Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In my speech on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Bilateral Agreement Implementation) Bill I want first to put on the record a few of the facts that have been glossed over. Those opposite have made significant efforts to disappear the facts from this debate. I would also like to talk about what the bill is seeking to do in a practical way, and then I will make some closing remarks about the Abbott government's environmental record so far—a record that sheets home why this bill is such a dangerous piece of legislation.

I want to commence with a very short story about a delightful four-year-old I met one Sunday morning at the EV Church at Terrigal, in the electorate of Robertson on the Central Coast, which is where I live. She came up to speak to me after the opening of the church—I think she had just finished having a great time on the bouncing castle. She made her mother bring her over to me because she wanted her mother to show me a picture on her phone that she was very proud of. It is a picture that hangs in this little girl's home—on the great gallery of Australia, on the fridge, held there with a fridge magnet. I will describe the picture. There is a small, banana-type boat. There are two characters sitting in the boat by the name of B1 and B2. Behind them, Tony Abbott is seated and behind Tony Abbott is the young girl herself, watching the action. The boat is exploding with litter. Her comment to me was, 'This is the boat on the Great Barrier Reef. I want to go there and see it one day. I've got B1 and B2 in the boat with me 'cause I'm watching them to make sure that Mr Abbott doesn't get rid of them. And all that rubbish in the boat—that is what he wants to throw over the side! I am watching Mr Abbott and I can tell you that I am not very happy with the choices he is making.' This was from a very articulate and forward-looking four-year-old. A four-year-old was able to explain her concern about the environment in those sorts of terms. She is spot-on in her assessment of what Tony Abbott wants to do in terms of the Great Barrier Reef: Abbot Point and the massive expansion he seeks to approve there is part of that threat. She identified the threats to other things that create this wonderful community we have in Australia, including the ABC.

That sort of perspective on what this government is doing is absolutely lucid. What we see in the commentary from those opposite is the exact opposite of lucidity; it is obfuscation at every turn: 'Let's just do the old trick—try and hide the facts from people.' It is as if the EPBC Act is going to cause a failure of Australia's development capacity. That is the argument they are putting, that this is green and red tape that should simply be removed: 'Get out of the way of great development and it will create jobs.' But we must not forget that the reality is, with 250,000 development applications put forward in Australia each year, the number to which this piece of legislation applied was 400. It was 400 out of 250,000—and it applied to those 400 because they were of national significance.

I am proud to be here representing the great state of New South Wales but the work of this parliament means we need to look to the nation. We have a responsibility to the nation—to all the people of every state—and we need to look after our environment critically, as part of a legacy to give to all Australian. We see in this legislation a hint of what we have seen in many other pieces of legislation that have come before the chamber from those opposite: that is, a delight in removing from themselves the responsibility for the work of government at a federal level, palming it off to the states. We have seen it in the arguments they have put forward in the areas of health and education and again we hear them say: 'Hands up! We don't need to be involved. Let's just remove ourselves from this place and hand it over to the states. That'll be fine. It's not a federal government responsibility.' We see every day that they have asked the Australian people to elect them to do less. That is what this legislation is about: enabling them to do less. There will be less scrutiny, less care for the country and less looking after sites of national significance.

If I move to this bill, we can see that what it does is pave the way for Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt to simply abrogate their responsibilities to others, namely the states. Under the sorts of changes they are proposing we will have Campbell Newman approving dredging and dumping on the Great Barrier Reef. I know that would cause incredible concern to the people of Queensland. I had the pleasure—prior to starting my family—of travelling around the entire country with my husband. The three days we spent at the Ningaloo marine reserve in Western Australia, just parked in our campervan at Turquoise Bay, was one of the periods of my and my husband's life that we recall with great joy. Anybody who has travelled around Australia—all those grey nomads, some of whom might be listening right now, know what a treasure a place like the Ningaloo marine reserve is. Intuitively, like that four-year-old I referred to at the beginning of my speech, Australians know that Colin Barnett is not the kind of person to be trusted with such a national treasure. He is not that sort of person; his record speaks volumes. Down in Tasmania, there are iconic World Heritage listed forests—and Will Hodgman will be in charge. This is not a good combination and Australians know it.

