Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Australia's primary environmental law, the EPBC Act, is broken. The state of our environment is deteriorating, and right now this government has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to strengthen Australia's environmental framework. But the legislation before us today—the Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill 2024, the Nature Positive (Environment Information Australia) Bill 2024 and the Nature Positive (Environment Law Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024—falls short of that opportunity, and it simply doesn't deliver on the promises made by the Labor Party during the 2022 election campaign. Back then, to win our confidence and many people's votes, the party promised to do three things: (1) fix the broken system; (2) end the extinction crisis; and (3) overhaul our broken environmental laws. Those promises may have been ambitious at the time, but many, including myself, expected to see them delivered. After all, a focused government can move mountains, as we have seen with the scale of the industrial relations reform this government has successfully pursued.

To be clear, we need both a national environmental protection agency and a national agency to oversee the collection of environmental information. But while two pieces of legislation in front of us right now seek to establish those bodies, the lack of public participation and community consultation in them and the government's failure to progress the full reform agenda as promised in the Nature Positive Plan is concerning. I'm also disappointed that, despite significant engagement with myself and others on the crossbench discussing amendments that may increase my community's confidence in the legislation, the minister has chosen to proceed without change. For this reason I support the crossbench senators who were able to refer the bills to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee last week, as I believe independent scrutiny of this legislation could make it stronger.

Recently I held a forum in North Sydney with representatives from five environmental organisations, for my community to hear from them directly on the progress of the environmental protection reform agenda. Sadly, there was broad consensus amongst the panellists that the current reforms do not live up to the government's commitment to end extinctions and rebuild public trust. The insightful questions asked by the audience that night and the discussions I had with community members both before and after the panel made it clear that there is still a trust deficit when it comes to environmental decision-making in this country, and people do not doubt that the current legal system designed to protect our environment is broken. This government has made much of the 2021 State of the environment report, which told us of the condition of rivers, reefs, wetlands, soil, native vegetation and biodiversity and its continued decline at a terrifying rate, whilst the list of plant and animal species identified as threatened or endangered has been lengthening.

Australia has lost more mammal species than any other continent. It has one of the highest rates of species decline in the developed world and is the only developed country that is a deforestation hot spot. Meanwhile, climate change is compounding damage from deforestation, invasive species pollution and urban expansion, and this poor environmental scorecard is arguably only being enabled by our broken Commonwealth environmental law.

Professor Samuel's scathing review of the Howard-era EPBC Act painted a dire picture of a dysfunctional legal framework lacking integrity and a need of fundamental reform. Professor Samuel found that the lack of public trust in the act's ability to protect nature stems from poor transparency, inadequate opportunities for community participation in decision-making and approval processes, limited pathways for legal review and perceptions of poor accountability for government decisions. Yet, two years into a three-year term, we have seen no significant improvements in any of those areas from this government.

In 2022 the Albanese government released the Nature Positive Plan, articulating its commitment to reform Australia's environmental laws. The plan was ambitious but nothing more than what was necessary. Late last year, the government introduced the first stage of reform legislating the nature repair market and expanding the water trigger in the EPBC Act. At that time I expressed concerns we were putting the cart before the horse, building a mechanism that allowed those that wished to destroy to simply pay their way out of it. The minister assured my community that my concern was not warranted, that the national protection standards would be in place before the market came into effect. Then, in April this year, the environment minister announced the nature-positive reforms would not proceed as planned but, rather, would move forward in a slower, staged manner. Concerningly, we now don't have a definitive timeline for the delivery of the one thing that absolutely underpins all this reform—the new national standards. It seems this government has overpromised and will now underdeliver.

Establishing the EPA and the EIA were identified as two priorities within the government's nature-positive reforms, but, as they exist in the current legislation, many, including myself, are concerned they do not meet the ambition originally promised. Many of the objects, functions and duties of the EPA in relation to public participation, transparency of decisions and accountability in government's mechanisms are not included in this overriding governing legislation. As a result, with an election due in the next 10 months my community is concerned the next critical stage of the nature-positive reforms will not be delivered. That would leave us with flaccid agencies that are as impotent as the laws they are tasked with enforcing.

With significant aspects of the nature reform package relegated to stage 3 with no due date, the new tough cop on the beat, the EPA, will be a rookie cop, enforcing the same, weak, out-of-date laws. I acknowledge that the Samuel report recommended a staged approach to the nature-positive reforms and that Professor Samuel has, himself, supported the minister in the approach the government is taking. Even so, I remain concerned that if this government fails to deliver all three stages in this parliamentary term, the reform to date could be wasted. Two years was long enough for this government to deliver the most significant industrial relations reform this country has seen in decades. Two years should have been long enough to also get this work done if it had been prioritised to the same extent.

I'll speak now to the specifics of the bills. The Nature Positive (Environment Information Australia) Bill 2024 establishes the head of Environment Information Australia, setting out their functions, including preparing a reporting framework and state of the environment reports, maintaining environmental economic accounts and identifying national environmental information assets. Looking at it in isolation, I'm broadly comfortable with it. The second piece of legislation, the Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill 2024, establishes a statutory agency to be known as Environment Protection Australia, and it's that bill and the Nature Positive (Environment Law Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024 that I want to focus on.

The nature-positive plan promised an independent EPA would be established to undertake regulatory and implementation functions under the EPBC Act and other relevant Commonwealth laws. Within that context it's arguable that independence and trust will be predicated on access to information and meaningful consultation to ensure transparency, accountability and integrity in environmental decision-making. Therefore, these principles should be at the heart of the EPA and be present in the primary legislation, yet they are not there currently.

