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

Minister, I guess, for people listening, that would probably raise concerns. It's a bit like saying, 'If you're a person or a business, you can't cut down a tree, but, if we're the government, we can cut down the tree, because we're the government.' I would have expected that there would be similar rules. Regardless of who is actually destroying nature, nature is being destroyed. But I accept your answer there, and we'll try to look at the detail.

Just on the EPA, we look at compliance with existing EPBC laws, and we know that everything rests on these laws actually being upheld. We've seen a number of breaches of our federal environmental laws, and I really welcome your work on increasing penalties, setting up an EPA and ensuring that there is more compliance. But I would be interested if you could maybe tell the Senate about resourcing and give us a commitment that the EPA will be sufficiently resourced to ensure that it can undertake that function.