Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you—the minister announced that the Macquarie Island Marine Park is set to triple in size. That's 385,000 additional square kilometres of Australia's oceans under higher protection, an area larger than Germany, that will be completely protected from fishing, mining and other extractive activities. This makes not just a significant contribution within the oceans for which we are responsible but a globally significant contribution to the health and resilience of our oceans.

It picks up and continues the work that Labor undertook when last in government to create a national network of marine protected areas. We did that when we were last in government, and we're barely 12 months into the job and we're getting on with that again. We've added a remarkable and very significant additional amount of ocean protection.

The recent budget includes funding to create an EPA, $262 million to support Commonwealth national parks, $163 million to the brilliant Australian Institute of Marine Science to continue their world-leading scientific marine research, and nearly $120 million to community groups, NGOs and local governments and First Nations groups to clean up and restore local urban rivers and waterways. All of those things, along with these bills creating a nature repair market, are part of a massive night-and-day, black-and-white change between the awful neglect and wilful blindness of the previous government, when it came to our environment, and the approach that the Albanese Labor government is taking under the leadership of the Minister for Environment and Water.

As I've outlined, the Albanese government as a whole and the Minister for Environment and Water have wasted no time, because there is no time to waste. Creating a nature repair market is one measure that answers what experts like Graeme Samuel have called for—new and innovative ways of delivering repair and restoration while, at the same time, we make new, rigorous, urgent and, in many cases, uncompromising efforts to protect Australia's environment and remarkable but endangered biodiversity. That's what has to be done. That's what this government is getting on with and doing.

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