Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make my contribution to the Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill 2024 and the Nature Positive (Environment Information Australia) Bill 2024. The introduction of these bills marks another important milestone in the protection of Australia's unique ecosystems, another milestone that builds on the Albanese government's strong action on climate change and environmental protection since coming into office in 2022.

On climate change, the government has already increased Australia's woefully inadequate emissions reduction targets, bringing us into line with the rest of the world, and enshrined them in legislation. It has passed changes to the Safeguard Mechanism to ensure Australia's highest emitters reduce their emissions in line with our emission reduction targets. It has introduced and then tripled the Capacity Investment Scheme and set a target of 82 per cent renewables in the NEM by 2030. Only recently, I spoke on the bill to permanently introduce the Net Zero Economy Authority to help manage the transition to net zero, another critical step in climate action.

On the environment, the Albanese government has expanded the water trigger to ensure all new gas developments consider their impact on water; protected an extra 40 million hectares of the Australian ocean and bush—an area which is the size of Germany; and invested $500 million to better protect Australia's threatened plants and animals, tackling invasive species. It has doubled funding for national parks, introduced the world's first nature repair market, rescued the Murray-Darling Basin plan after a decade of neglect under those opposite and delivered $1.2 billion to protect the Great Barrier Reef. And the list is not finished there.

In two years, this government has done more for the environment and climate action than the previous government did in the decade they were in power, because this government understand the importance of protecting Australia's unique and fragile ecosystems, and we recognise that is much more to be done. It is no longer good enough to protect nature; it is vital that we also restore it, which is why the Albanese government released the Nature Positive Plan at the end of 2022, committing to not only protect nature but leave it in a better state than what we found it.

'Nature positive' is not just a slogan, and these bills properly define what it means. Simply, it will be the improvement of our ecosystems as well as the species that rely on them, and that is important because it will mean that there will be a legislated definition and baseline that the environment can be measured against. It will be the first time a country has defined and legislated 'nature positive'. This forms the building blocks to the government's approach to environmental protection and is fundamental to the other measures established in these bills, the first of which is Environment Protection Australia, or the EPA.

In the establishment of an EPA, the Albanese government delivers on another election commitment. It is an important step in environmental protection. The EPA, once fully established, will play an important role in delivering on the Albanese government's Nature Positive Plan and will reinforce Australia's environmental laws. It will be independent and have strong new monitoring, compliance and enforcement powers. This follows a recent audit by the Minister for the Environment and Water, which found that one in seven developments may be breaching their offset conditions. Additionally, the Samuel review found that the regulator failed to fulfil the necessary functions of enforcing development conditions. It found that enforcement was rare and that penalties must be more than simply the cost of doing business.

The government has also commissioned and released the audit into environmental offsets, which highlighted further failings in the current system. These bills form part of the Albanese government's response to the audits and the Samuel review while the work on the next stage of our environmental reforms continues. The EPA will have a wide range of powers, including the ability to issue environmental protection orders, or stop-work orders, to those breaking the laws, and it will be able to audit businesses to ensure compliance. The body will also advise the minister and the government on how Australia's environmental laws can be improved. Importantly, the government will be increasing penalties to ensure that they act as a genuine deterrent. The new civil penalty formula will be in line with those applied to financial crime, and, for the most extreme and serious breaches of the law, courts will be able to impose penalties of up to $780 million.

These bills will also establish Environment Information Australia. The head of EIA will be an independent decision-maker with a clear legislative mandate to provide authoritative, high-quality environmental data and information to EPA, the minister and the public via a public website. It will track and report on the progress of Australia's environmental goals, such as the Albanese government's commitment to protecting 30 per cent of Australia's land and seas by 2030, and it will publish the state of the environment report every two years instead of five to encourage greater transparency on the health of Australia's environment and allow for more responsive action. The bills will also make it a requirement that the government of the day commit publicly to the national environmental goals in response to the report, and the government will be required to report on that progress.

The EIA will develop a database that can be easily accessed by business to make federal environmental approvals smoother and to help avoid duplication in scientific studies. The EIA will work in collaboration with the EPA to ensure that the EPA is acting on the best available data, alongside state and territory governments, to enable better availability and use of that data, both in planning and decision-making. Currently, environmental information is fragmented, of an unknown quality and often difficult to access. The EIA will play an important role in providing reliable data and information, which is fundamental to effective protection.

The Albanese government went to the 2022 election promising a strong EPA, and this is what these bills will deliver. They will ensure not only that there is a strong compliance body—and stronger penalties to ensure compliance—but that there is also reliable and robust information to inform environmental decisions. These bills represent the second stage of the Albanese government's ambitious environmental reforms, and I look forward to working with the minister to better protect what makes Australia so unique. I now commend the bills to the House.

See this speech in context