16 April 2024
Topics: Federal Environment Protection Agency, Tanya Plibersek’s disastrous environmental law changes
E&OE
Senator Duniam:
Two years after the last Federal election, we were promised laws that would make it better for the environment, better for business and laws that would be in the Parliament by the end of 2023. The Labor Government have failed on all counts and today, embarrassingly, all Tanya Plibersek has done has introduced a new bureaucracy at great cost to the Australian taxpayer. Far from providing more certainty for business, greater clarity for those who want to protect our environment, she has introduced a bureaucracy that will likely cost jobs, slow down economic activity, and sounds the death knell for prosperous states like WA and Queensland along with many projects here in Tasmania. We were promised clarity as a response to Labor’s overhaul to the national environmental approval laws. We have not been provided those. On top of two years of secretive and selective consultations with a select few entities from across the country behind closed doors where people weren’t able to take their telephones, iPads, laptops, that had to handwrite everything, we have no idea what Labor are planning to do. So while all we have today is a new bureaucracy, we certainly don’t have the laws we were promised, which as I said before, means greater uncertainty and greater lack of certainty around investor confidence in this country.
Journalist:
And you said it would have impacts on many parts of Australia. How will it impact Tasmania specifically?
Senator Duniam:
Well, we already know that in Tasmania for an extended period of time, the MMG tailings dam at Rosebury, an essential project that must go ahead for that mine to continue to provide employment for 400 Tasmanian families, hangs in the balance and has been on the chopping block for some time. Tanya Plibersek has failed to make a decision under the environmental approval laws. Under this new regime with this new bureaucracy, we don’t know how much longer this will take. One thing we do know is it certainly won’t guarantee jobs, but it won’t be able to provide greater environmental protections. Secondly, the salmon industry in this state, of course, is under threat because of reviews under existing environmental laws. Under this regime, things would be no better. There would be no certainty, there would be no clarity and in fact, I suspect that this industry would be under greater threat with her unelected bureaucracy making the decisions that they are, or will be, under this new arrangement.
Journalist:
Can you expand a little bit more on the salmon industry in terms of red tape, how will that be impacted?
Senator Duniam:
Well, Tanya Plibersek announced today the establishment of an Environmental Protection Authority which is not elected, not accountable to the Australian people. We don’t know what powers it will have apart from being able to find companies up to $780 million and jail individuals for up to seven years if they breach the law. What is that going to do when it comes to compliance for industries like the salmon industry? It’s going to really make things difficult for them to get on and what they do in a world leading way, it means that it’s going to be harder to invest here, the boardrooms of these companies are making decisions about where they invest their money and if it becomes too hard to do business here, to comply with the green tape these businesses are being wrapped up in, they’re going to take their business elsewhere. The jobs will go and the investment in things like programs to save the Maugean Skate won’t receive private sector funding. So it is a lose-lose, we lose in the economic sense and we also lose in the environmental sense. At the end of the day today, the announcement of no new laws to provide clarity despite being promised that we’d have them, complete secrecy around the consultation process, spells the disastrous outcome for our economic fortunes as a country into the future.