Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just picking up from where I finished before question time: I was talking about Labor's proud legacy of environmental reform and how, since coming to government, we have taken strong action to combat climate change and lower our emissions so that Australia meets its targets and protects its natural resources threatened by the changing climate. Today the Albanese Labor government continues that proud history with the second tranche of its environmental laws—the establishment of an independent environmental protection agency, the introduction of better data and accountability for decision-making and the world-first decision to enshrine a definition of 'nature positive' in legislation.

We've heard some criticism around the chamber about these new laws—from some that they don't go far enough and that the reforms should have all been done at the same time, and from those opposite that the reforms are too extreme. We've also faced criticism that the EPBC Act should be implemented first. Setting up the EPA before bringing in the EPBC Act reforms is a crucial step to ensuring the new EPBC Act will be enforced. I'm personally very committed to advocacy on strengthening our environmental laws, as this is a critical part of our entire approach to protecting nature and the way we approach climate change. This is something my constituents are very engaged with and something I am confident that we will be doing and that our minister is deeply committed to—that is, something that needs to be done properly. We are talking about around a thousand pages of legislation in the current act, so consultation is continuing around that.

Professor Graeme Samuel, the author of the review of the EPBC Act, has himself said that the government and the minister are doing everything exactly as they should be; I don't underestimate the complexity of what has to be done. The Australian Conservation Foundation has welcomed the government's announcement that it will set up an agency to enforce environmental laws—something that previous governments failed to do. The World Wide Fund for Nature has described the new EPA as 'a potential game changer'. The Australian Marine Conservation Society has described these new institutions as 'essential and welcome'. The Business Council of Australia has commended the government for 'taking the right step', and the Urban Development Institute of Australia has said 'the minister is doing the right thing'. The National Farmers Federation has also supported these reforms, saying:

Our members have said for years that the current Act is broken. It is hard to engage with producers who want to do the right thing, and in some instances it's preventing best practice management of the landscape.

This is Australia's first national environmental protection agency, and it will have strong new powers and penalties to enforce federal environmental laws. The EPA is an important part of delivering the government's Nature Positive Plan. It's ensuring that the framework behind setting up the EPA is on its way so it's ready to administer the new environmental laws. The EPA would administer Australia's national environmental laws to better protect our environment and make faster, better decisions. It will be charged with delivering accountable, efficient, outcome focused and transparent environmental regulatory decision-making.

Our government has undertaken offsets audits which found that one in seven projects using environmental offsets under our environmental laws had either clearly or potentially breached their approval conditions. Another audit found that one in four had failed to secure enough environmental credits to offset the damage they were doing. This is unacceptable. We need to urgently strengthen enforcement of environmental protection laws.

To ensure environmental protection, the EPA will be able to issue environmental protection orders to lawbreakers and perform environmental audits on businesses to ensure that they are compliant with environment approval conditions. The penalties for breaching environmental law will also be increased, bringing maximum fines into line with punishments for serious financial offences such as insider trading and market manipulation. For extremely serious intentional breaches of federal environment law, courts would be able to impose fines of up to $780 million or send people to prison for up to seven years. Importantly, the new EPA will provide better guidance and education to make sure businesses are clear about the rules so that they can do the right thing. The Samuel review into our environment laws found that the regulator is not fulfilling the necessary function of monitoring compliance and enforcement of the current laws. The review also found that serious enforcement actions are rarely used and that penalties need to be more than the cost of doing business.

We know that the current system is not working, so we are working to fix it. Ensuring that our regulatory system works to prevent environmental damage and ensures that our laws are upheld is one of the most important things that we can do to protect nature. If organisations commit to mitigating against or to an offset to make up for an unavoidable impact on nature, the public should be confident that the commitment will be kept. Our bills respond to those findings of the Samuel review and offsets audits while we continue to work on the rest of our environmental law reforms. Stage 3 of the Albanese Labor government's environmental plans will continue our broader efforts to halt and reverse environmental decline and protect nature. The EPA will deliver proportionate and effective risk based compliance and enforcement actions using high-quality data and information. It would provide assurance that environmental outcomes are being met.

Most businesses are doing the right thing. We know that. But when penalties for breaking the law are too low and the risk of being caught is negligible, some companies or individuals regard breaking the law as an acceptable cost of doing business. That's why we are increasing the penalties too. The EPA will play an important role in the full delivery of the Nature Positive Plan and beyond and ensure that the minister and government of the day have advice on how to continue to strengthen Australia's environmental laws.

These bills also establish Environment Information Australia. The EIA will have an independent position with a legislative mandate to provide environmental data and information to the EPA, the minister and the public. This independent position will allow the agency to transparently report on trends in the environment. This will support actions and decisions to halt and reverse the decline and, in turn, protect and restore nature. The EIA will be working in collaboration with Australia's experts, scientists and First Nations peoples to collect information and produce consistent tracking of the state of Australia's environment. We all know that a nature-positive Australia is good for the economy, livelihoods and wellbeing, but to achieve a nature-positive Australia we must have good quality and useful environmental information. The EIA we are establishing through this legislation will provide that for Australians and ensure that we are nature positive well into the future.

The information collected by the EIA will inform investment, policy and regulatory decisions by government, the private sector, community groups, academics and scientists, and philanthropic groups. We know that national environment information and data is fragmented, its quality is uncertain and what is available is not readily accessible and usable. To ensure that our environment remains protected, that our unique plants and animals continue to thrive in their environments, we must have consistent and reliable information and resources for businesses. When project proponents are more easily able to select sites which minimise impacts on nature, projects can be approved more busily and completed faster.

