Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

With respect, I would ask you to check with your advisers on that point. The whole purpose of having an adverse impact on a matter protected by part 3 is that part 3 only protects those matters from significant impact. Therefore, the threshold is not lowered from the standard test in the act. I would be thrilled to be corrected, but my understanding is there is still no power for the minister to act on this advice, even if the advice says there is going to be terrible impacts from coal seam gas or large coal mining, unless the impacts are on one of those listed matters of national environmental significance, of which water is not one.