David Smith (Bean, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Albanese government has committed to protecting 30 per cent of Australia's land and seas by 2030. The same goals have been adopted globally under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. These goals reinforce the findings of the 2021 State of the environment report,which confirmed that our natural environment is in poor condition and getting worse. A number of my constituents provided essential work in relation to putting that report together.

The 2021 State of the environment report has noted that all aspects of the Australian environment are under pressure and many are declining. Although there have been numerous environmental initiatives at national, state and territory levels, there has been insufficient overall investment and a lack of coordination to be able to adequately address the growing impacts from climate change, land clearing, invasive species, pollution and urban expansion. Australia has lost more mammal species than any other continent and continues to have one of the highest rates of species decline among countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

I think of the many advocacy groups in Bean who have raised these concerns over the long-term sustainability and repair of the environment in Canberra and across the country, including the Landcare, Waterwatch and ParkCare groups. On indulgence, in support of one these groups: in March of this year I partnered with the Conservation Council ACT Region's Bush Buds program. My official 'bush bud' was the gang-gang cockatoo, beloved across the Canberra community as the territory's fauna emblem. Gang-gangs can be seen at all times of the year, nesting during spring and early summer in hollow-bearing trees. Sometimes you can see them in my backyard. A favoured food of Canberra's gang-gangs is the buds and gumnuts of the southern blue gum, a common planting of inner Canberra's parks and avenues. Sadly, gang-gang populations across Australia have suffered a 70 per cent decline in the last two decades. Fortunately, Canberra's population appears to be steady, and that's despite some serious threats from the 2020 Namadgi fires. Unfortunately, steep population declines are being driven across the country by native habitat loss, an issue that is growing as a major threat for many species across the country.

Community advocacy groups like these, right around the country, have unfortunately been burdened with the responsibility of addressing environmental preservation and restoration because of a lack of direction from the previous Liberal-National government. That lack of direction has meant that Australia's strategies and investment in biodiversity conservation do not match the scale of the challenge. The state and trend of Australia's ecosystems and species continue to decline. That improves with the introduction of this bill. In response to these ongoing shortfalls, the Albanese government is committed to delivering better environmental protection and reforms as part of the Nature Positive Plan. One of these reforms is creating the nature repair market. By encouraging voluntary private sector investment, the market will make a significant contribution to restoring Australia's natural environment.

The Nature Repair Market Bill establishes a transparent framework to issue Australian landholders with tradable biodiversity certificates for projects that protect, manage and restore nature. It will enable the Clean Energy Regulator to issue Australian landholders with tradable biodiversity certificates for projects that protect, manage and restore nature. These certificates can then be sold to businesses, organisations, governments and individuals.

This government understands that business and private sector investment can make a significant contribution to nature repair. Businesses are increasingly looking for ways to demonstrate their environmental credentials and positive outcomes for nature. Several groups currently estimate the market for biodiversity in Australia as potentially unlocking $137 billion in financial flows by 2050. With this bill, we are now responding to that demand. But this is not just a market for businesses or landholders. Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders, conservation groups and farmers can participate. Projects will deliver long-term nature-positive outcomes through activities such as weeding, planting native species and pest control. They can be undertaken on land and water. This includes lakes and rivers as well as marine and coastal environments.

Open participation and extensive opportunity for project locations will support regional Australia through jobs and nature-positive economic activity. Projects in this program could include removing drainage ditches, excluding livestock and feral herbivores to restore a natural marsh, which will create critical habitat for diverse native frog, fish, turtle and wetland bird species. Indigenous rangers will undertake feral animal exclusion, buffalo grass removal, feral cat control, cultural burning in the Central Desert. The certificate generated for such a project could support the activities of Indigenous rangers working on country for many years to restore seagrass meadow permanently lost from historical poor catchment water quality, providing habitat for sea turtles, dugongs, marine fish and seahorses. Monitoring could be provided by local commercial and recreational fishers, who foresee increased local fish stocks.

This bill will also enable participation, and create employment and economic opportunities for Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. It will promote and enable free, prior and informed consent for projects on their land or waters. There will be opportunities to design projects that reflect the knowledge and connection to country of our First Nations people and to utilise their skills and knowledge for a nature positive future. Who better to inform the repair of our delicate ecosystems than those with a 65,000 year connection to it?

The market will operate in parallel with the carbon market, facilitated by having the same regulator. The alignment will encourage carbon farming projects and also deliver benefits also for biodiversity. There will be administrative efficiencies in this approach and, more importantly, clear and accurate oversight of claims made in both markets. The government acknowledges the recent review of carbon crediting led by Professor Ian Chubb. Lessons learnt from the carbon market have informed the bill and will continue to be reflected upon as environmental markets develop.

