Dan Repacholi (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 and the Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023. The Hunter electorate is lucky to be filled with beautiful nature. We have dense bush and native plants and animals, including rare native birds, and we have the largest saltwater lake in the Southern Hemisphere. As a father of two young girls, I want to make sure that we leave our land and nature, as a whole, better off for them and for their children. To achieve this, nature needs to be looked after, and, where it is damaged, we must try and repair it. This is why this government is making it easier for people to invest in activities that help repair nature.

We're supporting landholders, including farmers and First Nations communities, to do practical things that will make a real difference in the preservation of our natural world, things like plant native species, repair damaged riverbeds or remove invasive species. We're also making it easier for businesses and philanthropists to invest in those efforts, because anyone who wants to help the environment should, and now they will have more ways to make a difference through these simple, achievable measures.

The establishment of the Nature Repair Market is all part of this government's commitment to delivering on our Nature Positive Plan. We've committed to protecting 30 per cent of Australian land and seas by 2030. This is in line with what has been adopted globally under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. These goals further reinforce the findings of the 2021 Australia:State of the Environment report, which told a devastating story of environmental loss and inaction. We are the government who released this report. Those opposite hid it, and it's easy to see why. It didn't make those opposite look good at all when it comes to looking after the environment. It painted a crystal-clear picture of exactly how much damage that lot, over a decade of neglect towards the environment, did.

The results are damning. Australia has lost more mammal species to extension than any other continent, and, for the first time, Australia has more foreign plant species than native, largely due to the fact that in between the years 2000 and 2017 habitat the size of Tasmania was cleared. Our waterways were hurting too. Water is the single most important element for human existence, and the continued survival of the human race is not considered to be worth time or attention to those opposite. Our oceans are full of plastic. Up to 80,000 pieces of plastic are found per square kilometre, and flow in most Murray-Darling rivers has reached record-low levels.

We know those opposite never cared. It was made clear by their actions and their inactions. They axed climate laws, failed to land a single one of their 22 different energy policies and failed to fix Australia's broken environment laws, despite having a widely supported blueprint to do so. They promise $40 million for Indigenous water but never delivered a drop. They cut highly protected areas of marine parks in half and cut billions from our environment department. They also did some things just to make themselves look good—like setting recycling targets with no plan to actually deliver them. The recycling target was 70 per cent, but it didn't even get passed 16 per cent for four years. It was one of either two things: incompetence or inaction. I'll let you decide which one, Deputy Speaker Claydon.

We all know that our neighbours, the Pacific islanders, are under serious threat by rising sea levels. This is understandably one of the most important issues for Pacific governments, so important that, because of the inaction of the previous government, a wedge between us and our important friends in the Pacific was formed. The now Leader of the Opposition doesn't care. He laughed about our Pacific island neighbours going underwater. This just tops off the carelessness of those opposite. You'd think the election would have been a wake-up call, but they're no better in opposition than they were in government before they lost their prized blue-ribbon traditional coalition-supportive seats.

See this speech in context