Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill is an important part of the Albanese Labor government's nature-positive plan, and, importantly, part of delivering on our election commitment to implement strong environmental law reforms in line with the Samuel review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

These national environmental laws are a critically important part of the way that governments protect our natural environment here in Australia, and an important part of how we approach the climate crisis. The reforms of these laws are something that, since I was elected in 2019, has been a key part of my focus as a member of parliament and something that my constituents have been really engaged with. It's a topic which I have also spoken about in the parliament many times. In the last term, when the Samuel review was released, I, like many of my constituents, was dismayed by the response of the Morrison government through then minister Sussan Ley. At the time I said the Samuel review provides a great opportunity for this parliament to act to better protect the environment, but of course it took the election of a Labor government to ensure that that opportunity was grasped.

Because of course it is the Labor Party that has delivered all of the significant environmental reforms of Australia's history. It was Labor in the 1970s, under Gough Whitlam, who appointed the nation's first federal environment minister, Moss Cass. Also during the Whitlam government, Australia also saw the nation's first environmental impact inquiry, which established that sand mining on Fraser Island was untenable. One of the core tenants of Whitlam was embedding environmental outcomes while building the nation and its prosperity—something that is not mutually exclusive.

In the 1980s, Bob Hawke's Labor government saved the Franklin River from being dammed. It was his government that kicked off Landcare, which is such an important part of the protection of our natural environment to this day. They put in place protections for the Daintree, Kakadu and 170,000 hectares of forest in the Tasmanian World Heritage area. Hawke's government reformed the native forest industry and protected the most important old-growth forests across the country. Under Hawke and Labor, Australia led the international push in 1989 for the prohibition of mining in Antarctica, ensuring to this day that that continent remains a serene place of natural beauty, peace and science. Under the Rudd and Gillard governments, Labor built the largest network of marine national parks in the world and set Australia on a path to a low-carbon future.

In this term of parliament, we've introduced the world-leading Nature Repair Market to foster environmental stewardship and nature repair around the nation. We've reformed the water trigger to protect our incredibly valuable water resources. And we have increased the reach of our environmental protection laws so the minister must assess all unconventional gas projects, including shale gas, which trigger our environmental laws.

Debate interrupted.

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