Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Goldstein for moving the amendment. I want to acknowledge that the intent behind it is absolutely in line with the intent of the government in moving this legislation. There will be a baseline, but it will be set by experts—not by me, not by this parliament at an arbitrary date.

We need to know what the baseline is because we need to make sure that we're measuring progress and that we've got a consistent baseline measurement from which to measure that progress. As members know, one of the additional things that this package of legislation does is establish an independent head of Environment Information Australia, and then we ask that independent expert to set the baseline in consultation with other experts. We're looking for data nerds to do this work, if I can put it that way, rather than the parliament doing it. It will be one of the first tasks given to the head of Environment Information Australia. The legislation says that the baseline must be set by 31 December 2025. That's in schedule 13 of the transitional and consequential amendments bill.

The head of Environment Information Australia will consider factors that affect the condition of ecosystems across the country from time to time, like droughts, bushfires and floods. One of the problems with just picking a date that covers all of the indicators right across Australia is, if you've had particularly bad bushfires in one half of the country but not the other half of the country, if you've had flooding somewhere but not elsewhere, or drought, you can have the baseline thrown out by those sorts of anomalies, so we actually need someone who's an expert at evaluating data to make sure we're getting the baseline right.

As the member for the Goldstein's acknowledged, we need to make sure that we're measuring progress in the improvement of our ecosystem but not from a baseline that has been either positively influenced or negatively influenced over a longer trajectory because of an anomaly in the weather or some other type of anomaly. As the member for Goldstein said, the baseline will provide a national reference point for key indicators and metrics for measuring diversity, abundance, resilience and integrity of ecosystems and species. Nature-positive reporting may include additional reference points as indicators, metrics and data improve over time.

When reporting on nature positive, the Head of Environment Information Australia will be able to evaluate and report on actions to improve our ecosystems. The Head of EIA will start by looking at the priorities that I've agreed to with the states and territories. The state and territory environment ministers have already agreed with us that Australia's national priorities include a coming out of the Kunming-Montreal agreement, protecting and conserving 30 per cent of Australia's land and sea by 2030, restoring degraded land, controlling and eradicating invasive plants and animals, no new extinctions and creating progress towards creating a circular economy.

It's also very important—and I thank the member for Goldstein for acknowledging this—that the term 'nature positive' will be defined in this bill. This is a world first. Australia does have a right to be proud of it, and I understand why members are determined to make sure that we go beyond definition to implementation in our progress towards nature positive. It's a relatively new term internationally, and creating progress towards that includes that progress resting on a commonly understood definition of what nature positive means.

While goals and objectives are also important, we've demonstrated our commitment to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 through our support for the Global Biodiversity Framework under the Convention on Biological Diversity, and through our national biodiversity strategy and action plan, which is something that Australia has given to the international community to show that we are prepared to be judged globally on the progress that we make. I thank the member once again for her very thoughtful contributions.

See this speech in context