The Nature Repair Market will be based on science—that is a good thing to hear for a change—and underpinned by legislation to ensure its integrity. It will encourage investment in future repair and drive environmental improvements across Australia. There are seven provisions in this bill that will support the development of a Nature Repair Market. Firstly, this bill will create an independent expert Nature Repair Market committee to advise the minister on scheme integrity. The committee will have five to six experts with substantial experience and significant standing in one or more areas of expertise, including agriculture, science, environmental markets, land management, economics or Indigenous knowledge.

This bill will have the methodology determination setting out the requirements for different types of projects which are made by the minister, following advice from the nature repair market committee that the methodology meets legislative biodiversity integrity standards. There will be requirements for biodiversity projects to be undertaken in line with that methodology determination. There will also be a consistent way of measuring improvements in biodiversity, set out in an overarching biodiversity assessment instrument. This bill will create tradable biodiversity certificates that are regulated to ensure they provide accurate information about projects. Critically—and I know constituents from my electorate of Bean will be interested to know this—this scheme won't be used as offsets unless and until they meet these new standards.

The nature repair market will be an opportunity to create a supply of projects certified through purpose-designed offset methods. The register will be a comprehensive and public source of information on these projects and the biodiversity they are protecting. In addition to this, a public register of projects and certificates will include information about their ownership and provide access to reports about project delivery and environmental outcomes. Transparency will be a core element of the scheme. Comprehensive information about projects and certificates will be available on that public register. Additional information will be regularly published by the regulator, and there will be active release of relevant data by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. This will enable parliament and the public to monitor the scheme and provide an opportunity for citizen oversight. It will support certainty and value to the market.

Finally, this bill will act as an assurance and compliance framework to maintain integrity in the market and provide confidence that projects are being delivered as expected. We know that under those opposite environmental management was simply not a thing. We knew that, and the people of Bean knew that. The report that has been referenced a few times in this speech—the 2021 State of the environment report—was finally released last year after being buried by the former environment minister. The release of this report revealed why it had been buried. The report revealed the true cost of nine years of Liberal and National neglect and environmental vandalism. Australia has lost more mammal species to extinction than any other continent. For the first time, Australia has more foreign plant species than native. Habitat the size of Tasmania has been cleared. Plastics are choking our oceans—up to 80,000 pieces of plastics per square kilometre. Flows in most Murray-Darling rivers have reached record-low levels.

The dire state of the environment is not due to just neglect; it is the result of an unholy hybrid assault of willing neglect and active environmental vandalism. What did those opposite really do for the environment? They axed climate laws. They failed to fix Australia's broken environment laws despite having a widely supported blueprint to do so. They laughed about our Pacific Island neighbours going underwater. They failed to land a single one of their 22 different energy policies. They sabotaged the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. They promised $40 million of Indigenous water—who can guess how much they delivered? They set recycling targets with no plan to actually deliver them. They voted against the safeguard mechanism—the policy that they had previously championed. They cut highly protected areas of marine parks in half—and believe it or not, Bean has got marine parks around Norfolk Island. They cut billions from our environment department. The State of the environment report identified what a pathway forward looked like. That pathway required greater national leadership—no wonder those opposite weren't interested. That much-needed leadership was needed to help foster a coordinated action and encourage investment to address our mounting environmental and heritage issues. Australia needed to measure progress and undertake effective, adaptive actions. Significant new effort is required to consistently manage environmental and heritage matters.

At its core, this bill is pretty simple. The Albanese Labor government is making it easier for people to invest in activities that help repair nature. We on this side want to leave nature better off for our kids and grandkids. That's why we're delivering legislation that supports landholders, including farmers, First Nations communities and community groups do to things like plant native species, repair damaged riverbeds or remove invasive species. This bill will establish a new market for investing in nature-positive outcomes. It creates the nature repair market with proper integrity and transparency, giving business and philanthropists a way to invest in nature with confidence. The market will make it easier for businesses, organisations, governments and individuals to invest in projects to protect and repair nature.

I was elected to be part of a government that would take leadership on these issues. Climate action and our precious environment were towards the top of the issues people voted on in Bean, and I am proud that we are tackling these issues. It is of no surprise it has been left to a Labor government to show courage and leadership on environmental issues. I thank the minister for her dedication and work in this space, and I commend this bill to House.

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