The recent Narrabri gas project in the Pilliga Forest provides a great example of what can and will go wrong when meaningful consultation is not at the centre of project development. This project, which involves drilling 850 gas wells over a thousand hectares of land in a project site that cover two-thirds of the Pilliga Forest and overlies part of the Great Artesian Basin, is close to my home town of Coonabarabran. Given this, I can attest to the fact that, as the largest native forest west of the Great Dividing Range, the Pilliga is a beautiful place to visit. Importantly, it's home to several threatened species, including the koala, the Pilliga mouse, the regent honeyeater, the superb parrot, the spotted-tail quoll, the south-eastern long-eared bat and the swift parrot.

When this was proposed, a phenomenal 23,000 submissions were made with 98 per cent opposing the project. However, the then environment minister's statement of reasons for approving the project only addressed public submissions in five of 670 paragraphs, and the community got no explanation of how their submissions had been considered in coming to the final decision. That says everything that needs to be said about how broken this current system is. Under it, ministers can tick the consultation box, but that doesn't mean they have meaningfully engaged with the community. Rather, meaningful public participation occurs when a decision-maker engages genuinely with public feedback, uses it when coming to their decision and explains to the public with full transparency how they got to the final decision. To not have those requirements in this primary piece of legislation seems to make it fundamentally flawed.

Genuine consultation should be understood as, at a minimum, the decision maker's duty to respond to the substantive concerns and arguments put forward in the public submissions process. As Professor Samuel said himself:

Effective, outcomes-based decision-making, where the community can engage with the process and understand the reasons for decisions, is the primary way to improve trust.

Leaving consultation to matters of policy and giving proponents the power to control if, how and when that consultation happens is not in the spirit of the recommendations, observations or calls to date. The regulator should have the responsibility to ensure access to information and meaningful consultation, and the time to ensure that responsibility is now when the legislation is before us to establish the EPA. That's why we'll be proposing amendments to bring this level of responsibility, integrity and accountability into the EPA through this bill before us. Ultimately, the fix is not hard. It simply requires the bill to be strengthened to ensure the EPA is responsible for community access to information about proposed developments and that the community has an adequate opportunity and timeframe to express their views. As it currently stands, this is not the case. That responsibility is delegated to project proponents. I've got to say, that's a bit like putting the cat in charge of the milk.

There are several other elements of this bill that I believe should be improved. They include the governance model of the EPA, which many in my community currently believe is inadequate. As the agency will be established as a single-member regulator, the legislation does not allow for a statutory board to provide independent guidance or strategic direction to the EPA CEO. Rather, an advisory group will provide expert advice to that person to support decision-making. However, as it's currently drafted, both the make-up of and the advice received from the advisory group will be opaque. This risks enabling politicisation or conflicts of interest, but could be easily fixed.

Secondly, the EPA's objects and CEO's functions are currently nondescript and do not reference several important concepts, including community rights and climate change. Again, these could be easily addressed, were the legislation to be amended to include clearer objectives and duties to the public, including the provision of information about proposed actions and a responsibility to ensure meaningful consultation.

Interestingly, unlike many state EPAs, the national EPA is currently not required to develop or implement a charter of consultation, and this is more than a little concerning, given it's a break with current best practice. A charter of consultation would assist in ensuring the EPA has clear functions relating to community consultation from its inception, and it's critically important given the proposed community engagement and consultation standard will not be implemented until stage 3.

While the bill provides for information about decisions to be published on a register, it is silent as to the level of transparency required, and again I think this is a missed opportunity. Best practice is to ensure crucial concepts are defined and contained in primary legislation, and I urge the minister and her team to please ensure that is the case here.

Finally, it's unarguable that climate change is the biggest threat to our environment, yet climate considerations are not currently integrated into our national environmental framework, nor is it proposed that they be under this new legislation. Now, many on the crossbench have already spoken to this, so I simply want to echo their calls. While the argument against including climate change in this legislation has been that it is best covered by the safeguard mechanism, I'd suggest that an issue as large as climate change should be referenced across multiple legislative instruments.

Ultimately, enabling these improvements to the EPA falls squarely within the scope of stage 2 of the nature-positive reforms, and I continue to encourage the minister and her team to seriously consider adopting some of the suggested amendments.

A strong, independent environmental regulator is in the best interests of everyone, as not only will it reassure the public but it will also act as a second point of reference or support for projects the government wishes to see proceed. For example, just this past week, the government approved gas expansion plans in the Surat basin that will see more than 120 new gas wells developed out to 2080. That announcement follows the recent gas strategy that was also announced by this government, and consequently many across my community are concerned that the government is pursuing an agenda which is contrary to achieving our net zero target. The presence and input of a strong, independent, community minded EPA that is obliged to prioritise community voices would go a long way to reassuring the community in circumstances exactly like the two I've just spoken about.

In closing, I recognise that the establishment of the EPA and the EIA is important, and it's important to ensure the bureaucracy is put in place as soon as practicable. I also recognise that Professor Samuel himself has supported a staged approach. Yet there are serious deficits in the bills before us, particularly when it comes to acknowledging a bureaucracy's responsibility to the community it serves.

Finally, I remain extremely concerned that tranche 3, including the national environmental standards, may never happen. Fixing our broken system and restoring nature won't be possible without substantive legislative reform that has nature protection, community consultation and integrity at its heart. And no member of the government or any political party should ever assume they have another term to get essential work done. (Time expired)

Debate adjourned.

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