Page 3018 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 23 September 2014
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bill also stipulates that the government must keep a public offsets register that outlines the details of each offset in place in the ACT.
As the Greens have fundamental problems with the overall concept of biodiversity offsets, I am pleased that they can be used only as a last resort, only after the hierarchy of avoidance and mitigation has first been applied, and they cannot be used to justify poor development proposals. The offsets policy and guidelines make this very clear, and the offsets calculator helps proponents to calculate at an early stage whether their proposal and offset are even viable options.
I have further comments to make about the specifics of the offsets policy but, mindful of time, I simply seek to make some observations about where this bill is up to. I think that many members and certainly community organisations feel that this process is being rushed. The commonwealth, in its hasty desire to offload responsibility for matters of national environmental significance, has put a very strict time line in place. For the ACT to avoid those punishing financial penalties that might come, we have to meet that time line in order to fulfil those requirements and avoid the heavy financial burden that would come.
Again, on that basis I have agreed with my government colleagues to support this process moving through in the timely manner that it is. However, it has left key community organisations unsettled. Even in the last few days our parliamentary colleagues have not really had the time to contemplate amendments—I understood that the Liberal Party were considering some. We have not been able to do that because of this commonwealth timetable.
We cannot underestimate the importance of these issues because these are matters of national environmental significance that go to both this country’s and the planet’s long-term health. We have seen in this case the draft offsets go out for public consultation without the offsets calculator being available. The calculator is the part that allows people to see how well the scheme works. It has since been made available but it is not in a software format that allows people to easily use or understand it. I think these are unfortunate shortcomings that undermine community confidence. There has been considerable work done on this but, because people cannot see it, they do have concerns.
We have also got the Nature Conservation Bill, and there are significant areas there that I think are attached to this legislation where we need to look at how that legislation fills in some of the gaps and works in partnership with this legislation. We will be debating that legislation in the coming weeks and I will certainly be having further comment at that time.
In conclusion, I simply want to reinforce the Greens’ deep reservation with the commonwealth’s desire to abdicate responsibility and to vacate the field when it comes to decision-making on matters of national environmental significance. Let us not lose sight of the fact that the EPBC Act itself limits commonwealth involvement to some very specific areas. The matters of national environmental significance are spelt out in that act. In my view they do not cover the areas in which the commonwealth should be involved. They do not allow commonwealth responsibility
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