October 08, 2012 13:49
Barnaby Joyce
The Australian Conservation Foundation has today highlighted that the any Basin Plan may be open to serious legal challenge for giving too much weight to social and economic concerns.
There are two problems with this.
Firstly, on the basis of this analysis, conservation does not include the socioeconomic future of the 2.1 million people who live in the basin. If they need to be sacrificed they will be under this approach.
Secondly, if the legal opinion is correct, then Minister Burke’s assurances that the Water Act can deliver a triple-bottom line are empty.
Two diametrically opposed positions, only one can be right. So I call on Mr Burke to come out and confirm that the Water Act is safe from legal challenge.
We know that the government has commissioned more than 1000 pages of legal advice on the Water Act and it refuses to release the legal advice.
A Senate inquiry last year concluded that there are serious issues with the Water Act yet the government has done nothing to respond to these conclusions.
What we have at the moment is total uncertainty and it’s hard to get people to invest in the Basin in such an uncertain environment.
No comments:
Post a Comment