David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

That's all I need. I have real concerns with the Albanese government proposing a 3½ week Senate inquiry to look at seven different bills and almost 1,500 pages of legislation on the biggest environmental law changes in a generation. It doesn't do this important issue the justice that it deserves.

Like many Australians, I am a first-generation migrant and have fallen in love with this incredible place, this continent we call home, and the incredible natural beauty. We are doing a pretty shocking job of looking after it. We're the world leaders in mammal extinctions. We all know that. We all know that the status quo is not going to turn things around. Even if you don't necessarily care about numbats, potoroos, Tassie devils, spotted-tailed quolls or whatever it might be, as senators, I think we should care about something in this bill which I think is a huge red flag. Minister Burke, when introducing it in the other place, said:

This package of bills remains faithful to our commitment to follow the spirit of the Samuel review …

One of Graeme Samuel's biggest issues was the powers that the environment minister had. He said that they should be scaled right back, and yet the Labor government is handing the executive even more powers. They're handing the environment minister even more powers. That is directly opposed to what the Samuel review said. And, like they're doing with FOI and robodebt, where robodebt said, 'Don't do this to FOI,' the government is doing that to FOI and trying to use robodebt as justification—the exact same thing is happening with the Graeme Samuel review. We cannot continue to give the executive more and more power. You add, on top of that, this national interest exemption where projects can essentially just get the green light, even if they're in a no-go zone, even if they will potentially cause the extinction of a species. On top of that, they may not even be subject to offsetting or the pay-to-destroy model, because they're in the national interest. This all needs some very serious scrutiny.

If we are going to turn this extinction crisis around, which I believe the vast majority of Australians want us to do, this bill deserves scrutiny. It deserves strengthening. It deserves consultation. We've seen a number of groups come out and say they were not consulted on the 1,400 or so pages in this. I thank Senator Hanson-Young for putting forward this extension, and I thank the coalition—despite disagreeing with some of the direction that you're taking on this—for giving the Senate extra time to look at it.