Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

There has obviously been a lot of public interest in the provision in the bill that has become known as the national interest approval power. What this involves is rare situations where, in the national interest, the minister of the day decides that it is in the national interest to approve a project despite it not meeting the usual national environmental standards. That is a dramatic thing to do; I recognise that. That's why it is limited to national interest circumstances and we have said that it should be rarely used.

I would say that any decision to approve such a project in the national interest would only occur after a full assessment of the project under the EPBC Act and following the usual public consultation requirements that are undertaken during an assessment, and proponents would be required to reduce the impacts of their project. It's not a complete carte blanche of: 'Just go and do whatever you want.' It involves assessment, consultation, 'reduce your impacts' and 'avoid your impacts', but it preserves a power for an elected government and an elected minister to make that rare decision to approve a project even if it doesn't meet the national environmental standards.

The examples that were provided in the legislation related particularly to Defence and national security projects. I haven't got a particular project in mind, but you could imagine that there may be a time in the future, in a wartime situation, where a particular naval base or other Defence Force facility may need to be built urgently in a particular location that may have some environmental impacts and would not ordinarily receive an approval, because of those levels of impact and because it didn't meet the standards. But it may be in that type of situation that the minister of the day decides, notwithstanding that there will be significant environmental impacts and after whatever avoidance or mitigation of those impacts is undertaken, that it may still be in the national interest to approve that project going ahead if, for example, it was required for the conduct of operations in a wartime environment.

One of the other, if you like, safeguards or transparency measures associated with this power is that the minister is required to provide a statement of reasons or an explanation of the basis of their decision. However, as you pointed out, there are circumstances—which, again, are linked back to the national interest—where the minister may not be required to provide such a statement of explanation. To keep going with that analogy that I was providing you, it may be that, in a wartime environment, it's not a very good idea for a minister to put out in public, for all people and all countries to see, the full details relating to that project. They would be the sorts of circumstances that I can think of—perish the thought that we ever get to that—where a minister might not only decide it is in the national interest to approve that sort of project but also decide it's not in the national interest to publish their reasons in full and information about the kinds of environmental impacts that the project might have.