Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's great to be able to make a contribution to the debate on this topic. Australia is fortunate to be a place of remarkable biodiversity, and we are all fortunate to have the stewardship of one of the seven continents on Earth, which includes the terrestrial environmental condition and all those ecosystems and the biodiversity that flows from that but also a remarkable marine estate. There's no way that you can take proper responsibility and stewardship for that environmental condition of biodiversity that depends upon it if you're not part of environmental collaborative and cooperative action, because clearly the kinds of factors that influence the environment and the health of our environment don't stop at national borders.

We've always understood this. It's been a feature of the work of Labor governments for a long period of time. I think it was a couple of days ago that we marked a significant anniversary with respect to the work that the Hawke government had done around the Franklin dam. Of course, it was the Hawke government that really led the outcomes around the current Antarctic Treaty, considering that in Australia we don't just take responsibility for our own island and continent nation; we feel a special responsibility for Antarctica as well. This government is going to continue that work. We know that it's in our own interests. We know that it's in keeping with our national character, because we've always been a nation that wants to put our shoulder to the wheel of that larger action and have that larger impact.

In Australia, the fact that our environment has suffered considerable harm over a period of time is well-established. Each and every environment report tells us that story. If we didn't have the environment report, we could look at the Graeme Samuel report that was commissioned by and provided to the former government. It said that Australia's environment is in poor state and is on a trajectory of decline. We can't allow that to continue to be the case. It would be utterly irresponsible. In order to reverse that trend and embark on a nature-positive pathway, we need to address the kinds of things that impact our environment. It is about deforestation and habitat loss and invasive species, but it's also about climate change. Climate change has added to and impacted upon those existing vectors of harm.

That's why almost the first thing that the government did was re-engage internationally on the question of cooperative action on climate change. We significantly improved Australia's emissions reduction commitment to 43 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030. That was a more than 50 per cent increase in terms of its ambition compared to the target that the coalition had set. We legislated that. We recommitted to our participation in the Green Climate Fund, which is the way that developed prosperous countries like Australia ensure that there is support for less developed countries to take action as part of this cooperative effort. We know that it's only through that kind of work together with other nations that we can keep global warming below the kind of level that would have a catastrophic impact on human health and on our environment as well.

When it comes to biodiversity more broadly, we support the '30 by 30' commitment. It was last year that Australia joined with 196 countries in agreeing to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. It's a landmark agreement to stop new extinctions. We have to start by recognising, sadly, that Australia has been a world leader when it comes to mammal extinctions. It's not a title we want to hold, but, if we're not prepared to take concerted action, unfortunately a significant number of threatened and endangered species are likely to go closer to the brink of extinction. We can't allow that to happen, so we joined that agreement. More importantly, we've started taking concrete actions to put that agreement into effect. We've added 40 million hectares of land and sea to the national estate as protected terrestrial and marine terrain. That's a significant difference—40 million hectares of additional protected area as part of that commitment to see 30 per cent of Australia's land territory and 30 per cent of our ocean territory protected by 2030.

Of course, when it comes to marine territory, we've made significant progress in that direction, because, under the previous Labor government, we introduced the first national marine protected area network. Unfortunately, when the coalition government came to power, they cut the sanctuary areas under that plan by a significant amount. I think 50 per cent was cut for the highest protected areas, as they reduced funding to the environment department by 40 per cent and defunded a number of environmental protection measures.

Well, we're starting to turn that around. We're doubling the number of Indigenous rangers. We've provided $500 million for environmental work when it comes to saving native species, combating invasive species and seeing ecological condition restored. There's $200 million for the Urban Rivers and Catchments Program. Of course, just in the last couple of weeks of parliament, we've been debating the next stage of the big-picture nature-positive reforms, which will deliver a new independent environmental protection agency. That is a massive reform which has been long argued for and long sought after. We are delivering that as we do the two things that are necessary—the bigger picture, longer lasting systemic reform and the immediate, right here and now, changes that improve environmental condition and prevent Australia's biodiversity from being pushed closer to the brink.

In terms of ocean, which is a particular interest of mine and an area that I had some responsibility for in my former role as the Shadow Assistant Minister for the Environment, we have joined the High Ambition Coalition to end plastic pollution. We know that plastic in our oceans is a massive problem. If current trends continue, it's likely that there will be a greater weight of plastic in the ocean than fish by the time we get to 2050. That is a scary proposition. We know that microplastic that is in the ocean and is consumed by marine species ends up in human beings. There are some estimates that suggest that we are effectively consuming a credit card's worth of plastic ourselves every few weeks. Much of that material was never designed to be consumed. Needless to say, it's material that contains colourants, fire retardants and other kinds of chemicals that are carcinogenic in their nature. They're not things that human beings should be consuming.

But, when we don't take care of plastic waste and we allow it to go fugitively into the environment, inevitably that comes back to bite us. That's why we have been active in working with the High Ambition Coalition to end plastic pollution and, equally, making sure that we're undertaking change domestically to improve recycling and to avoid unnecessary plastic use in the first place, with the abolition of lots of different kinds of single-use plastics, which is something that the national government needs to lead but which, of course, the state and territory governments implement.

I can also say that I look forward to the forthcoming conference of the International Whaling Commission. I was very fortunate to go to the last one, which was early in this term in 2022. It was in Slovenia, and I represented the Minister for the Environment and Water at that conference. At that meeting of the IWC, which does vital work in protecting whales and advancing the cause of whale conservation, Nick Gales, a brilliant Australian scientist and conservationist, was elected deputy chair. He has done some great work, and obviously it would be great if he could continue to do that—perhaps in an even more senior role than deputy chair. That is another aspect of Australia's engagement on the international stage in the interests of achieving better environmental outcomes.

We know that, if you want to protect the environment, our remarkable biodiversity and the condition of the global environment—particularly around things like climate change—you have to act locally but you have to work cooperatively and collaboratively on the international stage. The Minister for the Environment and Water, the member for Sydney, has said there is no time to waste, and she has certainly wasted no time in resuming Australia's role as an international leader.

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