Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

) ( ): I have a further question to the minister. Senator Conroy put great store in relying upon the information that would be provided to the states as part of the assessment process for this new trigger. If it is reasonable to rely upon the assessment process that is undertaken at the state level and the information given to governments at the state level as part of this new assessment trigger then why on earth and how on earth is it unreasonable and necessary in a totally prescriptive way to legislate out any possibility that a government could indeed undertake a bilateral approval? Further to that, I note the emphasis the minister gave to the fact that the reason for singling out this one section of the EPBC Act in terms of disallowing the use of bilateral approvals is that this is a new matter, a new area of consideration and that, in the minister's words, 'in the first instance' it is appropriate that such approvals be undertaken at the federal level.

There is nothing, of course, that mandates the government of the day to actually use the bilateral approvals. In fact, in the history of their existence since 1999, as I understand it—and I am sure the officials will correct me if I am wrong—they have been used only once by a government in relation to a heritage matter regarding the Sydney Opera House. So they are hardly excessively used. It would be completely within the domain of the government to not use the powers that are there. They have effectively lain dormant since the EPBC Act was first passed. They could well continue to lie dormant. They lay dormant whilst all of the initial matters of national environmental significance, which were once new matters in terms of the passage of this bill, were established in the processes and guidelines.

So, Minister, your response, which I am grateful for, is, however, unsatisfactory in that there is no rationale as to why the government needs to legislate out the future capacity of itself or future governments to enter into these types of bilateral agreements. What is the government’s justification for doing this, in a legislative sense—which is of course permanent until this parliament chooses to change it at some future stage? Why would this one new matter of national environmental significance, which applies only to two particular industries, require a legislative change for a bilateral approvals process to be entered into at a state level? For virtually all of the others, with I think the exception of the nuclear option—the nuclear trigger, which sounds just as bad—the government of the day could wake up tomorrow, as indeed the Prime Minister did last year, and decide to negotiate a bilateral approval. Why was it acceptable that, for all those others, a government could make an executive decision to enter into such approvals, whereas for this one in particular you seek to bind all future governments and require legislative change to be able to undertake such activity?