Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Water. How is the Albanese Labor government delivering on its promise to protect, restore and manage Australia's natural environment? What challenges has it faced in achieving these protections?

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Nationals will just remain silent for this answer—hopefully.

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

I want to thank the member for Fremantle for his question. He is truly one of this parliament's greatest environmentalists.

Labor has delivered more to protect our environment in the last nine days than those opposite did in nine years. In fact, in this sitting of parliament, we have rescued the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, protecting the animals and the plants of Australia's largest inland river system and making sure that the three million people who rely this river system for their drinking water—the farmers, towns and communities—are able to share that water resource.

In fact, we've also passed our legislation to establish the world's first nature repair market, bringing more private and philanthropic investment into environmental restoration, without greenwashing, and supporting farmers and First Nations communities to look after their land. The Northern Land Council called this a game changer for Aboriginal people across northern Australia. And we have made good on our promise to update the water trigger in our national environmental laws, meaning that all unconventional gas projects will be assessed against their impact on our water resources.

This has been the biggest week for environmental protection in over a decade—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The minister will pause. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition will cease interjecting. She is warned. No more interjections!

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

All of this comes on top of the policies we have delivered already: doubling funding for our national parks; doubling the number of Indigenous rangers; putting net-zero emissions firmly into our national law; boosting renewable energy projects—we have doubled the rate of approvals for renewable energy projects; restoring our urban rivers; protecting the Great Barrier Reef; increasing our recycling capacity by more than a million tonnes every year; and tripling the size of the Macquarie Island Marine Park, one of the biggest conservation decisions made this year anywhere in the world. In fact, we have added 40 million hectares of land and sea to the area under conservation in Australia.

When we establish Australia's first environment protection agency, we will do even better. When we rewrite our national environmental laws, we will do even better. Labor is turning the tide after a decade of neglect by those opposite—a decade where the Liberals and the Nationals undermined climate action, sabotaged the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, launched 22 different energy policies and didn't land a single one of them—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The minister will pause. The Leader of the Nationals has been interjecting consistently all through this answer and through question time. He will leave the chamber under 94(a).

The member for Maranoa then left the chamber.

Opposition members interjecting—

Order! Members on my left will cease interjecting! The minister will continue with her answer.

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

Australians voted for an end to the political fighting over climate change; they voted for a government that will fight to get things done for nature, and that's exactly what Labor is doing. (Time expired)