Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak in favour of this important bill that is the next stage of this government working towards the Nature Positive Plan. This involves two elements: firstly, the creation of Australia's first national independent environmental protection agency, the EPA, which will be a body with strong new powers and penalties to protect nature; secondly, it is a step forward when it comes to accountability and transparency with a new body called Environment Information Australia. This will give government more information when it comes to its important strategic decision-making and it will give businesses earlier access to the latest high-quality environmental data. It will also report on progress on national environmental goals and release State of the environment reports. This is part of a broader agenda.

The Albanese government went to the last election promising a strong national, independent environment protection agency and, with this bill, we are delivering on that. In addition, since coming to government under Minister Plibersek's leadership, passion and diligence in this portfolio, we have already passed laws that strengthen environmental governance and legislation. Last year, the first stage of the Nature Positive Plan was introduced when we passed the nature repair market, enabling businesses to invest in the rehabilitation of nature in a rigorous and clearly monitored way. We have also increased the reach of our environmental laws so that the Minister for the Environment and Water is able to, and indeed must, assess all gas and fracking projects in relation to their impacts on water resources. It is important to note that we are delivering more than ever in relation to programs, projects, policies as part of our broader nature positive Australia.

This bill is part of the broader response to a number of recommendations that were put forward in the Samuel review. The Samuel review was an independent review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which is undertaken every 10 years. These are very important reviews that allow government, parliament and other stakeholders to see if the act is operating as it should. This particular review of the act, which was led by former ACCC Chair Professor Graham Samuel, was released in 2021, and this report made the case for serious reform.

One of the major themes of the report was the need for greater Commonwealth-level involvement in a range of areas of regulation. Some of the key recommendations were recommendation 1, which stated that matters of national environmental significance should be dealt with by Commonwealth responsibilities for the environment. Recommendation 3 was that the EPBC Act should be immediately amended to enable the development and implementation of legally enforceable national environmental standards. There were also a number of recommendations that related to compliance: recommendation 30, which is the Commonwealth should immediately increase the independence of and enhance Commonwealth compliance and enforcement; and recommendation 33, which was to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the EPBC Act, and the Commonwealth should immediately and—there was a sub part of that recommendation—establish a national environmental standard for environmental monitoring and evaluation of outcomes to ensure that all parties understand their obligations to monitor, evaluate and report.

There were a number of issues identified in relation to audits. An audit ordered by Minister Plibersek found that one in seven projects using environmental offsets under our environmental laws had either clearly or potentially breached their approval conditions. A separate audit found that one in four had potentially failed to secure enough environmental credits to offset the damage they were doing.

There are a number of aspects to this. One is the difficulty of matching offsets with projects, and, indeed, this is an area of microeconomic reform, which I think is extremely important, and I do remember speaking on that particular bill. It's very important that we improve these markets and have improved those markets. We can have aspirations for offsets, but, unless we have markets that effectively match projects with environmental offsets and unless we monitor those offsets effectively, then the whole scheme won't operate as it should. And those audits just confirmed that without redesigned markets, which this government has legislated, we wouldn't see the kinds of offsets that are needed. It's also another reason why the EPA is needed at the Commonwealth level.

This bill, in part, is setting up a new independent Commonwealth environmental protection agency. This will be Australia's first national independent environmental agency with strong powers and penalties to protect nature. At the same time, it will be based on a number of other recommendations from the Samuel review, ensuring that it is possible to make fast and better decisions. It will be charged with delivering accountable, efficient outcomes-focused and transparent environmental regulatory decision-making. The EPA will provide assurance that environmental outcomes are being met.

Of course, part of this will be increasing penalties. For extremely serious breaches of federal environmental law, courts will be able to impose penalties of up to $780 million, in some circumstances. Those kinds of penalties would only be for particularly egregious breaches and for particularly large organisations, but it is important that penalties match the scale of activities in a regulatory area, and, in this particular area, it is important that penalties be increased for deterrence and rigour to be in place.

