Interview with Megan Hughes, ABC Queensland Country Hour

MEGAN HUGHES, HOST: Good afternoon. Thank you for your company on the Country Hour. First up, questions remain over Labor's new environment laws. They were passed in the last week of Federal Parliament, thanks to a deal struck with the Greens. Under the new legislation there'll be more federal oversight for forestry and land clearing, and no fast tracking for coal and gas projects. There'll be a new National Environmental Protection Agency, higher fines for environmental breaches, tighter controls on land clearing, and $300 million for a Forestry Growth Fund. In Queensland in particular, the agriculture industry is chasing clarification on the changes to land clearing.

Well, Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt joins me now to talk details. Good afternoon, Minister.

MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: G’day, Megan, good to be with you.

MEGAN HUGHES: So, some parts of the laws are going to take effect immediately and other parts will take longer to implement. Can you detail which is which?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, that's right, Megan. These are major reforms to our national environmental law that was passed by the Parliament last week. You may be aware that they go back some time - five years ago, the former Morrison Government commissioned a review from Professor Graeme Samuel, the former ACCC Chair. He reviewed these laws and found that they were fundamentally broken, that they're failing the environment, they're failing the business community, they're failing the community generally, and we needed reform.

So, we have delivered what we consider to be a balanced package of reforms that delivers very real gains for the environment and also for business. The change that has commenced already, and I guess was probably of great interest to your listeners, are the changes that we have brought in regarding high risk land clearing, and happy to sort of talk through what some of those changes are. Other changes will take a bit longer to commence. For example, the new National EPA, something we've never had before, will commence on 1 July next year. And really, all of these changes will commence at different points over the next 12 months.

MEGAN HUGHES: So, high risk land clearing, how is it defined?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, so one of the issues we've had with the current national environmental law is that for 25 years it has provided an exemption from needing to get an EPBC or a federal environmental approval for some forms of land clearing which we know have damaging impacts on our natural environment. If someone wants to build a mine or a wind farm or a solar farm or undertake, you know, some housing development by clearing trees, if they're going to have a significant impact on a range of nationally protected environmental matters then they need to get a federal environmental approval. But up until now, if people wanted to clear land that would have that kind of significant impact on the environment, there hasn't been a need to get that federal approval.

So, we have made that change by removing those exemptions that applied for those forms of land clearing, to bring them into line with every other industry that operates in Queensland or Australia. And specifically, the two changes we've made go to clearing of regrowth and clearing that happens in the Great Barrier Reef catchment.

And just to quickly step you through what those changes are, now that these laws have commenced what it means is that if people want to clear regrowth that is 15 years or more old, and if that clearing will have a significant impact on, for example, threatened species, then they would need to seek federal environmental approval to do that in the same way that other industries do.

And the other change to do with the Great Barrier Reef catchment is that if people want to clear vegetation that's within 50 metres of rivers or creeks or wetlands in the Great Barrier Reef catchment then, similarly, they would need to get a federal environmental approval to do so if that clearing would have a significant environmental impact.

So as I say, the guiding principle here is to have the same rules, the same standards for every industry, whether you're involved in agriculture, mining, tourism, housing development, renewables. And we think that that is the fair way to go and, of course, it will deliver big environmental gains as well.

MEGAN HUGHES: So if I'm a landholder and I, you know, need to clear some regrowth, how do I determine if that will have a national environmental significance?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, it's a fair question and we need to be able to explain this in really practical terms for people. As of today, the Federal Department of Climate Change, Environment, Energy and Water website has been updated to provide guidance material for farmers, to help them determine whether they would be captured by these changes or not.

But putting it really simply, and maybe to go through each of those examples, for regrowth, the first thing people can do is, again, to go to our departmental website and search for what is known as the protected matters search tool on that website. And that gives people a bit of an indication of the likely environmentally protected matters that might be in their particular region. And if there are protected matters in their region then there's a reasonable chance that any extensive clearing of regrowth, 15 years or more, might have that impact and might need an approval.

And, you know, we want to take a common sense approach here. Of course, it's not about saying that if you remove one individual tree, then you might need a federal environmental approval. But the larger the area being cleared, then the more likely that it would have a significant impact on threatened species and other environmental matters, and the more likely that it would need an environmental approval.

