Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Our government is determined to protect more of what's precious, to repair more of what's damaged, and to manage nature better for our kids and grandkids.

And today, as part of that mission, I am very proud to be introducing this legislation into the parliament.

This bill will establish a new nature repair market in Australia—the first of its kind in the world.

It will make it easier for businesses, philanthropists and other Australians to invest in activities that repair and protect nature.

And it will reward landholders for the work they do in nurturing our natural environment.

It will encourage good environmental work, like replanting a stretch of koala habitat—I know, Mr Deputy Speaker Freelander, what a fan you are of the koalas—or repairing a damaged riverbank, or removing invasive species from a fragile ecosystem.

That's what this legislation is about: connecting people who want to invest in nature repair, with the people who can do that work on the ground.

This is critical work.

It's work we need to promote as a nation, in every state and territory, in every corner of our vast continent.

As the State of the Environment report made clear, Australia's environment is in a bad way, and it's getting worse.

We live in the extinction capital of the world—losing more mammals to extinction than any other continent.

These terrible extinctions have many causes, but chief amongst them is habitat destruction.

When we knock down trees, or pollute a waterway, or experience a natural disaster, and when we don't step in to repair nature or to replace the habitats we've lost, that's how we get into the position we're in now, where koalas are endangered across most of the East Coast, where our beautiful beaches are eroding before our eyes, where our soil is losing its fertility, becoming more vulnerable to drought, or simply blowing away with the wind, and where our fish, right now, are literally choking to death in our rivers, because they don't have enough oxygen to survive underwater.

When you look at these trends, when you look at the state of our environment, it is clear that we have to do more than just protect nature from future harm.

We need to start restoring the places that we've damaged in the past. We need to start healing the land and the water.

And that's what this legislation is designed to do—not to replace government effort, but to reinforce it; to add private money to the stream of investment our government is already making in nature protection and restoration.

In December last year, I released our government's Nature Positive Plan. At the heart of the changes that I am proposing is a shift in ambition.

For almost 250 years, since Europeans first colonised Australia, we've been running down our natural environment.

And when we've tried to do something about it, when we've attempted environmental policies, we have slowed the pace of this decline.

But the point of our plan, the point of being nature positive, is to reverse that trend, to stop the march of environmental destruction—and to go further: to begin the process of repairing nature, to start restoring damaged ecosystems and to genuinely leave Australia in a better state than it's in now.

If we're serious about this goal, a large part of our work has to be on private land because more than 60 per cent of our country's landmass is in private hands.

Of that land, a majority is owned by farmers and First Nations peoples.

That's where a large percentage of the critical habitats exist. That's where many of our most endangered animals live, which means we cannot restrict our conservation efforts to national parks, or other places of sanctuary.

We need to encourage and support nature repair everywhere. And that is what this bill will do.

The purpose of this legislation is to establish the machinery needed for a nature repair market—the register, the rules and the regulator.

This market will apply to projects that enhance or protect existing environments, as well as projects that establish or restore habitats.

These projects can be on land, in our lakes and rivers, or in marine and coastal environments.

They will be open in a voluntary way to all landholders: farmers, First Nations peoples, conservation groups, businesses, local councils—all will be eligible.

Under the scheme, when a landholder conducts a project to repair or protect nature, they will be issued with a tradeable certificate.

This certificate will provide a range of standardised information—such as the size of land repaired, the kind of work conducted, the threatened species protected, and the length of time actions will continue.

This will help buyers understand exactly what they're investing in—and allow them to compare and value projects. Once projects are approved by the regulator, these certificates can then be sold on to a third party—like a philanthropist, a business, a government or an individual.

This will give the landholders extra income.

It will help companies demonstrate their environmental credentials. It will help philanthropists achieve their social mission.

And most importantly, it will protect and repair Australia's environment. These certificates will be tracked via a public register.

This register will be open and transparent—helping buyers show their shareholders and customers exactly how they're supporting nature repair.

And a regulator will ensure that projects are being implemented according to the rules, and that the register accurately describes what is happening on the ground.

The nature repair market will encourage all kinds of good work—work that landholders already want to do, but often don't have the funds to complete, like helping a farming family, who want to remove invasive plants and manage feral animals on their land so they can better protect a stretch of native forest where endangered greater gliders live; or a group of Indigenous land and sea rangers, who want to control feral species across a coastal floodplain, to protect sea turtles, migratory birds, and to improve water quality for fish and crabs; or another farmer, who wants to replant native grasses and trees on an unproductive stretch of land to make the area more resilient to drought and salinity; or a group of fishers, who want to work to regrow a meadow of seagrass that was previously killed off by poor water quality so they can provide a habitat for dugongs, turtles and seahorses and, at the same time, improve fish stocks.

