mock outrage. When you look at the previous Labor government, we used to get just a Friday committee to look at most legislation. We did not get five weeks, as this is allowing. This is an important bill. Quite rightly, the minister for the environment is diligently pursuing this. He is pursuing it appropriately. It needs to be looked at and it needs to be passed by this parliament for the good interests of this country.

Question put:

That the amendment (Senator Bartlett’s) be agreed to.