Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We can all take a deep breath and remind ourselves we're in the House of Representatives having a debate on the Nature Repair Market Bill 2023—not that you could elicit that from the previous contribution. I thank the member for New England for a minute of extraordinary sounds and squeaks and buzzing; that will be very handy for a campaign ad, maybe, later on! The member for New England came in here and demonstrated the calibre of the Dutton opposition and their attention to the complex way in which we need to manage our natural habitat and ecosystems as well as our transition towards low-emissions technology. If you ever wanted to see why the Liberal Party and the National Party are not respected and not trusted on this important task, I think anyone who watched the last 15 minutes of screaming, of ranting and of a lack of cohesion or sense would understand why.

Not only that; it's also worth mentioning the fact that, in the previous government, environmental management was not only extremely problematic and avoided but also undemocratic. In the previous term of parliament the Morrison government underwent a process through which environmental management and the protection of our environment through the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act was reviewed by Professor Graeme Samuel. This was a process whereby the former government, under their own appointed specialist, said, 'What do we need to do to improve the environmental standards in this country?' Professor Samuel went away and did a huge piece of work, and came back to this place and said that one of the things the federal government must have is federal environmental standards—that this place, the House of Representatives, and the federal parliament cannot absolve itself of responsibility when managing the environment. The federal government needs to lead. It also needs to work with the states and territories.

But that was not the approach of the then environment minister, now the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. The then environment minister sought to basically take the federal government out of decision-making around environmental approvals and hand over all responsibility to the states and territories. It was a complete cave-in to the recommendations of their own review. They refused to support Professor Samuel's key recommendation that this parliament and the federal government should have standards of environmental approval and environmental management. So, instead of coming to this place and setting out those standards and improving the way in which we look after our biodiversity, our ecosystems and our precious natural environment, the federal government came into this place and said: 'We are not interested. We're not even going to listen to our own review. We're going to give it all to the states.'

But, to make it even worse—and all those who were members of the previous parliament will remember this well. I was sitting on the other side of the chamber. I had given a contribution, and all of a sudden the speaking list was cut and the Morrison government then used their numbers in the House of Representatives to cut off debate and ram through an environmental EPBC reform. They refused to allow the opposition to speak on the bill. They refused to allow full, proper engagement and debate on the bill. Not only were the Morrison government willing to trash their own report and the recommendations of their own engaged expert on environmental management; they were willing to come in here and trash the democratic conventions of this place in order to ram the bill through the parliament. That is the legacy of the former government when it comes to environmental management. That is the legacy of the member for New England and his friends and colleagues who came into this place and refused to lift the standard of environmental management, who refused to try and engage in a way in which this parliament can help safeguard our natural wonders, our habitats and our wildlife for future generations. So proud of their own reform were they that not one member of their team actually spoke on the bill. Not one member of their team was willing to stand up in this place and talk about the work of trashing environmental standards and then trashing the democratic conventions of this place.

That was the legacy of those opposite. We have a very different idea of what it is to be responsible environmental managers, to hand over the absolutely precious gift that we have on this vast continent of ours and to protect the wildlife, to protect the indigenous flora and fauna, that we are custodians of for this brief period of time. That's what the work we have done since coming into government, including in this important piece of legislation, is all about. It's about putting the federal government at the absolute front and centre of environmental management, ensuring that there are further environmental standards that we are all adhering to. That is going to be a key part of the EPBC Act reform that the minister for the environment will bring in at some point in coming months, complementing bills such as this.

The Nature Repair Market Bill is an essential part of environmental management because it is all about putting an intrinsic value on our environment and putting an intrinsic value on our biodiversity—putting a value on the precious parts of our Australian wildlife and ecosystems that is essential to protecting them and preserving them for future generations. With this bill, there are a number of components that the minister has introduced. The first thing is that it's voluntary. If a farmer or if a landowner wishes to participate in this framework, they will be able to preserve and to get credits for doing the right thing by the environment that they are custodians of. They will be able to have a certificate that then will be able to be sold on to a third party. This is a way of saying: if you are a farmer who wants another form of income, and you are passionate and you are willing and able to protect and improve and get credit for the work that you are probably in many cases already doing on your piece of land, then there will be an extra value put on that. Far from the ranting that we heard for the member for New England, this is about encouraging farmers to have an extra form of income.

