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

The short answer to your question is that there is nothing in these laws that prevents hazard reduction burns. However, if a hazard reduction burn would have a significant impact on a nationally protected environmental matter, such as a threatened species—any activity that is likely to have a significant impact on a nationally protected matter requires EPBC assessment and approval. A hazard reduction burn may fall into that category. It doesn't mean that can't occur, but it means that, if someone wanted to do that hazard burn and it was going to have that impact, they would need to go through an EPBC assessment and approval.

There are a couple of ways to shortcut that process. Having been in that portfolio, I know that these things get done every year but often at fairly short notice. It's dependent on what the weather is like at any particular point in time. The first step in getting those sorts of burns approved would obviously be to try and avoid those significant impacts on particular species. But, if that couldn't be done, then there is an existing provision in the act that goes to national interest exemptions from the act.

That's a little bit different from what we were talking about with Senator Pocock. He was asking about the national interest approval of an individual project, which, as I was saying, still needs to go through EPBC assessment, consultation et cetera. A national interest exemption is slightly different in that it provides an entire exemption from the act. It doesn't need to go through the assessment and approval process. I, in fact, granted one of them not that long ago in relation to remediation works following a natural disaster, which urgently needed to be done. If that had had to go through the usual EPBC process, that could have taken a very long time. This work needed to be done quickly. So I was able to grant an exemption from the act to allow that work to occur.

So even under the existing law it's possible to seek an exemption from the act—I guess it would most likely be a state government—if they could demonstrate that that activity were in the national interest. So that's one pathway where it could be approved more quickly than going through the usual processes.

You would have heard me talk about some of the new fast-tracking processes or streamlined assessment processes. At least one of those pathways could be used for this kind of activity as well. In fact, we are already in discussion with the Victorian government around some of these issues through a process which is known as a strategic assessment which, effectively, is a way of trying to in-build processes to allow for quicker approvals of these types of activities. So it's still paying attention to the standards that are needed, the need to avoid impacts, but trying to allow these kinds of decisions to happen more quickly while still not destroying the environment.