QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS

Senator DUNIAM (Tasmania—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (15:16): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today In doing so, can I say: what a terrible way for me to end my Senate career—to hear these terrible answers about how out of touch this government is with real people, small businesses and farmers.

Apparently this government doesn't know what a farmer is, by the way. We sort of had to stumble through question time there, trying to figure out how this government felt. Senator DUNIAM: Oh, well, the grandfather of Senator Wong, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, is a farmer, so we'll take that.

But, of course, when the question was asked, 'Where does food come from?' they all said Uber Eats. What really did astound me out of that set of questions and the answers given was, of course, the response to the question about McPhillamys goldmine. In the last term, I was the shadow environment minister, and, on this issue, the finding of the government—the former environment minister Ms Plibersek—was to rule against the capacity for this billion-dollar goldmine to proceed—a mine, I might say, that met every state and federal planning and environment approval and had gone through millions of dollars of assessments and years of work.

It had done the work with the traditional owner group, the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council, only to be stopped by Minister Plibersek, the minister who also gave it environmental approval. The same minister, after all of those approvals had been given, then took in a bit of evidence from a group who didn't actually represent the traditional owners of that part of the country around Orange, Bathurst and Blayney, which the McPhillamys goldmine was located in.

After all of that work, the minister said, 'No, it cannot proceed,' because of evidence we have never seen—evidence that was provided in secret by a group of people who, again did not represent the traditional owners, evidence that has never been tendered to the proponents of the mine to analyse, and evidence that was perhaps given orally. It's not even required under the act that governs this that it be given in written form.

So how is this piece of legislation, which is, in fact, as old as me, still fit for purpose? This government has an opportunity to reform it, and I believe a test that the new legislation should pass is: would this mine survive under the new laws? If the answer is yes then pass the laws.

If the answer is no then go back to the drawing board. It's pretty simple. The fact is that we have people who want to invest in this country and this government's mantra is: 'We want a future made in Australia.

We want to create more jobs. We want to get the economy ticking over.' Well, how do you do that when you have a government that allows someone, whether they're a domestic investor or a foreign investor who has come to this country, to sink money into multiple approval processes over a long period of time, only to say, at the very last hurdle: 'You know what? We're not going to let you go through with this.

We're not going to tell you why. Good luck. Hope you do well'?

The court, of course, found, just yesterday—and it was a great gift for me, on the day of my valedictory speech to this Senate, which I'm now going past and now talking again, to have the court recognise this—that this government made a terrible decision by denying procedural fairness to the proponents by hiding the evidence they relied on from the proponents of the mine.

So I hope this government takes this opportunity to reflect on how terrible this decision was and how, if they are really interested in a future made in Australia, they'll get these laws right. In saying that, it's been a real delight to sit through my last question time as a senator for Tasmania, and I thank my colleagues again for their good humour and forbearance with me as I fill in that five-minute slot.