I know the member for New England spoke about windfarms. I have spoken to farmers who have windfarms and wind turbines on their properties, and, depending on the size of the turbine, you can be talking about thousands and thousands of dollars of annual rental fees being paid directly into the farmer's hands for the use of their land for windfarms. It is a very, very handsome business if you are a landowner in an area where there is a good supply of wind. So this, quite frankly, pretty loose scare campaign being run by those opposite actually has no reflection on truth or reality—something that we have come to expect from the member for New England.

It's worth mentioning that only 15 per cent of land in Australia is publicly owned. Most of that publicly owned land is owned by state and territory governments. The largest single group of landholders are the holders of pastoral leases, who control 44 per cent of the Australian land mass. It is therefore extremely important that landowners, whether they're farmers who own their land freehold, pastoralists, Indigenous communities, corporations, local governments or not-for-profit groups, they are all required to be part of the national efforts to protect and preserve our environmental heritage. That is the objective of the bill here today.

I will quote the minister's second reading speech, because I think it sums up the bill nicely:

We need to start restoring the places that we've damaged in the past. We need to start healing the land and the water.

And that's what this legislation is designed to do—not to replace government effort, but to reinforce it; to add private money to the stream of investment our government is already making in nature protection and restoration.

The Nature Repair Market Bill is designed to create incentive for landholders of all kinds to undertake biodiversity on the land that they own or control. The bill provides that, when a landholder conducts an approved project to repair or protect nature, they will be issued with a certificate which will certify that the regulator has agreed to the project and that it meets the requirements laid down for biodiversity projects. Once that project is approved, the certificates can then be sold on to a third party. This will give the landholder extra income and thus a financial incentive to undertake the project and more like it in the future. It will also show the landholder's neighbours that they can make money by undertaking biodiversity projects on their land.

Who is going to buy the certificates? Anyone can do so—an individual, a corporation, a state, territory or local government or a non-government organisation. However, it is likely that most of the buyers will be one of two types. The first type will be individuals or NGOs who want to advance the cause of biodiversity. Let me take a moment here to give a shout-out to the incredible activists and the incredible people in the electorate that I'm proud to represent who are deeply passionate and deeply committed to protecting our environment—people who are members of groups such as the Australian Conservation Foundation in Macnamara and many others. They come and meet with me on a regular basis. My door is always open to them, and I will always have time for those people in my electorate who give up their time to try and do more for our environment and for future generations. Since the certificates will contain standardised information about the project, and since their accuracy will have been certified by the regulator, people can invest in these certificates with confidence that their money will actually go towards improving environmental standards and furthering biodiversity projects.

The second type will be corporations who want to buy certificates to offset the effects of their activities on biodiversity elsewhere. If a corporation is building a shopping centre or building a road and thereby having an unavoidable impact on the environment in that particular location, they will be able to offset that negative effect by investing in biodiversity elsewhere, through the purchase of certificates. I know that that concept does make people a little bit nervous, and there are legitimate reasons why that needs to be done in a way that is extremely regulated and controlled, but this specific arrangement is carefully constructed and it will be vigilantly policed. Governments or corporations will not be allowed to get away with causing more damage just by purchasing offsets.

However, in saying all of that, I do think that the principle of offsets, and creating that intrinsic value, is something that we need to balance. There will be further work about how that is managed under the rewrite of the EPBC Act and the new nature bill that the environment minister is going to be bringing forward. I have already been meeting with environmental groups and environmental legal organisations, and I appreciate their advocacy on this. I think this is something that we will continue to monitor and continue to work through as we go through those environmental purposes. But underpinning that is creating an intrinsic value for creating biodiversity and protecting nature, something that fundamentally is an important reform.

We do not want greenwashing. We do not want corporations using this mechanism to damage the environment in other parts. What we want is a well-regulated system, one where nature has an important price, where nature has an important value, where we encourage and create more protection and more certainty for biodiversity, where we are able to protect more of the precious environment that we are all custodians of, but in a way where it is managed and controlled. I have full confidence in the Minister for the Environment and Water overseeing the introduction of this program. There is a 12-month lead-in time so that we can get the details right around how this is going to be regulated, how this is going to affect not only the landholders who can voluntarily participate in this program but also those who wish to purchase credits and purchase certificates.

In summary of my contribution on the Nature Repair Market Bill, let me say this. The previous government came into this place and completely threw away any attempt at improving environmental standards and environment management. That is not our approach. We are systematically leaving a legacy of raising environmental standards, of putting a greater value on our environment and protecting it for generations to come.

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