Greens slam climate ‘race to the bottom’

April 20th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

It is “two-faced” of Tony Abbott to call himself a conservationist at the same time as he unveils a plan to create one-stop shops for environmental approvals, Greens leader Christine Milne says.

On Friday, Mr Abbott announced a coalition government would offer state and territory governments the chance to administer a single environmental approvals process.

The states should aim to have up to 70 per cent of planning compliant residential and light industrial development applications exempted from the assessment process, Mr Abbott said.

However, Senator Milne says existing environmental regulation has served Australia well and should be maintained.

“Tony Abbott coming out saying he is a conservationist whilst going out of his way to get rid of every environmental law that has protected the icons, the great things about this country, is nothing less than being two-faced,” Senator Milne told reporters in Sydney on Friday.

She dismissed the opposition leader’s claims that his plans to give states and local councils more powers to cut “green tape”, and create a single assessment and lodgment process, were necessary to boost the economy.

“Without environment, there is no economy,” she said.

“Go and ask anyone who lived through the drought.”

The Greens say the proposed reforms are no improvement on the Labor government’s plans to streamline the environmental approval process.

“What we’ve seen today is an absolute race to the bottom,” Queensland Senator Larissa Waters said.

“We’ve got the two old parties competing with each other as to who can shed the most responsibility for the environment the quickest.”

“It will lead to reduced standards.

“This is a sell-off of the environment from this one-stop shop,” Senator Waters said.

She said the growth of the coal seam gas industry in Queensland, “which has been sanctioned and approved by the state government”, strengthened the case for greater federal involvement in environmental regulation.