Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with pleasure that I rise to support the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Bilateral Agreement Implementation) Bill 2014, and support the minister, the Hon. Greg Hunt, with his second reading speech in the other place.

There are three criteria that all of us would recognise as being essential for any project before it would come to fruition. The first is broad community support, the second is environmental sustainability and the third is economic sustainability. Any project that does not get the tick-off on each of those three is not going to survive; it is bound to fail. And, as previous speakers have said quite rightly, community support is essential. But the point that I would make as a proud Australian and as a proud Western Australian is: which is the community that is most likely to be interested in and affected by any decisions that are taken with regard to the environment? Of course, it is the local community. It is the community of people who enjoy the asset, who enjoy that environment and who would be likely to be adversely impacted by it.

We have heard in the discussion today the various mechanisms that are in place in this country for members of the community to be able to represent their concerns right through the various agencies, like ICAC in New South Wales agencies right through to the courts. And we have seen it over time in this place. But the concern that I have is just this basic assumption that a group of bureaucrats here in Canberra for some reason or other are going to be able to determine decisions on those areas of Australia about which they know little, if anything and, indeed, about those which should rightly be allocated to the local communities who will be affected by them. This is my main reason for supporting the bilateral agreement implementation bill that is before us.

Mr Acting Deputy President Edwards, you well know, as a proud member of our party, that it was a senator from your state, the Hon. Robert Hill, then Minister for the Environment in 1999, who actually introduced the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Bill. It was regarded at that time, and probably still is, as being the foremost legislation in the world in this area. But it was always predicted and always contemplated that provisions to allow for the creation of a one-stop shop be placed into the EPBC Act since the time it was introduced.

I think that is interesting for people who are listening to this debate today; there is nothing new, there is nothing unusual and there is nothing different about the introduction of the one-stop shop. What it says is that each of the states and territories in our federation, who have responsibility for land and related management—those, indeed, who send us to this place as the states' house—should have that responsibility. And that is what Minister Hunt is doing by introducing this legislation. I would suggest that those who are opposed to this particular amendment in the EPBC Act either have no faith or confidence in their own state instrumentalities or the local communities who actually represent them.