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

We won't take lectures from the Greens political party, who voted 41 to 32 in the Senate in December 2009 to side with the climate deniers over there and to not take action on climate change. Hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon pollution is in the atmosphere because the Greens political party say one thing and do another. The Greens housing spokesperson over there can't find a housing proposal in his own electorate he'll support. He comes in here and gives us platitudes of support for public, social and affordable housing, but he can't find one that he'll support locally. I see that in his walking out now.

The Greens say one thing and do another. You can't find an environment group that won't support the legislation. I noticed that three Greens spokespersons spoke beforehand in this debate. Not one addressed the actual contents of the bills before the chamber. They know that every conservation group supports this legislation. They won't support it. They'll side with the coalition on it as they did in December 2009 when opposing the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Don't believe that they want to take action on climate change as the Leader of the Greens said, because, when given chances to do so in the past, they haven't. When given chances to do so in terms of housing, they haven't.

They are great heroes here, but, when they go back to their electorates, they don't do the right thing. We won't take any self-righteous lectures from the Greens in relation to this. We know that the environment groups support this legislation. The Australian Conservation Foundation welcomes the government's announcement that they will set up an agency to enforce environmental laws, which is something previous governments failed to do. The WWF says that the EPA is a 'potential game changer'. The Australian Marine Conservation Society says that these new institutions are 'essential and welcome'.

The Greens are opposing this. They can't find an environment group that supports them on this legislation. I notice that not one of the three Greens people that spoke on this bill actually addressed its contents. You know why? If they addressed the contents of this bill, they'd realise how positive this bill is for nature. It's absolutely positive. We are doing the right thing here and taking steps. I imagine you'll see one Liberal and National Party person after another getting up and siding with the Greens in relation to this issue as the Greens end up voting with them on this particular legislation.

I want to speak on what the legislation is actually going to do and explain how positive nature legislation will have a positive impact on the environment and what this legislation is geared to achieve. I'm pleased to speak on Nature Positive (Environment Information Australia) Bill 2024, the Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill 2024 and the Nature Positive (Environment Law Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024. We're making significant investments here to protect more of our natural world. Those opposite, and the crossbench and the Greens as well, are going to say that they want to take action, but when given the chance to actually vote for it, they won't. We're going to fix up more of what's been damaged and care for the places we love. The Greens act like they're pure, holy and righteous all the time—that they're the only ones who care for the environment. Well, they're not. They give us lectures all the time in this place, but look at what they do, not what they say.

We had a decade of waste under the previous coalition government. They left institutions to manage the state of despair and the repair that we need to undertake in relation to the environment. Through our Nature Positive Plan, we're doing more than ever to protect our natural world and fix up more of what's been damaged. We are supporting sensible development and good local jobs. We've already completed the first stage of the reform. We passed legislation to establish the world's first nature repair market and expanded the water trigger to apply to all unconventional gas projects. We are now moving quickly to deliver Environment Protection Australia and Environment Information Australia. It's something that we said we would do. It is the environment and business that will benefit from the second stage of our Nature Positive Plan. These changes will protect the environment and support sensible development. They will deliver stronger environmental powers, faster environmental approval, more environmental information and greater environmental transparency.

The key measures include the first national independent Environment Protection Agency, with strong new powers and penalties to better protect nature, with $121 million in the May budget for this new body—but the Greens aren't going to support it. Seriously! There will be more accountability and transparency with the new body called Environment Information Australia, which gives businesses easier access to the latest environmental data, and will release State of the environment reports every two years and report on progress on our national environmental goals, with $51.5 million set aside in the budget for this, but the Greens aren't going to support it. There will be faster environmental approvals on projects, thanks to a $100 million investment, including renewables and critical minerals, but the Greens aren't going to support it. Combined with a significant investment in funding, this stage of reforms will deliver better environmental protection laws, and that's really important.

The key feature in the first piece of legislation is really critical, and that is the establishment of our first national Environment Protection Agency with new powers and penalties. We talked about it in the election campaign, and some of my colleagues have talked about the EPA being the tough cop on the beat in relation to the environment. It will be able to issue stop-work orders to prevent serious environmental damage and proactively audit businesses to ensure they are doing the right thing. Under the changes, the Minister for the Environment and Water will ask the new EPA to examine illegal land clearing and offset conditions as a priority, after a recent audit found one in seven developments could be in breach of their offset conditions. Penalties will increase to align maximum fines with punishments for serious financial offences. Courts will be able to impose fines of up to $780 million or send people to prison for up to seven years for extremely serious, intentional breaches of federal environment law—and the Greens won't support it.

The second bill before the house is the Nature Positive (Environment Information Australia) Bill 2024, which sets up a statutory and independent head of the new Environment Information Australia, EIA, which will provide up-to-date and transparent environmental data and information. It will be a reliable source to help business make faster and easier development decisions. The EIA will release State of the environment reports every two years, instead of five, so we have a better understanding of what's going on.