I stand here proudly as a Labor senator, part of a Labor Party with a fine record of looking after the environment. Labor were the first to have an environment minister. The legacy we leave in the state of New South Wales is a massive expansion of forests for Australians—of national parks and the amenity they provide. This is Labor's legacy. We understand about the interaction between the economy, people and our natural environment. We seek a balanced, integrated model of that. What those opposite seek to do is always to upset that balance in favour of speed and dollars over people.

Development is critical. Indeed, my family—all my brothers and my father—have spent most of their lives involved in civil construction and the rolling out of new suburbs and subdivisions to provide sites for people to live. The processes of our governments can be slow in some cases. But to pretend in this place that a one-stop shop is going to eliminate those sorts of sticking points that happen as developments are pushed through is an absolute misrepresentation of reality. Make no mistake: there will be no one-stop shop; that is just another slogan—another slogan that has been proven to reveal the lies rather than the truth of what those opposite say. The one-stop planning shop will not come into being. Be very clear: people who propose developments of all kinds will have to put them through their local council and their state just as they currently do. Those two bodies will have to have a conversation. But this legislation is taking away the capacity for the federal government to have oversight of that process where a matter of national significance is involved. It is an abrogation of responsibility, in my view.

What is even worse is that beyond shifting the responsibility to another level of government—namely the state government—this legislation is also seeking to provide the ability for those same state governments to give to local government the capacity to undertake critical assessment and approval processes. It is like it is a train of thought: 'We'll abrogate ourselves of responsibility; we'll hand it on to the state but we'll build into it a capacity for them to abrogate their responsibility and hand it to local government.' There are fine local government counsellors and people working in those great parts of our community who do wonderful work. But is the decision making and the correct, detailed and careful investigation into the impact of development on sites of national significance really the work of your local council? In my area, provision of roads is the main focus of local councils, and they are resource poor. They became even more resource poor after this government came in and took away all their school improvement and financial assistance grants. Delays to local road construction have now increased because of the choices that this government has made. More and more pressure is being shifted from this government, which wants to do less and less and heap more and more on those who have the least capacity to pay. To do the kind of careful assessment required for looking into the future across decades in the interests of the Australian people is not the work of local government. Yet that is what this legislation is seeking to achieve.

Also of great concern to me as a Labor senator is the whole renunciation by the government of their sense of responsibility to quality and consistency in the processes between the states. It is ironic that in the bill itself they talk about inconsistency when what they are creating is a structure which will create incredible inconsistency and incredible inequality between the states. This bill mentions for the first time local governments having the power to approve developments across the country, taking away that sense of common transparent reality for all regions around the country. I am very concerned that the bill, along with the bilateral agreements being developed, will mean that World Heritage sites, nuclear activities, uranium mining and species protected under international treaties are going to now be put in the hands of state governments—or at least, in the first instance, in the hands of state governments, but then potentially in the hands of your local government. World Heritage listed sites will now potentially be in the hands of local governments. This is not a step forward for Australians. This is not an advancement of our nation. There is no 'advance Australia fair' in what they are doing here. It is taking away the probity that necessarily needs to be applied to the quality of a proposal for development and it will have implications for generations.

I would like to speak briefly about what it could mean to the state of New South Wales. In 2013, the former Minister for the Environment, Robyn Parker—who had an unpleasant engagement in a public place with the Orica incident in Newcastle—made the claim with regard to a major logging development that 'logging protects koalas'. Let me say it again because I could not believe it when I heard it: 'Logging protects koalas.' That was the argument of the Minister for the Environment in New South Wales. I am sure, if I asked a four-year-old, they would be able to come up with a more lucid and accurate statement than that. That is the level that this legislation is proposing to drop the decision making to, with the threat that it could fall to local government, which is even less resourced.