The bill also sets up Environmental Information Australia. This will be an independent position with a legislative mandate to provide environmental data and information to the new EPA, to the minister and also to the public. Environmental data collections will be collected and integrated by the EIA. This will mean that there is consistent and reliable information on the state of the environment across the country. This will inform decision-making and rigorously track our progress against goals—for example, our goal of protecting 30 per cent of lands and oceans by 2030. The EIA will work with Australia's experts, our scientists, our First Nations people and other key stakeholders to collect the highest quality data and to produce consistent tracking of the state of Australia's environment.

Lord Kelvin, a famous scientist, a famous engineer, once said that unless one has the ability to measure something, one has a poor and meagre understanding of it, and this is true in a regulatory area such as this. Unless we have high-quality data, unless we have consistent data over time, unless we are tracking that data and unless we are publishing that data, for transparency purposes, so that it is accessible for third parties, then I think our regulatory arrangements won't be functioning to the extent that they should be. So this is a really important step forward.

Indeed, the EIA's promotion of accountability and transparency was a key element of Professor Samuel's review. Recommendation 11 of that review was that the Commonwealth government should increase the transparency of the operation of the EPBC Act by immediately improving the availability of information as required by national environmental standards. This is something that Professor Samuel well understood—that information is absolutely key if our regulatory ecosystem is going to function well. The EPA will use high-quality data that is collated by the EIA, and it will deliver proportionate and effective risk based compliance and enforcement actions, using that high-quality data and information. It will provide assurance that environmental outcomes are being met.

A number of stakeholders have commented on this, of course. It has been an area of great interest. The business community has expressed strong support for providing more rigour in this area. The Business Council of Australia, for example, has said:

The establishment of the Environment Information Australia is a positive step in ensuring businesses and communities have transparency in their data.

We know that business, firstly, desires certainty in regulatory arrangements, particularly where they're making long-term decisions. In this instance, not only is there certainty in the decision-making that the EPA will undertake, as a result of the regulatory arrangements established under the bill, but, as they said in that quote, there will be greater transparency for businesses, for the public and for other stakeholders, such as academics and scientists, given that the EIA will be making high-quality data more available. Professor Graeme Samuel said that, in the broad response to his report, the government and the minister are doing exactly what they should be doing, and he also acknowledged the complexity of this policy space.

As I mentioned before, we have the Business Council of Australia reflecting positively on the fact that the government is taking steps to provide stronger but also more transparent regulatory arrangements, and we have the Urban Development Institute of Australia providing broad support for the direction that the minister and the government are taking. The National Farmers Federation has said that, for a number of years, its members have indicated that the current act is broken, so they indicated a desire for reform as well. When it comes to stakeholders in the broader environmental movement, the WWF has indicated that the EPA is a potential game changer and the ACF has indicated that it welcomes the government announcement to set up an agency to enforce environmental laws.

What we have is a very complex policy situation. We have a situation that had not been attended to for far too long. We had a major review undertaken by Professor Samuel, which pointed to a number of serious problems in the previous regime, problems which had been acknowledged across the gamut of stakeholders engaged in this sector, whether it be environmental groups, business groups or other stakeholders involved in the regulation of the environment. What they all said was that we need, firstly, more rigorous and certain decision-making at a national level. It's taken far too long for a national independent regulatory body to be established. Secondly, there was an acknowledgement across the stakeholder community that it is absolutely critical that we have published information of the highest quality, collated from a range of sources.

In terms of local stakeholders, I've received many emails and other forms of communication from my electorate, indicating that my community wants to see progress in this area—that they support the establishment of a national regulator and that they support efforts by government to create and publish more rigorous information in this space in order for there to be greater transparency. And that is undoubtedly also the case for many other members in this place. This is an area where there is a broad groundswell of community support for timely and, one might say, overdue action.

So this is an important response. It's not the first response of this government. As I mentioned earlier, there have been a number of other acts already in this term, important acts in this space, but these two very important bills respond to some of the key recommendations of the Samuel review, a very important review of a piece of legislation that needs reform, which this government, in recognition of its election promise and that review, is delivering.

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