Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on the Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 and the Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023. Somewhere between Prime Minister John Howard and Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the Liberal Party and National Party stopped believing in markets. They once believed in taking action on climate change by pricing carbon. I listened carefully to those opposite, all the way through this debate, constantly railing against the concept of a market. These are the Liberal and National parties, who claim they're the parties of private enterprise and the market. But it's the Labor party who wants to take action on climate change through the safeguard mechanism. We did when we were last in government. The Labor Party, through this particular legislation before the chamber, is wanting to engage in nature repair through a market-based mechanism. But those opposite cannot bring themselves to believe in the market, which is a great irony for the party of Menzies, Fraser and Howard. The Liberal and National parties somehow cannot believe in the market and cannot believe in taking action to create a market, yet when they were in government previously, legislation not dissimilar to this was something they once believed in. They've had a sort of Damascus Road conversion experience in reverse on this particular legislation in the last 12 months or so, but on taking action on the environment and taking action on carbon pollution by using a market mechanism—somewhere in the last decade and a half they did it. They lost their faith in the market.

We are the Labor Party, the party of the collective and solidarity. We are the party of the market, and this particular legislation is taking action on the environment and nature repair using a market-based mechanism. For those who listen, when you hear the platitudes and the sermonising from those opposite about the market, look at what they actually do and how they actually vote, rather than what they say. Actions speak a lot louder than words when it comes to those opposite. The Albanese Labor government wants to make it easier for people to invest in activities that help repair nature. To that end this landmark legislation would create a national framework for a world-first, voluntary national biodiversity market. We want to protect our environment from destruction.

Those opposite—having lost the election and sitting all those teals and Greens up there; having lost the election with seats held traditionally by the coalition, like Higgins and Bennelong, now held by Labor—still cannot bring themselves to accept the outcome and the lessons about taking action on the environment. Our ambition for nature is very big. Just as the Hawke government established Landcare, we want to restore environments that have been impacted in the past and repair more of what has been damaged. That's how we can build a truly nature-positive Australia where we leave our environment in a better state for our children and our grandchildren.

Australians want to live in a nature-positive country, a country that stops environmental decline and repairs nature—a country that prizes the Great Barrier Reef in my home state of Queensland, the beautiful rural areas in my electorate around the Somerset Dam and the Wivenhoe Dam and the rural areas around Ipswich. One of our government's most important priorities is to see new private initiative and private investment in our natural environment. We want to tap into that enterprise and creativity and harness them for the benefit of nature. We see enormous untapped potential here, and we are determined to help unleash it not in place of government action—Labor governments always take governmental action—but in addition to it, a partnership between governmental action and the private sector.

That's why with these bills we are legislating a world-first nature market, establishing the measurements, integrity and property rights necessary to properly reward the restoration and protection of biodiversity, working side by side with the carbon market. We want to support landholders to carry out activities that repair nature by establishing a world-leading nature repair market. In a world-first scheme, landowners will be able to be paid by a third party for protecting and restoring nature on their land. It will make it easier for businesses, philanthropists and others to invest in repairing nature across our great land.

The legislation establishes a scheme to incentivise private enterprise in nature restoration by creating tradable certificates for projects that protect and restore biodiversity. This market forms part of our nature-positive plan to protect more of what's precious, repair more of what's damaged and manage nature better for the future. This new market could realise billions of dollars of investment, complementing the existing carbon credit scheme while improving our environment. Indeed, many people have talked about recent reports of $137 billion that this market could unlock to repair and protect Australia's environment by 2050.

The credits would be generated, for example, by supporting landholders, including farmers and First Nations communities, to do things like replant a vital stretch of koala habitat, revive a critical nature corridor, repair damaged riverbeds or remove invasive species. Examples of this include removing drainage ditches and excluding livestock and feral herbivores to restore a natural marsh, which would create critical habitat for diverse native frog, fish, turtle and wetland bird species. Indigenous rangers undertake great work in terms of feral animal exclusion, buffel grass removal, feral-cat control and cultural burning in the Central Desert. I've met Indigenous rangers all across the country, from the Kimberley to Maningrida in the Northern Territory, in Central Australia and in my home state of Queensland, and I see the great work they do.

The certificate generator for the project could support Indigenous rangers working on country for many years, restoring seagrass meadows permanently lost from historic poor water-catchment quality, providing habitat for sea turtles, dugongs, marine fish and seahorses. Monitoring can be provided by local commercial and recreational fishers who foresee increased local fish stocks. In my own community, three projects across Ipswich and Somerset recently received federal government koala community grants to support recovery and protection of koalas, including by improving habitat. I've had the pleasure of visiting two of these projects—the koala health and habitat rehabilitation project in the Esk/Somerset region, run by the Australian Earth Laws Alliance and Care4esk, and the Purga koala habitat restoration project being delivered by Forest Land Management. I'm really pleased to see the work and research being undertaken in relation to those koala corridors around Glen Rock in the Somerset region, and Purga and Peak Crossing around rural Ipswich. These projects involve tree planting, habitat revegetation and weed eradication in known koala habitats, so they would be likely to generate biodiversity credits under the scheme. I look forward to those opportunities in my local area.