We're creating a nature-positive Australia, and that will mean nature is repaired and regenerated faster and will be less likely to continue to decline. The government's doing more than ever to protect our country's natural treasures, native plants and animals, so nature can continue to repair. We're not just doing this to protect the environment; we are doing it because it is the right thing to do. It's the ethical and moral thing to do. Last year, the government passed critical legislation to establish the first nature repair market, driving business and philanthropic investment in nature repair and threatened species protection. The budget locks in $35.6 million over two years to develop the processes and systems to administer the scheme. It builds on the more than $500 million investment we are undertaking to better protect our threatened species, such as koalas, quolls and Australian sea lions, and crackdown on feral animals and weeds.

My own electorate of Blair has many wonderful natural assets including attractions like Flinders Peak in the Flinders-Goolman Conservation Estate, White Rock in the Spring Mountain Conservation Estate in Ipswich, several state forests in the Somerset region and a number of koala conservation corridors and projects that our government has provided grant funding towards. I want to thank the environment groups in these areas for the work they're doing. We're developing stronger protections for precious environmental assets like these through the reforms we're undertaking here.

We're working to support faster and clearer decisions for business. I don't know if the Greens understand it, but we actually live in a free-enterprise economy. Indeed, the budget provides $134.2 million to strengthen and streamline environmental approval decisions on priority projects. These include renewables and critical minerals. That greater certainty for business will help drive investment in nation-building projects. When the minister first announced the Nature Positive Plan, she said she would take some cooperation, compromise and common sense to deliver it, and that's how we've done it.

The government's delivering stage 1 of the plan that we adopted last year. We will fully deliver stage 3 of the reform to make environmental laws less bureaucratic and fit for purpose by continuing to consult with stakeholders for further updates to these laws. The minister and the department have already consulted around 100 groups, held public webinars which 3,000 people have attended and received 2,500 submissions. So we're not doing this without support. We know that environment groups and the public support this legislation. A comprehensive exposure draft of the laws will be released for public comment before being introduced into parliament. So we're moving as fast as we can to put this legislation—it's big and complex, and we need to get it right—but it's part of what we said we'd do before the election,. It is part of our election commitment, and we're doing what we said we would do. The current act is about a thousand pages, so the legislation is similarly weighty.

There's some criticism from those opposite and particularly from the Greens political party. There's a saying that, if the noise in one ear is roughly equal to the noise in the other, it shows you've probably got the balance about right. Don't take it from me; take it from Professor Graeme Samuel who recently said, 'This criticism from those opposite'—and indeed from the Greens—'is simply unwarranted because change is going to happen, and we've got to get the right result from proper consultation.' He told a recent Senate inquiry: 'Just sit and wait; take a chill pill. What we're going to get will satisfy all their aspirations, as set out in the Nature Positive Plan.'

We're going through a complex process. It's been an abysmal failure over the past 25 years and we need to get it right. The government and the minister are doing everything exactly as they should be doing. I don't underestimate the complexity of what has to be done. Professor Samuel has called out the mining industry, especially the WA chamber of mines, saying that its claims that the government's proposed update of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the EPBC Act, would signal the end of mining were 'utter rubbish'. He said, 'The mining community needs to understand the proposed reforms are designed to protect the environment whilst safeguarding and simplifying approval processes by compressing state and federal approvals into one process.' He said, 'Neither side would get 100 per cent of they want, but we should be aiming for 80-plus per cent.' It's a good example of 'don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good', which is a message that the Greens political party could adhere to, just for once.

In addition, key stakeholders, as I outlined before, have supported this legislation. It's interesting that Professor Samuel was commissioned by the former coalition government to review the EPBC Act yet they ignored his recommendations in government and now in opposition are against the proposed reforms coming out of that process as well as the establishment of the EPA. It's another example of the coalition opposing everything for political expediency. It's pure obstructionism and opposition for opposition's sake.

When we were first elected, the minister released the official five-year report card on the Australian environment, the Australia state of the environment 2021 report. The former minister and now deputy opposition leader received it before Christmas. She chose to keep it hidden, locked away until after the federal election. It's a catalogue of horrors, and it shows just how much damage a decade of Liberal and National party neglect did to our environment.

The report says that the Australian environment is in very bad shape and getting worse, and that we need to take action. Is it any wonder our environment fared so badly under the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments? We had the spectacle of the now Leader of the Opposition, when he was a minister in the previous government, laughing about rising sea levels in the Pacific. A decade of climate denialism is an environmental crime. It says a lot about the Leader of the Opposition, who wants to water down Australia's environment laws introduced by John Howard when he was prime minister. And, last week, we saw the opposition's risky and expensive nuclear reactor plan, which would be an absolute disaster for the environment, given concerns about nuclear safety and waste. Talking to constituents in the country areas around Ipswich in my electorate last week, most of them were pretty clear that they don't want the nuclear gamble in their backyards. One of the coalition's two proposed nuclear reactors are in my home state of Queensland—Tarong Power Station in the south Burnett, which is just across the border from my electorate. They're proposing seven locations, but who is to say that they won't expand to more places, like Swanbank in Ipswich and Wivenhoe Power Station located in my electorate?

The real irony here is that while we're trying to create certainty for business through our nature-positive laws, the Liberal and National parties' nuclear announcements are creating greater uncertainty, and they're supporting the Greens political party as well. (Time expired)

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