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

Like the member for Macarthur, I have a peri-urban electorate. I'm not sure my koalas are quite as famous as the member for Macarthur's koalas, but we do see the odd koala at the Langwarrin Flora and Fauna Reserve. I have seen both a tiger snake and a tawny frogmouth in my own backyard, and needless to say there was one of those I was happy to see! Like in many electorates, whether they be urban, peri-urban, regional or rural, the people in my electorate care deeply about both the local environment and, more broadly, Australia's environment and what we have always been incredibly proud of: our native flora and fauna. I was trying to think of a way to describe how integral to the sense of being Australian our flora and fauna is. I came up with the suggestion that Crocodile Dundee wasn't necessarily popular for the acting so much as—

Not everyone in the chamber agrees with that statement, but I will carry on! It was not so much for the acting as it was for a depiction of an Australia that Australians, no matter where they live in the country, no matter how long they've been here—whether they were born here or came here—inherently think of as Australia. It is the outback, the native animals—a slightly outdated, sexist man, but apart from that! The environment somehow is just a part of all of us. As I said, people in my electorate care about that and identify with the Australian environment, as do people across the country.

Here are just two small examples of what locals are doing in Dunkley because they care about the environment. Of course, those who have the longest connection to the environment—and it's about culture as much as it is about where they live—are out First Nations people. Ben was kind enough to talk to me about a program operating in my community and the surrounding region called the Warreen Beek rangers course. Warreen Beek means 'saltwater people' in the local language. It's a training program for Indigenous rangers developed with the Bunurong and Wiradjuri land councils in collaboration with a lot of other groups, including Holmesglen TAFE and Trust for Nature. The course was developed as there was a lack of trained people to work as land management practitioners. It was consultation with community members that led to the idea of starting a course. We are not only tapping in to First Nations connection with the land but also giving people qualifications that allow them to use that connection as part of a career.

Rangers in the program are learning to care for country. It is a course that's designed specifically with and for traditional owners, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, to learn the skills to work on country, providing accredited training in areas such as pest plant control, revegetation, construction, chainsaw use, occupational health and safety, and cultural studies. It's a hands-on approach that provides a culturally safe space for people to learn together and is actively improving the local environment. Students in the course have worked in coastal areas and on properties that have conservation covenants, providing landholders with a chance to understand traditional knowledge. Students learn land-care skills such as plant identification and threatened species conservation techniques. This is the sort of program that this Albanese government wants to invest in and support. It's a concrete example of commitment to environment being delivered by local communities with and for First Nations people, something that I think is a tangible example, of course, of what the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice will accomplish if we get the referendum through later this year.

The second example of my community's commitment to the environment and sustainability that I wanted to tell the chamber about is the Frankston High School Eco Team. I've had a lot to do with in the different students that have come through in the four years I've been in this place and the few years before I was elected. They are always, always looking for ways to improve the environment around their school and the sustainability of not just their school but the broader community, in the knowledge that climate change and threats to biodiversity are the existential threats to their future.

These exceptional young people recently came and spoke to Paul Edbrooke, the member for Frankston, and me about the need for better environmental education in schools, embedding education about sustainability across all courses so you're not just learning about it if you are studying geography; it's part of science and English and home tech and all of the subjects that everyone does. Everyone can learn about environment and sustainability, how the subjects impact those concepts and also how those concepts can enhance the subject. Then they had an incredibly detailed and impressive submission about the policies of the education department on protecting the environment and sustainability, showing how they were vague and lacked enforcement. As their school is going through renovation because of investment, they asked why the state government didn't have stricter standards on sustainability and protection of the environment when building public school facilities. I don't think you could get smarter or more involved young people than the Frankston High School economics team, who are actively taking a role in looking after the environment, for their future but also for the people that come after them.

We know that we now have a government that is committed to protecting 30 per cent of Australia's lands and seas by 2030. These are the goals that were adopted globally under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, and they're the goals that this piece of legislation is looking to help us reach. The goals reinforce the findings of the 2021 State of the environment report in Australia, which was an incredibly disturbing report with a story of environmental degradation, loss and inaction.

How could it be the case, in a country where the environment, the flora and fauna, are deeply embedded in our national psyche, that we could have lost more mammal species to extinction than any other continent? How could it be the case that Australia, a country where we almost venerate the wattle, the banksia and all of our local plant species, now has more foreign plant species than native species in the country? How could it be the case? In just short of two decades—in this century alone—habitat the size of Tasmania has been cleared. We know that plastics are choking our oceans with about 80,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre. I'm not even making a political point. It's really just the point that this is where we're at in this country. We can't be a country that sees ourselves as unique in the world because of our landscapes, our waterways and our animals yet does nothing to protect them or doesn't do enough to protect them.

It's why I'm really pleased about this government's Nature Positive Plan and the establishment of the Nature Repair Market. If anybody embodies the saying 'hit the ground running', it has to be the Minister for the Environment and Water, who hasn't wasted a minute getting on with the job of saying: 'What legislative measures do we need? What oversight measures do we need? What role can we play in the international community to not just protect what we have left but try to restore some of what we've lost?' That's what's really important. This Nature Repair Market doesn't just protect what we've got; it also helps us restore what we've lost, harnessing business and private sector investment, working so that landholders, farmers and First Nations communities can play their roles in planting native species, repairing damaged riverbeds and removing invasive species.

All the speakers before me have talked about what this legislation does, so there's nothing new or revelatory in what I'm saying about it, but the structure of this scheme is really important. It's fundamentally important that the clean energy regulator is going to have that regulatory role. It's fundamentally important that there is going to be transparency and integrity in the scheme. We have to make sure that there's not greenwashing. It just boggles my mind, really, that corporations would like to pretend that they're doing something for the environment but not actually do it. If you know that you need to pretend, then you know that there is a moral imperative. You know it matters to people but you still don't care enough to actually do it. That's why it is really important that the ACCC and ASIC will have a role in ensuring certificates under this market aren't really greenwashing.

I am proud to be part of a government that wants to do things differently. I am proud of a government that wants to act swiftly. I invite members of the opposition to be part of that. We do stand here and make partisan remarks. We have talked about the 10 years under those opposite, which we see as marked with wasted opportunities and neglect, but maybe let's put that behind us for this and say, 'Let's move forward.' Let's have some bipartisanship about moving forward about something that, when it comes down to it, surely we all care about. We all care about protecting Australia's unique environment. Surely we can't have an argument about encouraging biodiversity and all it represents. I'd be surprised if there was an argument about using a market system to do so. I would have thought those on the other side would have been right up for that sort of mechanism. Let's put the cudgels down for once.

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