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

I rise to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standards and Assurance) Bill 2021 as the voice of my community of Dunkley, as I do on all manner of legislation and issues that come before this House. I can tell this House that I have received hundreds and hundreds of emails from members of my community about the environment and specifically about this government's attempts to reform the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Not a single one of those hundreds and hundreds of emails has asked me to support this legislation—not a single one.

This morning I received an email from Christine, from my electorate. I'm going to read it to the chamber because it personifies those hundreds and hundreds of emails that I have received from members of my community across Dunkley. It reads:

Dear relevant senators and Ms Murphy, my federal MP

I am extremely concerned that the Morrison government is continuing to push through amendments to the EPBC Act to hand over national decision-making responsibilities to states and territories with no commitment to the national standards Professor Samuel has recommended. Professor Samuel's recommendations are balanced, following a year of consultation with scientists, environment and business groups and the community. I am alarmed that the government is proposing a weaker set of standards.

Christine goes on to say:

The streamlining bill will put Australia's wildlife and habitats in further peril. I think devolving environmental approvals to the states and territories is taking a reckless gamble with our environment. If the government persists with devolving approvals for matters of national environmental significance, it must implement the full recommendations of the independent review, including Professor Samuel's suite of national environmental standards, an independent statutory environment assurance commissioner with teeth, and an independent office of compliance and enforcement.

Christine ends with this sentiment:

Now is not the time to weaken environmental regulations and pass laws that will have detrimental impacts on nature, but instead to ensure that our environment is put at the centre of our thinking and laws, strengthened and enforced.

As I said, Christine's email reflects all of the input that I've had from my community about this legislation and about the Morrison government's reckless attempt to pretend that it's doing something to protect the environment whilst actually weakening protection laws.

In this country we know that 10 species were gazetted as extinct under the EPBC Act in March of this year—10 species! If that doesn't cause every single member of this chamber to have concern then I don't know what would. Our iconic koala is under significant threat. As I will talk about later in this speech, the Great Barrier Reef, one of the Seven Wonders of the World—something that every single person in Australia, no matter where they live, identifies as a glorious environmental jewel in the crown for Australia—is endangered and has been for way too long.

As the shadow minister said in her contribution to this debate, Australia is a world leader in mammal extinctions—not something you'd ever want to be a world leader in, is it? We're in a biodiversity crisis. Australians have seen the impact of those terrible fatal bushfires last year. Australians know what is happening to this country as a result of climate change. Day after day, week after week, Australians have to hear about iconic Australian indigenous animals and plants becoming extinct. Something that we've all been so proud of, and taught to be so proud of, is that all of the animals that we have in Australia are ours and they're nowhere else in the world. Yet under this government more and more of them are becoming extinct. What we are presented with, which we're supposed to believe will protect them, is legislation which isn't even a handkerchief of coverage on this government's failure to act and to act properly.

It's extraordinary how many times the Morrison government commissions independent reviews and reports and then refuses to implement their recommendations—over and over again. What we also see is this pretend attempt to say that they're implementing recommendations and then when we look at the detail they just aren't. It's all trickery. It's not good enough. Australians know it's not good enough. How can it possibly be that we have people in our country at the moment who are concerned that their grandchildren are never going to be able to see a live koala in the bush? It was just recently in my community in Langwarrin, which is an outer suburban community, that we had koalas in the gum trees. Imagine if that can never happen again.

This government should be working day and night on recovery plans but they really don't seem to be. They're more concerned about personal leadership, about spin, about how they might pretend to Australians that they're leading when they're not. We can't have much more of this in this country if we want to have a future where the state of decline of our wonderful, unique environment is halted. That's what we all want but it's not what this legislation will do.

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