There are also a number of local Landcare organisations in my electorate across the Ipswich, Somerset and Karana Downs regions. For example, Bremer Catchment Association have worked tirelessly to restore the banks of the Bremer River in central Ipswich, Cribb Park and other areas. I've seen the work that has been done over the years around the Allawah Scouts place, and around Basin Pocket with people like Darren Close and others who have been working in the area to restore the land and the vegetation, and get rid of noxious weeds along the Bremer River. It's very important. I commend organisations like West Moreton Landcare, who have made considerable progress in rehabilitating waterways and environmental corridors, particularly in places like Rosewood. The Rosewood Scrub project and Mason's Gully restoration—right on the fringe of the urban areas in residential areas of Rosewood near Cabanda Home Care—are great places for people to go and walk, with a number of different species of plant that have been put back in that area.

I commend the work that has been done in terms of flood mitigation and restoration after the many floods and fires that have impacted the Ipswich and West Moreton region, including the Somerset region. I also thank West Moreton Landcare for the great work they've undertaken in the Brisbane Valley Rail Trail around places like Lowood. They've got considerable funds that I've been seeking support on. I also thank the Brisbane Valley Kilcoy Landcare group for working with me on vegetation issues and tree planting in the upper part of the Brisbane valley along the rail trail. They've also done some great work—they've been involved in rainforest restoration and the recovery of koalas, ecological communities and species in South-East Queensland, up around Jimna and the state forest in the northern bit of my electorate. These Landcare groups make a significant contribution to our local environment. It would be great to see their work recognised and captured by this nature repair market. I'm really excited about this, I think it is a great opportunity for those Landcare groups to partner.

Finally, I'll mention some of the traditional owners from the Ipswich region, including Uncle Henry Thompson Jr, who runs a local business providing Indigenous land conservation services and traditional fire techniques. That's an opportunity I see for local First Nations people in the Ipswich region. In my electorate, about 5.5 per cent of our population is First Nations, so it's a growing part of the electorate. I think this will be terrific. I see a lot of synergies in the work that's been done together by people like Henry Thompson and the land care groups.

This new market will be regulated by the Clean Energy Regulator. The regulator will have monitoring and enforcement powers to ensure projects are conducted in accordance with rules. It won't be willy-nilly open slather; there will be monitoring, reporting and notification of delivery of projects and activities on environmental outcomes. An independent committee will provide advice to the minister about the methods to set the rules for the projects. Creating a nature repair market with proper integrity and transparency will give business, philanthropists and local people interested a way to invest with confidence and will allow them to buy a quality product—verifiable, well-regulated certificates—so they can ensure their investments in protection and restoration have environmental benefits that are long lasting.

The Nature Repair Market would include a public register of biodiversity certificates to track their status and ownership. These integrity measures will ensure that, if people are investing in repairing nature, they actually get the long-term benefits. We can't allow greenwashing. We see this in numerous projects that get government funding. We see from time to time that people put a flavour on things when it's not actually what is happening on the ground. We want to ensure that the benefits that are promised are realised. Let's be clear that, while nature credits will be available for companies, the need to offset unavoidable damage they cause to nature—for example, if they build mines or other developments—is not the point of the program in any way at all. It is not designed to be an offset scheme to give developers an opportunity to buy credits instead of protecting our natural environment. This is not an effort to make it easier to replace one bit of the natural environment with another bit of the natural environment. This is a way of getting additional private sector and philanthropic investment into nature, so we need to get the market design right.

Ten years ago, the Australian Labor government created the world's first national legislative scheme for accrediting carbon offset projects. Today millions of dollars of these carbon credits are being traded each year, providing an extra income for farmers and landholders and lowering Australia's overall carbon emissions. Like all markets, it is an ongoing task to make sure the scheme is done with impeccable integrity. It's an important part of Australia's climate strategy and for our long-term path to zero emissions. The lesson is that well-designed, well-functioning environmental markets, including the use of offsets, can be a powerful force for good and not evil. In contrast, a bad market can be worse than no market if it's poorly designed, underregulated, creates perverse incentives or just greenwashes bad behaviour. These schemes need to be built on solid ground. That includes timing; we hope the new scheme will be operating by next year. That's why it's important that we pass the foundational legislation now to allow all of that work setting up the market and developing the methodologies to commence. It's part of what we need to do to protect, restore and repair nature.

I know that personally from my electorate. We have been hit by three major floods since 2011. There were bushfires around Linville and Moore, Bundamba and Ripley Valley. We've seen in my electorate the impact of the ravages of nature. I've seen what floods can do in communities and how they can destroy whole families' livelihoods and prospects. I've seen the impact on Lockyer Creek, the Bremer River, the Brisbane River and so many parts of my electorate.

I'm so optimistic about this legislation. I fully support it and I commend it to the House.

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