Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standards and Assurance) Bill 2021. There are lots of things we love to talk about in Australia, where we say our country is punching above its weight, and we celebrate every time we appear on the podium internationally. But there's one place where we're coming first that shames us as a country: Australia is the world leader in mammal extinction. More species of mammals die here than anywhere else. We're also a place that has the first recorded and attributed climate change extinction—species going extinct because of the growing climate crisis. We aren't just in a climate emergency; we are in a climate and extinction emergency. We are at a point in history where, if we don't act, we are going to see the fellow species that we inhabit this wonderful planet with wiped out at a rate that we have never ever seen before. They are already being wiped out, but worse is still to come. In Australia there's something this parliament can do about it. There's something this parliament can do to ensure that the other species we share this land called Australia with are protected.

Most people would think that if you have a piece of legislation called 'the environment protection act' it does what it says on the tin—that it protects the environment. But it doesn't at the moment, and we know that not just because wilderness and environment and conservation campaigners have been pointing it out, and pleading with us for ages to do something about the fact that we are wiping out species at a rate of knots; the government's own commissioned inquiry told us that. The government commissioned an independent inquiry, and it found that there are holes in the legislation big enough for whole species to fall through. It is the reason we see development approval after development approval end up with species going extinct—with, as I said, mammals going extinct the fastest; Australia has become the world leader there.

The independent review told us we need legislation that puts in place strong minimum standards, and it backed in many respects what the Greens have been saying for some time—that we do not have a strong set of minimum standards. Not only that; we also devolve too many decisions to state governments. A big problem with that is that state governments are the ones most often captured by the big developers. The developers take those developer donations, and come in and say, 'We want to bulldoze this area of land, we want to mine this area and we want to blow up that area, and, by the way, here's a bit of money to be donated to your political party.' It's the state governments that very often go rogue and have to be reined in, because they're in the pockets of the big corporations and the developers that do things that see species go extinct. That's what came out in the review. It made it clear that too often not only do we not have any standards but we're letting the wrong people make the decisions about protecting our environment. The review also told us we don't have a tough cop on the beat. We have these weak standards. We devolved so many of the decisions to the people who are actually the problem in the first place and who are captured by the big corporations and the billionaires, but then we don't have a tough cop on the beat to come in to check that those weak standards are being complied with.

The government's own independent report came back to it and said: 'Fix those things. Put in place strong standards and have a tough cop on the beat.' What does the government do? The government says: 'Well, we'll cherry-pick some of that. We won't take the strong standards bit. We won't take the "tough cop on the beat" bit. What we might do is pass legislation that gives even more power to those state governments that should have less power to begin with.' The first piece of legislation that the government came to us with was to say, 'Let's contract out even more of it to the state governments.' It's no surprise that this parliament has said no to that so far. It has said: 'We can't support that. You cannot support going against the spirit of your own report.' The minister said at the time: 'Well, no, it's okay. We promise to fix it up. We promise that there'll be strong national standards in place. Just take our word for it.' Of course, there's no reason to trust this government when it comes to stopping the extinction crisis and stopping the climate and environment emergency that we're facing.

Then the government says: 'We'll tell you what we'll do. We'll introduce a bill about standards.' A few of us thought, 'Well, you've got an independent report that says "lift the standards to protect Australia's environment", so maybe this bill is going to do that.' But this bill that we've been debating today does nothing of the sort. All it says is, 'We're going to take the existing inadequate standards that are in the legislation, that've been roundly criticised by everyone, including the government's own hand-picked reviewer, and we're just going to put it in a new bill and legislate those, but still leave pretty much everything up to the discretion of the minister.' This is an attempt at a fig leaf that, on any reading, completely fails to do what the independent review asked and what environment groups, wilderness and conservation campaigners and scientists have been saying for ages is needed.

You only have to listen to what the Academy of Science said when this bill was being inquired into by the Senate to understand just how terrible this is. The expert evidence from the Academy of Science about the so-called standards in this bill was this: 'The standards that are now proposed as interim standards are not scientifically credible.' It is staggering that, after this massive review process and all of these submissions, the government bowls up a bill called the standards and assurances bill to protect the environment, and the scientists tell us it is not scientifically credible. It's not surprising, because this government, like the state governments, takes donations from the billionaires and big corporations that are wrecking our environment. So it's no wonder they come up with a bill that scientists say is not scientifically credible.

The Humane Society International and the Environmental Defenders Office, having reviewed the latest version of the National Environment Standards tabled by the department on 30 April of this year, told the committee that: 'The latest versions of the standards have further weakened possible environmental outcomes.' So the expert evidence is, again, not only that the standards have no scientific credibility but that the standards might even potentially weaken environmental outcomes. The National Environmental Science Program's Threatened Species Recovery Hub summed up the overarching problem very succinctly when they appeared before the Senate committee. Talking about these standards, this piece of legislation, they said:

I see no basis to be enthusiastic about where this would leave us. I think it's going to leave us, at best, in the same position we're in, which is a parlous state. We are in the middle of an extinction crisis.

When our environment, our koalas, our precious wildlife is under such threat, what does the government do? It bowls up a piece of legislation that the scientists say has no scientific credibility and that the analysts say will not halt the extinction crisis. At best, they tell us, it's going the leave us where we are now, and, at worst, it will take us backwards. Still the government refuses to implement that other recommendation of the inquiry and have a tough cop on the beat, because then they'd know standards might actually have to be enforced.

We have an appalling situation in this country where it's possible for a big corporation or a developer, while they are awaiting an approval from the environment minister for their project to go ahead, to make a donation to that environment minister's political party. Because we have this terrible situation in this country where billionaires and big corporations make these donations to the big political parties, the big political parties then put in ministers who have weak pieces of legislation. The government can then be making decisions about projects at the very same time as money is being paid to their political parties, through the back door, in the form of political donations. That is what is contributing to us being the world leader in mammal extinction. That is why we are in an extinction crisis. What we need is legislation that introduces the tough environmental standards that the scientists have been calling for, that ensures that we have got a tough cop on the beat and that doesn't let the rogue state governments who are so easily captured by the developers and big corporations that are wrecking our environment make the decisions about whether to approve projects or not.

This is a bad bill. The government needs to go back and read its own independent report more closely—not just pick particular recommendations but understand the holes that were being pointed out in the legislation—and come back to this parliament with legislation that introduces the best possible environmental standards to stop our species going extinct. But that's not this piece of legislation. This piece of legislation, as it is, will do nothing to halt the extinction crisis that we are in and may well, in fact, accelerate it.

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