The nature repair market will cover a broad range of different types of nature restoration. And it will reward the people for getting involved in it—money for farmers, jobs in First Nations communities and, at the end of the day, homes for our native animals and plants.

That's what this legislation is designed to promote, because there's no shortage of repair work that needs to be done.

And this scheme is flexible enough to make sure that landholders can do the environmental work that is needed specifically on their patch of land, like supporting the east coast koala population; or reviving critical nature corridors that animals can travel through for food and water, for shelter, or to avoid bushfires; or replanting hillside vegetation to stop erosion and to protect and enrich the local soil.

These projects will look different in different places, depending on local needs. And the nature repair market will work absolutely hand in hand with carbon credits.

It will help ensure that, when we plant new trees, we're not just establishing an endless monoculture, relying on a single species, but that we're supporting a rich spectrum of biodiversity; of plants and animals and ecosystems; and that we're planting the right trees in the right places.

We know that organisations are very keen to support these kinds of projects. International organisations are looking to Australia as a destination. They understand that Australia is a megadiverse continent, with plants and animals found nowhere else in the world.

And they recognise we're one of the most important sites in the global fight to protect biodiversity.

When I talk to businesses and philanthropic groups, they tell me that they want to support this type of nature repair effort.

That's what their shareholders are asking of them. That's what their customers are asking of them. It's what their employees are asking of them.

Shareholders, customers, staff—they want to know that they are investing in and working for environmentally responsible enterprises.

In fact, these investments are already happening in small ways.

But they are happening without an institutional framework to support them, which makes the whole process more difficult to enter into, far more cumbersome, risky and ineffective than it should be, making these investments impossible for the vast majority of businesses and landholders that would like to engage.

This legislation will solve two major problems with the status quo, making it much easier to invest in nature repair and protection.

Firstly, it will connect people wanting to fund this work with landholders who are willing and capable of doing it.

Currently, if an organisation wants to support environmental restoration, they have to either buy the land themselves and then contract the work or find a willing landholder to enter into some sort of custom management agreement.

This can be very frustrating for everyone involved.

Most companies are not usually in the business of environmental management and, in general, they shouldn't have to own land in order to contribute to the protection of it.

And, basically, we wouldn't want them to or need them to, because no-one knows their land better than the farmers and First Nations communities who steward it.

And these landholders often don't want to sell their land or engage in complex legal arrangements.

When this scheme begins, investors will be able to find projects they want to support, without having to purchase their own plot of land, and without having to design their own contracts.

And both parties will be able enter into the arrangement with the confidence of a legal framework behind them.

This leads me to the second problem this legislation will answer, which is the question of trust and integrity. Currently, organisations and conservationists are understandably nervous about some investments in nature repair.

How do they know these projects will actually deliver the improvements that they advertise?

Without a legal framework, without a national regulator to enforce the rules and ensure compliance, there's a greater risk that business and the public will fall victim to greenwashing, that the proposed project will look different in practice to what has been promised.

This bill will introduce necessary oversight and assurance.

It will enable the Clean Energy Regulator, an independent statutory authority, to certify biodiversity certificates.

The regulator will monitor and publish landholder reports on the delivery of these projects, including the progress being made towards the environmental outcomes specified.

And the regulator will also have enforcement powers—to ensure that projects are following the rules.

This is a scheme that will be built on transparency.

The regulator will publish information on projects and the ownership and use of certificates.

It will actively release relevant data, which will allow parliament and citizens to scrutinise the scheme. And we welcome that scrutiny.

I acknowledge the recent review of carbon crediting led by Professor Ian Chubb.

Like the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, I am committed to learning the lessons of that review, and to make sure that those lessons shape this market as it develops.

Nature markets—like all markets—need to be properly regulated, and this is, of course, challenging because environmental outcomes generally aren't measured in tonnes or kilometres.

Just because something is difficult, doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. It means we should put some thought into making sure we do it properly.

And that's what we're doing with this legislation, because we need every tool available to us if we want to build a nature-positive Australia.

If we want to leave this country in a better place for our kids and grandkids, we need effective national environmental laws.

And we need active government investment.

And, yes, we also need private money and philanthropists. Our government welcomes that support.

This scheme will bring more money into nature repair.

And it will guarantee that that money is doing what it's intended to do: restoring habitats, improving our soil, helping threatened species, protecting our beaches and making our land more resilient to droughts and floods.

I commend the bill to the House.

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