Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today as the federal member for Durack to speak on two issues that are critically important to my large rural and remote electorate. The first issue is the government's proposed bills to establish a nature repair market, the Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 and Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023. First things first: we on this side of the House support in principle the creation of a biodiversity market. Indeed, our record in government shows that, with the introduction of the Agriculture Biodiversity Stewardship Market Bill 2022, we actually pioneered work in this area of policy in Australia. The core focus of that bill, which unfortunately lapsed at the conclusion of the 46th Parliament, was to establish the legal framework for a national voluntary Agricultural Biodiversity Stewardship Market to enable agricultural landholders to receive a tradeable certificate for undertaking projects that enhance or protect biodiversity in native species.

It is fair to say that to a large degree these two new bills replicate the comprehensive work, including the significant level of consultation with stakeholders, that we undertook in this area during our time in government. If they were to pass, Labor's bills would likewise legislate for the operation of a national biodiversity market, enabling the Clean Energy Regulator to issue Australian landholders with certificates for projects that preserve, manage and restore nature. They would then be able to sell these certificates to individuals, businesses, other organisations or indeed governments.

These kinds of markets are generally growing in popularity around the world. There are three main reasons for this: firstly, they incentivise new areas of spending on the environment by private interests; secondly, they allow for improved consultation on the most efficient and effective use of limited public resources; and, thirdly, they help to better prioritise the funding of environmental protection measures by governments. In other words, if their structures and frameworks are carefully and comprehensively designed, then these markets can help to improve and complement government-funded conservation activities by attracting new spending and resources from private individuals and organisations and, accordingly, by enabling governments to direct more of their money away from these forms of conservation towards other environmental priorities.

During our considerable consultation and thinking on this area of policy while in both government and opposition, we have recognised that biodiversity markets genuinely offer the potential for improvements in the way that Australians protect and restore the environmental values of our land. With their two bills, the Labor government is adopting the same broad philosophy, and we commend them for doing so. However—and there's always a 'however'—as has been the case on a number of fronts with this government, these bills contain several aspects that are lacking sufficient detail for anyone to be confident about whether they will be positive and worthwhile changes. In particular, I argue that the proposed extension of the parameters of the biodiversity market from just agricultural land to all land and water tenure needs some further examination to look at the various practical issues that this could lead to. Given that this decision will inevitably lead to more stakeholders and more different kinds of scenarios in the marketplace, there will most likely be a lot of confusion, particularly for first-time entrants to a biodiversity market. Similarly, these bills divert from the considerable amount of work, particularly from ANU, we undertook in basing our legislation strictly on the application to potential projects of the specialised carbon and biodiversity and enhancing remnant vegetation assessment models.

We have some concerns and reservations about an opening-up of the parameters and methodologies by which projects can be designed and assessed and how certificates can be traded. Additionally there are a number of further complexities and risks that the bill creates around precisely whose consent will be needed for projects to go ahead. Similarly there is an absence of key detail around what criteria and also evidence the minister will consider when making decisions on potentially excluding projects under section 33 of the Nature Repair Market Bill. In turn there are a lack of defined standards or controls around biodiversity assessment instruments and on the precise role of the native title body corporate. This added complexity and risk needs to be subjected to detailed scrutiny, and therefore it is appropriate that the bills be referred to the Senate Environment and Communications Committee. The opposition will reserve its final position on these bills until we see and hear what emerges from that committee process, but as things currently stand we have sufficient doubts about the veracity and quality of this legislation to not vote in support of it.

I'm also concerned about the prolonging of this process. Rather than build on and complement the comprehensive work that had already done for them by the coalition, the Albanese government bizarrely decided to go back to the drawing board and started the consultation process all over again. This has meant they needlessly prolonged processes and tried to reinvent the wheel and that they have generated more consultation fatigue, more irritation, more frustration and more consternation among key stakeholders than should have been the case. From evidence provided at the October 2022 Senate estimates hearing it seems the Clean Energy Regulator and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water probably spent around $11.4 million in carrying out these 100 per cent unnecessary activities. We thank the many stakeholders, however, who did engage. Thank you very much for being a part of the process. We thank them for the work that they did whilst we were in government and those who continue to work with us in opposition to help chart the path for a successful biodiversity market in Australia.

Disappointingly, it isn't just at the federal level where Labor are writing uncertainty into law. In my home state of WA the Labor government has rammed through parliament its new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2021. From 1 July landowners with more than 1,100 square metres will come up against more red tape for basic activities like clearing and planting trees, building a fence, putting in a bore or digging a dam. Undertaking any of these activities on your own land could mean you could have to engage local Aboriginal cultural heritage services, known as LACHS, at your own expense to get a permit. Kimberley Land Council and other Aboriginal groups have condemned the laws, claiming native title groups are vastly under-resourced for their rollout and pointing out that the LACHS are still not established. Labor themselves aren't even ready for their own laws to come into effect, with the permit system still not ready just weeks out from their starting to be enforced from 1 July. They are still not ready. These are just some of the issues with the state government's complex new regulations.

It is no surprise that WA's farmers and pastoralists, many of whom are from my electorate, are calling this shambolic. WA Farmers President John Hassell outlined that it's open to such bad interpretation that it's going to cause major drama in the sector. Understandably they are calling for a six-month delay on the commencement of the act so that these issues can be worked through constructively. Already more than 27,000 concerned Western Australians have signed a local petition for a delay. I want to give credit to the Hon Neil Thomson for facilitating this Tony Seabrook petition.

How has WA Labor responded? The new, unelected Premier likened the calls of thousands of locals in Western Australia to this delay as a dog returning to its vomit. West Australians are right to be concerned and confused about the new regulations and simply want answers, but this seems too hard for the new Premier Cook, who is on L-plates, clearly. They have instead resorted to slurs because they have botched the implementation of their own regulations. Western Australians are quickly finding out what this new Premier's priorities are. He has confirmed that one of his first acts as Premier was to call the rugby league boss to lobby for a team in Western Australia. Don't get me wrong: I love rugby league—I love rugby union a little bit more, I have to say—and I could get behind a WA team. But, Premier, if you have enough time to spare to listen to the NRL, you should take the time to listen to our WA farmers, instead of insulting and ignoring them. Our farmers are the lifeblood of our state, and they deserve better from this useless state Labor government.

To conclude, we on this side of the House, like all Australian, believe in protecting our diversity and also our sensitive Indigenous historical sights, but let's do it in way that constructively works with Australians; let's not take the Labor approach of confusing or imposing on Australians.

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