The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Streamlining Environmental Approvals) Bill 2020 amends the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, known as the EPBC Act, which is the primary piece of Commonwealth environmental legislation. The EPBC Act contains a statutory requirement to review the operation of the act every 10 years. The second of those 10-yearly reviews is presently underway. The government appointed Professor Graeme Samuel AC, one of Australia's most experienced regulators, to lead that review.

Today, in one of the opportunities that we get to speak in this parliament about our constituents, I wanted to speak about some very important constituents, and those are the people who've been working on the front lines throughout the COVID crisis this year. 

I regret to say that Australia is in the middle of a jobs crisis and an environmental crisis, and the Morrison government is failing on both counts. Never has that been made more starkly clear than in the most recent Auditor-General's office report, Referrals, assessment and approvals of controlled actions under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. This is perhaps the most damning Auditor-General report that anyone in this place has seen for some time.

The Migration Amendment (Prohibiting Items in Immigration Detention Facilities) Bill 2020 is a bill that, if passed in its current form, would allow the government to prohibit items such as mobile phones in detention centres. But there's a particular place of detention that I wanted to mention, and that's the one in my electorate, at the Kangaroo Point motel. That motel houses a number of people at the moment and has done now for many, many months. The government decided to establish what they call an 'alternative place of detention' at Kangaroo Point—but it is what most people would think of as a makeshift detention facility in a motel—some time ago. Regrettably, they didn't consult with me before establishing that facility, but nonetheless it's been established in my electorate. There have been a number of people in that APOD, as they call it, for a long time now.

Last week, LNP senator from Queensland Amanda Stoker said that the Queensland Premier was 'the knee on the throat of businesses of Queensland, stopping them from breathing'.

Ms BUTLER (Griffith) (10:17): As at 3 June 2020, data shows that the fires and the initial impacts of the global pandemic have accelerated longstanding economic challenges under the Liberals. It's a litany of bad news, and it shows how out of touch the Prime Minister is to think that somehow our economy is just going to snap back to the way things were before or that he can just turn off the tap without damaging the economy further.

When people think of the arts sector they often think of celebrities. But, of course, 92,000 Queenslanders are directly or indirectly employed in the creative workforce. Data released last week showed that the arts and recreation services have experienced some of the worst job losses during COVID-19. Live Performance Australia estimates the COVID-19 impacts on Queensland's live performance industry over a three-month-ban period would result in the loss of $79 million in ticket sales.

This government's never found a public fund that it doesn't want to rort. We've just seen even more evidence of that this week, when we learned exactly what happened with the Environment Restoration Fund. More than two-thirds of the initiatives under that fund went to Liberal or Liberal-target seats. Of course, most of the rest of them went to National or as-yet-unallocated issues. In fact, if you had a look, you'd find only three out of the entire 55 initiatives were exclusively in non-LNP or LNP-target seats.