Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Nature Repair Market Bill 2023. I want to congratulate the Minister for the Environment and Water, the Hon. Tanya Plibersek, for bringing this bill to this parliament. It's incredibly important, and she, in her short time as minister in this portfolio, has done a lot more in one year than that other side did in 10 long, sorry years.

I live in a wonderful electorate. I represent the electorate of Cooper. It has many environmental and climate activist groups. We have the local chapter of the Australian Conservation Foundation, who sit with me in my office and have done so for many, many hours while we discuss important issues, like how to make the safeguard mechanism the best it can be, and I thank them for their hard work and the dedication they have to making sure that climate change is halted in its tracks and that there is a future for this planet. I want to thank the Australian Parents for Climate Action, a group of parents coming from many schools across my electorate, who visit me with their schoolchildren and talk to me about caring for the oceans and our forests and looking after the many animals and species that are facing extinction, They bring me lots of pictures, they bring me cakes, they bring me stories of their travels, and, to be honest, they bring me hope.

I want to thank the Friends of the Earth, an amazing organisation that recently have been talking to me about their concerns to make sure that in our transition to a clean energy economy we don't leave anyone behind—that there is a fair transition for workers. So they were very pleased to see that this Labor government has established the Net Zero Economy Agency and advisory board, led by the incredibly able Greg Combet, somebody I know very, very well from a previous life. And the Net Zero Authority will work with state and territory and local governments, with existing regional bodies, with unions, with industry, with investors and with First Nations groups to help key regions, industries, employers and others proactively manage the transformation to a clean energy economy, so that no-one is left behind.

I have activists who are very keen on electric vehicles and come and see me very often about the infrastructure that is needed to make sure electric vehicles are affordable and can be used by everyone. I have wonderful community battery groups who know how to run community batteries and have worked very closely with us on our community battery policy. I am very pleased to say that Alphington in my electorate will actually have a community battery.

We have local groups and local people who form part of Extinction Rebellion, the true climate disruptors. Whilst many might question their tactics, no-one can question their passion and dedication to making sure that we have a clean energy future. We have the Tomorrow Movement, a group of wonderful young people in my electorate who come and meet with me often, and who sometimes stand out the front with placards and signs to make sure that the issue of climate action is not going away. It keeps me grounded and makes sure that I am accountable and responsible to them. There is the Youth Climate Coalition. We have the Darebin Climate Action Now group. These are an amazing group of people. They are leaders in our community—absolute leaders—who are dedicated to making sure that there is strong action on climate change from all levels of government—local, state and federal.

Speaking of local government, the Darebin Council has actually declared a climate emergency. They were one of the first, if not the first, local governments to declare a climate emergency. I want to acknowledge the hard work of Trent McCarthy and Jane Moreton for instigating that movement, where hundreds of local governments now have declared climate emergency, as have, of course, the Labor Party and the Labor government.

There is my own climate and energy reference group, branch members of the Labor Party and local individuals who meet with me on a regular basis and make sure that I keep them up-to-date with advances on what the government is doing around climate action, and they give me very honest—and sometimes hard—feedback. But they are extremely glad to see that they finally have a government that is moving on climate action.

I have to mention all the wonderful waterways groups, the Merri Creek groups, the Darebin Creek volunteers and management committees, the great people who work hard down at Edwardes Lake and on Edgar's Creek. These are amazing activists who have reclaimed our waterways from barren, polluted wastelands to gorgeous green urban areas, where we now have platypi. We have seen endangered native fish return to our waterways, amazing birdlife, including beautiful kingfishers, and now, thanks to the collaboration with First Nations rangers, we have had cultural burns along the Darebin Creek that have seen Indigenous grasses that have not been seen for decades re-emerge. We have many Friends of the Forest groups, especially the Newlands Friends of the Forest, and a big shout-out to the wonderful Cath Rouse, who took me on a trip to Toolangi state forest. I was lucky enough in the dark of the night to spot a greater glider. Now thanks to the Dan Andrews government, we know that those old forests will be protected.

Recently my daughter, her husband and her two kids set off around this beautiful country—doing a lap, as they say—in their campervan. My grandchildren are learning about the environment first-hand, and through their home schooling they do bird spotting, they do researching of local flowers and plants, they draw animals and they are learning about endangered species. Right now they are in croc country and, I can tell you, they are learning about dangerous creatures. I want my grandchildren, Isla and Jack, to be able to grow up and do the same with their kids. So you see, for my electorate and my family, care of the environment and action on climate change are paramount issues.

The Albanese Labor government is delivering with a huge suite of policies led by Minister Bowen and Minister Plibersek. The Nature Repair Bill sits in our environment policy framework that aims to protect and restore Australia's natural landscape. It is a market mechanism much like the CPRS—which we never managed to implement because of the Greens party, which voted against it, you will recall—and is much like ACCU and credit units in the Safeguard Mechanism, which have the support of the majority of this parliament.

The Albanese Labor government is making it easier for people to invest in activities to help repair nature. We want to leave nature better off for our kids and our grandkids. We are supporting landholders, including farmers and First Nations communities to do things like plant native species, repair riverbeds or remove invasive species, and we're making it easier for businesses and philanthropists to invest in these efforts. We need significant investment in conservation and restoration for a nature-positive future. Business and private sector investment can contribute to reversing environmental decline and, to be perfectly honest, they should.

This bill introduces a world-leading voluntary market framework to support landholders in protecting and restoring nature. It will do a world of good after a decade of bad from the previous government, who did very little in this area. It will include a tradable biodiversity certificate, assurance and compliance arrangements, a public register and a nationally consistent approach for measuring biodiversity outcomes. And it will mobilise private investment to protect, to manage and restore Australia's natural landscape. 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. The bill includes a wide range of provisions to ensure that these certificates will have integrity, so the market can invest with confidence, and so people who care so much about environment can be confident that people engaging in this market do not engage in green washing.

The bill has been drafted with a strong focus on integrity and transparency. The biodiversity integrity standards will support the making of project rules, and the nature repair market committee will advise the minister on methodology determinations with these standards. There will be transparency in the market, which will be achieved through the advice of a committee being made public. Projects being publicly tracked through the register and ownership of biodiversity certificates being listed on the register will be there for all to see. All landholders including First Nations people, conservation groups and farmers can participate in the market. Landholders can undertake projects that improve or protect existing habitat as well as projects to establish and restore habitat. These can be on land, waterways or in marine and coastal environments.

So you see, the Labor government is absolutely committed to making sure that our environment is protected, not only for the wonderful burghers of my electorate in Cooper, who, as I mentioned, care so much about these issues but for my grandchildren, for their children and for future generations to come, and for our First Nations people as well to make sure that we respect the land as they have done for 60,000-odd years. This is an incredibly important bill. It's one that we must support. It's one that we cannot let slip by. It is there for the future of all to enjoy this country.

Debate interrupted.

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