Page 3015 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 23 September 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
that we needed to have oversight so that those things that were beyond a matter of local opinion or local interests could be protected.
Since this time, substantial gains have been made across the country to protect many other areas of national environmental significance. However, there are still many environmental battles underway and ahead of us, such as protecting precious places like the Great Barrier Reef from the effects of dredging for coal ports, protecting our state forests from native forest logging, or providing protection from clearing for coalmining or the impacts of coal seam gas projects, be they in relation to land use for agriculture or the impacts on water across areas like the Murray-Darling Basin.
However, sadly, there is a national agenda at work here, to implement a one-stop shop for national environmental issues.
As I said earlier, this idea was dreamt up by the previous federal Labor government, to streamline assessments and approvals of national environmental matters. By the time we were in the election period leading up to the last federal election, the ALP had fortunately backtracked on their proposal, recognising the importance of federal intervention for national environmental matters. However, by that stage, the Abbott government, being led on environment policy by Greg Hunt, picked up where the Labor government had left off and continued to roll out this policy around the country—with the support, of course, of people like Campbell Newman and people like those in the New South Wales and Western Australian state governments who are hell-bent on ensuring that mining interests can continue with their business unencumbered and uninterrupted, building coal ports near the Great Barrier Reef, and matters like that, and doing it as quickly as possible, with minimal consideration of the national or international consequences.
Hand in hand with abdicating responsibility, the federal government is in the process of cost-shifting environmental responsibilities and essentially turning our national environmental approvals process into a very expensive fee-for-service type arrangement. Cost recovery was introduced by the commonwealth on 1 July this year, creating exorbitant financial penalties for the ACT as a regular proponent for each referral unless we introduce a bilateral approvals agreement with the federal government. Therefore, the ACT Greens do feel that we need to support this agreement and supporting legislation today—with the proviso, as I have mentioned, that we will implement a model that retains a key role for the federal government in approvals.
This abdication of responsibility is being accompanied by the Abbott government’s slashing of federal public service positions and undermining of the very capability of our federal environment department.
On the specifics of our ACT agreements, and given the importance of a national perspective on environmental matters, the ACT Greens moved to ensure that the commonwealth maintains an ongoing approvals role for the federal government in environment protection matters, through including it as an item in the parliamentary agreement that we signed with the Labor Party in 2012. We believe this legislation before us today ensures that the government will deliver on this item.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video