Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise in support of the nature Repair Market Consequential Amendments Bill 2023, and I want to acknowledge the work of the minister, who is present with us in the chamber, the Minister for the Environment and Water, for her excellent work in this portfolio. The Albanese Labor government is delivering on its nature positive plan with the establishment of the Nature Repair Market. The Nature Repair Market forms part of our nature positive plan to protect more of what is precious, repair more of what is damaged and manage nature better for the future. This market will make it easier for businesses, organisations, governments and individuals to invest in projects to protect and repair nature.

The Australian government is 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 and its story of environmental degradation, loss and inaction. The report, which is more of a report card with a miserable scorecard, says that the Australian environment is in very bad shape and getting worse. Australia has lost more mammal species to extinction than any other continent. Considering we are an island continent with one government responsible across this wide land for environmental policy, the blame rests solely with those opposite, who presided over this.

It found that, for the first time, Australia has more foreign plant species than native. It found that habitat the size of Tasmania has been cleared. The report found that, with up to 80,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre, plastics are choking our oceans. The report found that flows in most Murray-Darling rivers had reached record low levels.

This decline doesn't happen by accident. Our environment has fared terribly under the Liberals and Nationals. During the last decade that they presided over this nation's environmental policy, they axed climate laws and, despite having a widely supported blueprint to do so, they chose not to fix Australia's broken environmental laws. In turn, they failed to land a single one of their 22 different energy policies. They promised $40 million to Indigenous water, but they didn't deliver a drop. They had a recycling target of 70 per cent, which was stuck at 16 per cent for four years. It shows that those opposite simply set recycling targets with no plan to actually deliver them. Not only did they not deliver on their promises; where they did take action, it was to vote against the safeguards mechanism, a policy they had previously championed. Again, where they did take action, they cut highly protected areas of marine parks in half and they cut billions from our environmental departments.

As the Minister for the Environment and Water said in introducing the Nature Repair Market Bill to the House:

Just because something is difficult, doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. It means we should … do it properly.

It's a real reflection of this government's approach to policy and strong faith in our country and economy, and this government's ability to be able to advance good governance. In this spirit of action and progress, this will be a world first scheme. Under the nature repair market, landowners can be paid for protecting and restoring nature on their land. It will make it easier for businesses, philanthropists and others to invest in repairing nature across Australia. We need significant investment in conservation and restoration for a nature-positive future. Business and private sector investment can contribute to reversing environmental decline. In fact, a recent report found a biodiversity market could unlock $137 billion in financial flows to advance Australian biodiversity outcomes by 2050.

The bill will enable the Clean Energy Regulator, an independent statutory authority with significant experience in regulating environmental markets, to issue Australian landholders with tradeable biodiversity certificates. The certificates can then be sold to businesses, organisations, governments and individuals. There is an economic dividend to environmental policy. We will be supporting landholders, including farmers and First Nations communities, to do things such as replanting a vital stretch of koala habitat, repairing damaged riverbeds or removing invasive species. Importantly, it will enable participation and create employment and economic opportunities for Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders. This bill will promote and enable free, prior and informed consent for projects on their lands or waters. It will enable Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders to promote their unique knowledge and promote it on their terms. 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.

This is the power of economic policy that has the economy working for people, and not the other way around. Private companies, conservation groups, farmers and other landholders are increasingly looking for ways to achieve positive outcomes for nature. We want to leave nature better off and help create an Australia that is sustainable now and into the future, with legislation that ensures the ongoing integrity of the market, encourages investment in nature and drives environmental improvements right across Australia. The nature-positive plan reflects our commitment to restoring public accountability and trust, a common feature across the depth of the Albanese Labor government's approach to policy and governance in this term.

What this means in practice is that the bill will enable the Clean Energy Regulator, an independent statutory authority with significant experience in regulating environmental markets, to issue Australian landholders with tradeable biodiversity certificates that are then sold. It means that the bill provides for biodiversity certificates to have integrity and represent a natural environmental improvement. Buyers can then invest in the market with confidence.

Transparency will be a core element of the scheme. Comprehensive information about projects and certificates will be available on a public register. Additional information will be regularly published by the regulator, and there will be the 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. This mechanism will ensure that statements made under certificates will accurately reflect the projects and investments they represent and that the projects in the carbon and biodiversity markets are not affected by misleading claims.

The environment is an economic driver. It has always been—whether to repair the diversity for flora and fauna that shapes the natural environment around us, parts of which can be found nowhere else in the world, or whether to do so for the food, livestock and farming that are the basis of trade and our national economy. This is as much an economic policy as it is an environmental one. This recognition is particularly evident through the market mechanism which underpins this bill, which has been outlined.

What of our tourist industry or the drivers of corporate social responsibility initiatives? In my electorate of Calwell, we have the magnificent Woodlands Park and the Moonee Ponds Creek Trail. These are environmental attributes that many schools in my electorate use to educate our next generation about the importance of preservation, about protecting habitat and species and about recycling. Through this bill, this government is giving weight to the environment for a generation of young people who are becoming increasingly concerned about our footprint on wildlife and our natural habitat.

These are issues which concern people amongst our communities who expect government to have a role in creating the mechanisms to invite and to repair and to not only protect what is damaged but create the natural conditions for a habitat to exist where it would otherwise have perished. The government are not just committed to doing things differently; we're committed to doing things right, however difficult things might be. I commend this bill to the House.

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