[Greens-Media] MEDIA RELEASE: Greens stand against Tony Abbott's national environment law destruction

[Vandeleur, Monique (Sen L. Waters)]

Senator Larissa Waters
Senator for Queensland

MEDIA RELEASE

Greens stand against Tony Abbott's national environment law destruction

Tony Abbott's 'one-stop-shop' for environmental approvals, launched today, will effectively abolish national environment protection, say the Australian Greens.

"Tony Abbott wants to wind back environment protection by 30 years by handing national environment law over to his state cronies to control," Senator Larissa Waters, Australian Greens environment spokesperson, said.

"If state governments had the final say in the past, there would be oil rigs on the Great Barrier Reef, cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park and the Franklin would be dammed.

"We just need to look at the way state premiers are currently treating our national parks, with threats of logging, shooting and grazing, to see that they can't be trusted with treasures like the Great Barrier Reef or the Kimberley and our endangered species.

"A Senate inquiry into Tony Abbott's plan to hand over national environment protection found that there was no compelling evidence to show how it would improve business efficiency.

"The Senate inquiry reported that most of the public submissions it received expressed grave concern about the risks to the environment.

"The Labor-dominated Senate inquiry concluded that it was not appropriate for the state and territories to have decision making powers for approvals that impacted matters of national environmental significance.

"Despite this, Labor refused to support my bill to strengthen national environment law so that Tony Abbott could not hand these critical national responsibilities over to the states.

"Failing to Abbott-proof national environment law has made Labor complicit to this plan, which will destroy the legacy created when Bob Hawke stepped in to save the Franklin River.

"The Greens are the only party Australians can trust on the environment and we will be a strong voice in Parliament to stop Tony Abbott's plan to destroy national environment protection," Senator Waters said.

Contact: Monique Vandeleur 0419 626 725