Farm organisations angry at Abbott plan to restrict legal action against resource projects
Farm groups furious at Coalition move to restrict environmental challenges, Guardian, Lenore Taylor, 19 Aug 15 Farm organisations horrified they will be swept up in changes to environmental laws that aim to stop green groups taking legal action against resource projects Angry farm organisations have learned they will be caught by changes to federal environmental laws aimed at stopping “environmental saboteurs” using the courts to delay big projects, but agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce says some individual farmers may not.
After the surprise announcement of major changes to federal environmental law on Tuesday, the Abbott government spent much of Wednesday making conflicting statements about which part of the laws it intended to abolish.
But by the day’s end it confirmed it would try to repeal all of section 487 of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – contrary to an answer given by the responsible minister, attorney general George Brandis, just hours earlier, and contrary to confidential speaking notes mailed to all MPs that morning.
The clarification horrified farm groups because many farm organisations will also be denied standing to challenge federal environmental approvals in the court and this could stymie several planned challenges to federal approval of the controversial $1.2bnShenhua Watermark coalmine on the fertile Liverpool Plains in NSW.
Any person wanting to mount a challenge would have to prove they had been directly and personally adversely affected……
The government insists the changes to the law will stop only what it calls environmental “vigilantists” and “vandals” and not farm groups.
According to Joyce the Shenhua mine is a “far different proposition” from the Adani mine because it is located on a fertile farming plain.
According to lawyers expert in the operations of the EPBC Act, the amendments proposed by the government would leave both environmental and farm groups bogged in lengthy and expensive legal proceedings to decide whether or not they had the “standing” to take legal action, and will mean many of them wouldn’t.
The proposed amendment, to be introduced on Thursday, appears likely to be defeated in the Senate. Labor and the Greens have said they would not support it. Independent Queensland senator Glenn Lazarus and Palmer United party senator Dio Wang are also unlikely to vote for it and independent Nick Xenophon has said he is “very wary”…….. http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/aug/19/farm-groups-fear-coalition-move-to-restrict-environment-challenges
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