We've also set up a hotline for people to call, and the number for that is 1800-920-528. And that'll be staffed between 9:00 to 5:00, Monday to Friday, for people to make some inquiries and see whether they would be captured or not. And the end of the process really is that if people do think it's likely that their clearing may have that significant impact on the environment then, just like miners need to or wind farm developers need to, they will need to write to the Federal Environment Department seeking approval to undertake that clearing.

MEGAN HUGHES: I imagine that this is going to result in a huge uptick in work for your department. Is it staffed well enough to be able to handle that, I guess, volume of applications to clear land?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah. I've been speaking about this with the department over the last few days since the laws were passed to ensure that we are ready to undertake that work, and they assure me that we are. I've also spoken to them about making sure that we do have enough people on hand to answer those phone calls which will inevitably come into the hotline. I recognise that this is a big change for people to grapple with, and we will certainly be making sure that we can have people available to explain it.

But I think, you know, it's probably also worth me just explaining why we've done this. And really, it comes down to delivering stronger environmental protections that we desperately need. We know the clearing of native vegetation is a really big driver of habitat loss, and that has big impacts on threatened species which are at risk of being driven to extinction. We know, for example, that this sort of clearing has contributed to the listing of about 60 per cent of the threatened species in Australia. So, that's really particularly to do with the regrowth aspect, to limit and regulate the kind of clearing that we're seeing to ensure that it's not having those serious impacts on the environment.

And when it comes to the Reef, we know from the science that sediment runoff is having a major impact on water quality around the Reef. There are 77,000 jobs just in Queensland that depend upon a healthy Reef, particularly in the tourism sector. And it's in all Queenslanders' interest to make sure that the Reef is protected from the kind of clearing that might generate that sort of sediment runoff, and continue to damage the Reef.

MEGAN HUGHES: Where does that evidence and that research come from?

MURRAY WATT: There is an enormous amount of science to back this up, and that's all available on our department website as well.

MEGAN HUGHES: Did it come from the review that was done a few years ago?

MURRAY WATT: Some of it has. Some of it has come through that, but there's any amount of academic research that is available that demonstrates those kind of figures that I'm talking about. Some of it did come through that review, but some of it has been prepared for other purposes as well.

MEGAN HUGHES: Now, as part of the laws that you mentioned that will take longer to implement, like this new EPA. Looking at the website, it said it would require consultation. What will that consultation with industry look like?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, we have undertaken a huge amount of consultation in the development of these reforms. As you may be aware, I've only been in the role of Environment Minister for about six months but, even in that time, I've personally undertaken over 120 different meetings and forums with all sorts of stakeholders, including the National Farmers' Federation. And, of course, the consultation on these reforms goes back to five years ago when that review was first tabled.

But we want to continue developing and implementing these reforms in consultation with industry. Tomorrow, in fact, I will be meeting with a number of agriculture sector representatives to discuss in more detail the land clearing changes. We obviously have been in discussion with them before that, but there'll be a further meeting tomorrow about that.

But as we develop and start creating the National Environment Protection Agency, as we develop National Environmental Standards and all of the other aspects of these reforms, we'll be consulting very closely with industry, with environment groups and the broader community, just as we have over the last few years.

MEGAN HUGHES: One of the things that you have said is that you're wanting producers to comply with the same standards that every other industry needs to meet. Do you think it's fair though to put, say, a family farm on the same level as a multinational mining company?

MURRAY WATT: Well, I think what's fair is to make sure that we have environment laws that protect the environment, and that we should minimise the loopholes that existed under the current law that allowed some sectors to - and I'm not pretending that every farmer does the wrong thing by far, quite the opposite, you would be aware that I used to be the Agriculture Minister and I've got a lot of respect for the way the vast majority of producers manage their land - but we do need to make sure at a time when we are seeing more species threatened with extinction and we are seeing the Great Barrier Reef under enormous environmental pressure, we've got to make sure that we've got laws that protect those things because that's in everyone's interest to make that happen.

So, sure, big multinationals have to obey these laws as well, but so do smaller resources sector companies as well - it's not only for the big boys. So, I think the principle that we're trying to apply is that everyone's got an interest in managing the environment and protecting threatened species, the Great Barrier Reef, whether you're a farmer, a wind farm developer, or a miner, or anyone else

MEGAN HUGHES: Thank you so much for your time today, Minister.

MURRAY WATT: Thanks, Megan.