In New South Wales, under the O'Farrell government, we have seen nine members step aside from the Liberal Party, two of whom gave up their seats immediately and who have now decided to allow by-elections to be held in their electorates around Newcastle. Those votes will be taken and the new members will come in. We have seen nine members remove themselves from the Liberal Party because of ICAC investigations. Amongst those investigations, there have been significant comments made in the public place about the role of developers and developers' dollars in getting a hearing with the government of the day—the Liberal government. It is an incontrovertible fact that the influence of property developers of the unscrupulous kind is now on display for all the people of New South Wales to see. What they had as their protection when people did the wrong thing was federal oversight. Labor embraced that responsibility at a national level to make sure that there was some oversight.

The reality is that this government does not want to see. It wants to turn its head away. It is happy to support people who think that logging helps koalas. It is happy to see dumping on our reef. It is happy to see care for the Ningaloo marine reserve go to Colin Barnett. It is happy to see the potential destruction of things of national importance because it wants to do less. That is its mantra. The coalition are not up to the responsibility of government and to taking seriously their role as a federal body of oversight to act in the national interest. We should be scared about what this legislation can deliver because of what the government wants to do. Its qualifications in this area are already well and truly on the record.

First of all, it is pretty clear that they do not have any credibility when it comes to the environment because they do not even have a minister for science to speak to the issues of the environment. In fact, they have spent most of the last six or seven years decrying environmental fact. We have a Prime Minister who said that climate change is 'crap'. Now that man, with that eloquent speech, is, sadly, the leader of this country. It is his legislation that we are dealing with right here. The record of the government is astounding. Apart from the backward moves on climate change risking outstanding World Heritage icons, they have gone into government rushing through environmental approvals. They have disallowed the endangered community listing of the Murray River from the Darling River to the sea and, against all reason and sneakily, they have gone about having the world's largest marine reserve system reproclaimed to undo the care and management plans that gave them effect.

As I said earlier, this government has begun, right now, processing the handing over of environmental approval to the states—

Proceedings suspended from 18:30 to 19:32

To continue my remarks on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Bilateral Agreement Implementation) Bill 2014: this is a bill, by the way, which actually does not explain what it is about to do, which is to rip away the protection of the Australian environment.

As I said earlier, this government already has an appalling record. It has begun to hand over control of the Great Barrier Reef to Campbell Newman and to Colin Barnett the control of the Ningaloo Reef, and so many other great national treasures. It has all but abandoned efforts to have Queensland's Cape York added to the World Heritage listing, it has approved every request for development in the Barrier Reef catchment that has landed on the minister's desk, despite UNESCO threatening to list the reef as in danger. This government continues to act not only as economic vandals against Australia's interests but environmental vandals, and to have a fake veil that this is in the economic interests of Australia. It is absolutely not in the economic interests of Australia.

This side of the chamber—and I stand here representing the Labor Party—stands proudly on the record of Bob Hawke and those who preceded us in establishing the first environment ministry; establishing forever and for us the Antarctic reserve, preventing unwarranted development of a pristine environment. That is Labor's strong record. We do not just talk about it; we deliver it in government. And this government has come in and is determined to pull it apart.

This government has disenfranchised communities across Australia by ripping Commonwealth funding from the Environmental Defender's Offices. They have taken away the money from the people who can stand up and defend the environment. They have ripped out the capacity of our country to be able to look after those things which are in our care at this time. They have taken us backwards on every front in the environment. They have repealed carbon pricing and ignored climate change. They want to axe the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, the Climate Change Authority, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the renewable energy target. There is nothing of environmental significance and benefit to this country that this government is not prepared to rip away.

I agree with the four-year-old I mentioned at the beginning of my comments. I, and many Australians, are not very happy with the choices Mr Abbott is making in the national interest, because they are in the national disinterest. (Time expired)