State Development Bill 2025
Second reading
resumed from 2 December
Hon Dr Steve Thomas (4:19 pm): Given the comments in the newspaper today, it should come as no surprise to anybody that the opposition will not be supporting the referral motion before the chamber at the moment. That is worthy of a short explanation. No amount of review and consideration of this bill will make it acceptable to the people who are most opposed to it and moving the amendment before the chamber today. We could go round and round for another six months reviewing all these aspects. I understand that there are people out there who do not believe that the government should be empowered to do the things the government thinks it needs to do. These people certainly spend a lot of time attacking the government on the basis that the powers are apparently king-like. I am a believer that government is elected to do a number of things. Being able to stop the government from delivering is actually not the role this Parliament has. Overseeing that role, the rollout, and the things the government does and commenting on it and ultimately giving the people an opportunity to judge the government on that every four years is where I think we actually end up in this particular debate. I do not think that having what would probably end up being a fairly long and lengthy review with obviously a large amount of public consultation—another orchestrated campaign with all of us receiving hundreds or thousands of woke emails and also going to a committee to do the same thing—has any chance of delivering an outcome that is acceptable to the people who are violently opposed to this process or the people in this chamber who will not be voting in favour of the referral motion. The opposition, for its part, would like the government to get on with the job, and we would like to hold it to account if it fails that job. As I said in my contribution to the second reading debate, I think the government has repeatedly failed to deliver a better development process. We are giving it the opportunity to deliver a better one. I think it would be petulant if we denied it the opportunity to at least try to make it better. Delaying that, in my view, is of no benefit to anybody but the people who do not want a rapid development approvals process and a process that might disempower campaigns against development and industry. There are lots of things I could add, but the opposition will not be supporting the delay and the deferral of the bill before the chamber.
