Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There's no doubt that the Great Barrier Reef is an iconic symbol of Australia. It's an iconic symbol around the world of the extraordinary beauty of nature, and all of us in Australia, whether we've been to the Great Barrier Reef or not, are immensely proud that it is our iconic symbol, but we have to do more to protect it. I take the point by the speaker before me: there is a lot of work being done to protect the Great Barrier Reef. There's no doubt about it. And we have scientists who are leading in reef management around the world here in Australia. But we shouldn't just be looking at resilience and recovery from bleaching events for our Great Barrier Reef. We also need to be doing the work to stop bleaching events happening in the future. Our Great Barrier Reef has suffered its third major bleaching event in five years, and we can't afford another blow. It is an iconic environmental wonder of the world, but it is also a powerhouse of job creation and economic development. If we lose the Great Barrier Reef—just as if we were to lose a lot of our great environmental wonders in Australia—then we lose something that can't be replaced. In the short term, we lose jobs and we lose the opportunity to build our economy.

The government needs to do more for its management of the reef, and one of the things that it needs to do is take a proper response to climate change and the mitigation of climate change. Yes, there is a lot to do up at the reef, and, like all of my colleagues on this side of the chamber—and I think on the other side of the chamber—I encourage Australians to travel to the Great Barrier Reef when they can and to support that local industry. But, unfortunately, it's not going to be enough simply to support the tourism industry. We have to do more.

Just this morning the Prime Minister apparently said that one of the ways to recovery is a modernisation of how Australia approaches the economy. If it were just that phrase and not what he said after, I couldn't agree more. But, as I understand it, what the Prime Minister said today is that his idea of a modern approach for how Australia should approach the economy is deregulation. This is almost a once-in-a-lifetime chance, as we come out of the public health crisis and deal with the recession that we are now in, to actually ask ourselves what sort of country we want to be, what sort of community we want to be and what sort of economy we want to have in Australia. This is almost a once-in-a-lifetime chance, particularly for those of us who are in this chamber. Instead of looking at snapping back to 2019, instead of resorting to old ideologies about the evils of regulations, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to look forward to the future and, to use a phrase that the government likes to use in response to the bushfires—although I've seen little to no evidence of it actually coming true—to build a better future, to build back better. This is an opportunity, for example, to go back to quite an old economic approach and look at something like triple bottom line accounting, to actually say to ourselves everything that a government does should have an economic, an environment and climate and a social benefit, to evaluate all policies and all actions based on whether they build an economy and an environmental and climate and social benefit.

Such an approach isn't just a way of getting through the short term; it's a way of building for the long term. All one has to do is look at the CSIRO Australian national outlook 2019 report. What's the best future that we can look at for the economy, for productivity and for our export markets? A decarbonised future. How can we scale up existing low-carbon activities? That's what this government should be looking at. This government should be spending on renewable energy and energy efficiency. A McKinsey research article entitled 'How a post-pandemic stimulus can both create jobs and help the climate' estimates that for every $10 million spent on renewable technology there will be 75 jobs created; on energy efficiency, 77 jobs; and on fossil fuels, 27 jobs—economically beneficial, environmentally beneficial and good for social capital. That's an agenda for a future economy—not simply talking about deregulation.

So this bill is welcome and supported, because it is appropriate to take short-term measures to support small businesses like tourism on the reef, but there will be no healthy reef for tourists to visit in the medium to long term without environmental laws that provide a framework for ecologically sustainable development and build an ecosystem which is healthy and resilient for all Australians. Do you know who's saying things like this? It is scientists and experts. It is the people the Morrison government turned to, rightly, to get through the health crisis of this pandemic: scientists and experts relying on data. That's what we need in order to build a future where our environment is protected and we deal with climate change. An article in today's Sydney Morning Herald refers to comments by Alana Grech:

Assistant director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies Alana Grech said climate change is the 'leading cause of decline' for the Great Barrier Reef and the legislation should be changed to mitigate its impacts.

The same article also states:

A CSIRO study, Quantifying extinction risk, estimated that climate change would increase the rate of losses about fivefold—

in terms of our threatened species and ecosystems—

with 10 birds and seven mammals becoming extinct in the next 20 years 'without purposeful intervention'.

Our environmental laws are being reviewed. They currently fail to protect wildlife and ecosystems from climate change. This is an opportunity for this government, which I hope it would take, to look at drafting laws that do just that. Instead of referring to environmental laws as 'green tape' and saying that they get in the way of progress, we should see well-drafted and proper environmental protection laws as a blueprint for a better future.

There are a number of problems with the EPBC Act and a number of opportunities. There are opportunities to better address climate change and the way we do land clearing. There are opportunities to protect the long-term future of the Great Barrier Reef. The Prime Minister likes to talk about deregulation and getting rid of regulations because apparently they are blockers to projects going ahead. But, if we actually look at the delays in project approvals under the Morrison government, they've exploded. Cuts to the environment department have caused these delays in projects and jobs. Since their election in 2013, delays in project environmental approvals have absolutely blown out. Late project decisions increased by 40 per cent on the Liberal government's watch, up from about 15 per cent when the Labor government was in power—that's an increase from 15 per cent to 40 per cent—and the total number of decisions went backwards. At the same time, since 2013, environment department funding has been cut by almost 40 per cent. So devastating cuts and mismanagement in the environment department have delayed jobs and investment and have brought about major project delays. It is just disingenuous for the government to point to delays in the approval of projects and say that that's a reason to get rid of environmental laws. They actually have to look at the cause of the delays and cuts, and at the government that hasn't pushed the approvals through.

We've seen the devastating bushfires. We know that climate change is the leading cause of damage to our Great Barrier Reef. We know that too many endangered species are now facing not just endangerment but extinction. We know that in the past 20 years the number of threatened species in marine ecosystems has grown by more than one-third, and mammal losses continue at the same rate of between one and two species a decade. Since 1788, 100 species have become extinct in Australia. We can't be proud of that history. We have a moment in time now, perhaps like no other that we've had before, to actually do something about it.

The review of the EPBC Act should not be used as a fig leaf for a conservative agenda of reducing protections. It's not just politicians saying it; we're saying it because the experts have said it: 240 conservation scientists have published an open letter telling told Scott Morrison that Australia is amid an extinction crisis and calling on the government to fix our laws in order to protect and restore nature across Australia. I stand here today to add my voice to the voices of those scientists and to speak as the voice of the Dunkley constituents who have emailed me over the last few months, worried about the deregulation agenda as it applies to environmental laws. They have asked me to stand up for the role of science—to put science at the heart of environmental protection and climate change policies, to protect critical habitats for threatened species, to have stricter controls on the wildlife trade, and to have more funding for the protection and recovery of our environment. I stand here as their voice and add my voice. Decisions should be made on science, not politics. There should be federal leadership, and I urge the government to take this opportunity to show it.

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