Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am surprised this motion is before us here in the federal parliament. It is a matter that is entirely for the Victorian state government. It surprises me that we are debating this topic today. Sometimes you will have these debates in the leadup to a state election, where friendly fellow-travellers of a political party may try and use the floor of parliament to score a few points for their allies in their community, but we are not due for a state election in Victoria until November 2026. So it does surprise me that we are here today debating a matter that is entirely the responsibility of the Victorian government.

But it does give me an opportunity to talk about the great work the Commonwealth—the federal government—is doing for national and marine parks. After a wasted decade, the environment is back under Labor, and we are prioritising making sure we are doing our bit to protect our natural environment. You could say it was a wasted decade or that there were deliberate decisions made by the previous government to destroy our natural environment.

We are working to protect more of our natural environment. Since coming to government, we have doubled the funding to better look after our Commonwealth national parks, including Kakadu and Uluru, after the Liberals—to be frank—let them fall apart. The parts the Commonwealth manage in national parks have been closed to visitors because they were unsafe. Roofs were coming off buildings, alarming crocodile warning signs were missing or broken. We, in government, have made sure we have corrected this through infrastructure grants and supporting the community to get these areas back to being safe for visitors.

We've also added new areas to Kakadu National Park, extending the area of protection. It's not just Kakadu. We've tripled the size of the Macquarie Island Marine Park, the biggest act of conservation in 2023. We've quadrupled the size of the Heard and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve, the biggest contribution to ocean conservation on the planet this year. This is what our government, an Australian government, has done. These decisions now mean that Australia's protecting more oceans than any other country on Earth. We've also voted to ratify the High Seas Treaty, which helps protect seas and waters beyond our own. Our natural environment is so precious, and as the King himself said in an address here in this building, it is upon our generation as leaders to protect and support the environment for future generations and it is a moral duty to do so.

On cultural heritage: back in 2020, all of us remember the devastation and the tragedy of a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal sacred site being destroyed by a mining company. It was tragic and, sadly, legal. The Australian people were quietly outraged and appalled. And since then, all political parties have said that this tragedy should never be allowed to happen again.

There were two parliamentary inquiries chaired by the Liberal member for Leichhardt. Both inquiries recommended updating the national laws to better protect First Nations heritage. Work on updating the national laws was started by the previous Liberal government and has been continued by this government. We are consulting carefully on updating cultural heritage laws.

As usual, the draft laws will be released for public comment. There will be the standard parliamentary inquiries, and everyone will be given the opportunity to have their say. This is about updating our existing national laws to make sure a tragedy like what we saw in 2020 doesn't happen again. Our goal is to have laws that better protect First Nations heritage whilst giving businesses, farmers and others more certainty, and we believe we can do both by working together.

A final comment I wish to make is to remind members of the coalition, particularly Victorian members of the coalition, that this is the federal parliament, and we should really do our best to stay in our lane. The times we have to stand on our feet to debate matters that this parliament can address are limited, so let's focus on federal laws, federal changes and ways in which we can better support our environment at a federal level.

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