Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

At the 2022 federal election, then aspiring prime minister Anthony Albanese committed to delivering an ambitious package of environmental reform named the Nature Positive Plan. Nature Positive is a global movement to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 and achieve recovery by 2050. Three years later, the lack of substantive progress on this critically important area of policy is one of the most substantive failures of this term of government, and it's frequently raised in that vein with me by my constituents in Goldstein.

In the final sitting week of 2024, after much political brinkmanship in the Senate, Minister Plibersek was within striking distance of a deal with the crossbench to pass these reforms. But an intervention by the Prime Minister and the Western Australian premier left it and the urgent action that our native wildlife and environment need shelved indefinitely. The government has a record to folding to powerful corporate interests. This is just one example displayed during the term of this parliament.

Australia is endowed with diverse natural beauty and unique native wildlife. Both are central to our lifestyles, our culture and our national identity. With that comes a responsibility on us all to preserve and protect it. As an example, data provided by BirdLife Australia shows that 11 bird species that called Goldstein home are now classified as critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable—the Swift parrot, the fairy tern and the blue winged parrot—and 2,142 Australian animals, plants and unique ecological communities were officially recognised as being in danger of extinction last year.

Yet, even with clear data on the disastrous outlook for those species, this government's proposal for environmental reform in this term of parliament has not been the systemic reform our environment deserves. It was first chopped up across multiple packages of legislation and now terms of parliament. At every possible opportunity, I moved amendments to strengthen our environmental protection laws—for example, proposing an ambitious and world-leading definition of 'nature positive' and proper parliamentary oversight of the government's proposed environmental protection agency. Neither of these common-sense improvements were supported by the government. This is incredibly frustrating not only for the crossbench but also for our communities who put us here to get this done.

National environmental standards are the low-hanging fruit in this debate. Ambitious standards should form the foundation of Australia's environmental protection laws. Standards would provide assurance to conservationists that action is being taken, provide industry with the guardrails needed to make decisions with certainty and provide our environment with the urgent intervention it needs to restore and recover. Indeed, as Professor Graeme Samuel recommended in his review, legally enforceable standards should be legislated immediately. Standards should precede other areas of reform, such as an EPA, because they form the basis for environmental impact assessments across all levels of government, not just the Commonwealth. Unfortunately, this was not the approach adopted by the government. In fact, the government did the opposite. The legislative package didn't even mention standards. It is among the greatest missed opportunities of the 47th Parliament that we could not agree on a package of environmental reform, one with national environmental standards at its core. And I agree with the assistant minister to some degree: that's on all of us.

Australia has some of the most biologically diverse and carbon-dense native forests in the world. They're inhabited by among the most unique and diverse wildlife in the world: the koala, the kookaburra and the fierce little Tassie devil. Meanwhile, industrial logging of these natural assets results in huge amounts of carbon pollution into our atmosphere. The regional forest agreements that enable such logging should be abolished. This would be of benefit to a range of sectors, including ecotourism, and enable soil stability for agriculture. Untouched native forests enable more effective bushfire prevention. Older trees are more fire resistant, a healthy canopy holds more moisture and logging often leaves behind debris that can act as extra fuel for fire. The economy is turning away from this anyway and is increasingly taking many state governments along with it, but there's been the usual sluggish approach from the major parties on environmental reform throughout the 47th Parliament, while only the crossbench has stood up for the policies to protect and restore our native wildlife while providing certainty and establishing fair guardrails for industry to operate within. This is a balance that is possible to achieve, one missed by this government and this parliament, and, in that, we have failed our children.

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