Legislating for independent, consistent and authoritative environmental reporting will mean that no Australian government can hide the truth about the state of our environment—as the previous government did. This will stop the decade of environmental crime that we saw under the previous government from ever happening again. The Leader of the Opposition wants to weaken environmental laws, including giving Clive Palmer's coalmine on the doorstep of the Great Barrier Reef the green light. It is important to note that the Minister for the Environment has blocked this coalmine, because Labor cares about the environment. This bill also provides more transparency of the critical information and data that underpins regulatory decision-making. This agency was a key recommendation of the Samuel review and delivers on our promise at the last election to provide consistent and reliable information on the state of the environment across the country.

The bill also defines for the first time the term 'nature positive' and introduces a requirement to report on Australia's national progress towards that outcome. This will be the first time any country has defined 'nature positive' in legislation and put in place national reporting against this objective. In short, 'nature positive' means improving our ecosystems, including the species that rely on them and form part of an ecosystem. Creating a nature-positive Australia means that across Australia nature is repairing and regenerating rather than continuing to decline. Requiring reports to be prepared and published online every two years instead of every five years will allow us to get on the front foot and better apply and track protections where they are most needed.

Australia's environment is a national asset and responsibility. This is why the State of the Environment reports include a new requirement to report on the progress of the government's national environmental goals. This bill makes it a requirement for the government to commit publicly to national environmental goals. I am looking forward to working with the minister to make our environmental laws fit for purpose. This is an incredibly significant bill and an incredibly ambitious plan that we have to protect our environment. I commend the bill to the House.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here we go again. This government doesn't find any bill, doesn't find any legislation and doesn't find anything else where it can't fight to make things more difficult for people in Australia trying to do something. This is called the 'nature-positive bill'. Something about the 'nature-positive bill'. Most of the people over there live in the natural environment of a concrete jungle. They live in cities. Members on the other side, from that corner around, are city elites. They don't live in the country. They don't live in the natural environment anyway. Yet, again, in this bill they are telling us in the country—this is a city-versus-country thing again—how we can do things better: 'What you do is not okay. How you do it is not okay.' That is from their elite and entitled position in society.

What is this bill going to do? I'll tell you what this bill is going to do. It will mean less investment in this country and fewer jobs over time in this country. People looking to invest in this country will go: 'You know what? It's too hard. This is all just too hard.' And it isn't rocket science to work out how you succeed as a country. Let's take it down to the family level. As a family, you sit around the table and you go: 'Okay, we need to increase the income of our family here. If we want to send the kids here or if we want to go on a holiday there or if we want to put a thing out the back, we need more money. We need to increase the income of this family unit.' We all understand that one. Even members over there understand that one.

Then go to the next level. You have a small business. You not only employ yourself and other people but you need to attract some investment or capital into the business and, as a bigger business, you might need to attract a fair bit of capital into your business. Those opposite have no idea about what you have to do to attract investment, to attract capital into your business. You have to make it attractive and be able to sell it to people by saying, 'This is the idea. This is what we will do. Get involved and you are going to make some money.'

As a country, we are no different. Those opposite are all very good at spending money. They love spending money. They have great ideas about how to spend money—some of it I don't disagree with, some of it I do—but all you see with these types of bills is how to make it harder to make it. What this bill will do is make it a much more unattractive country to invest in, resulting in less investment into this country. Therefore, it will make it harder for us as a country to attract investment—therefore, income—and have money to spend on the government services that we want and that those opposite want to spend money on.

Why do I say that, Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou? I will go through parts of the bill with you. This is going to create a new bureaucracy, create a new entity. The bill will create an environmental protection authority. We have a few already but let's create a new one and let's also then get a data collection body we will call Environment Information Australia. What is this going to mean? It will mean an extensive new audit and inspection arrangement—great—that will create a few more jobs for people to go around looking for ways and ideas to stop people from doing stuff.

The other thing it will do is provide the ability through what will be called environmental protection orders to force projects' proponents to immediately cease work on their developments. Well, that is sounding like the unions now—unions with a different modus operandi. Let's walk into places where people are trying to have a go, trying to get an investment up, trying to employ people, maybe even trying to export stuff from our country and force them to immediately cease work on their developments. The other thing it will do is impose unprecedented monetary fines on businesses. What else is it going to do? It will increase red tape and confusion, increase sovereign risk and a whole lot of other stuff.

This bill will result in less investment in this country, fewer jobs in this country over time, which will damage our economy, which will mean less money to spend on the services that the other side talk about. I will go through quite a number of other ways this bill does that. It will give the power or authority to the DCCEEW to undertake many of the environmental assessments under the EPBC Act. As I said, it will result in extensive new audit and inspection arrangements. It is going to force project proponents to immediately cease work on their developments at any time where it is reasonably suspected they have contravened obligations. It will mean the imposition of unprecedented monetary fines, a significant degree of free reign and the near-complete impunity from the removal for the EPA CEO. All of these changes will be especially damaging to industry and will leave it with more red tape and confusion, increase sovereign risk and exert a chilling effect on the future investment in Australia.

Similarly, the legislation will inevitably prove heavy-handed given it will legislate for the substantial authority and autonomy of its head. I am going to have a wild guess here that none of the people who run this, the people who head this up, the people who go on to these places and say, 'You are going to stop this, or 'You cannot invest in this,' or 'We are going to stop you from doing what you are doing,' have ever worked in private enterprise and employed people on their own bat. That is my prediction. I am happy to be proven wrong. I am happy for someone to come back into this chamber in six or 12 months time and say 'No, actually, the head of this has had good experience in the business world.' I will happily eat humble pie but it won't be the case.

I've spoken on the Export Control Amendment (Ending Live Sheep Exports by Sea) Bill 2024 in the last couple of days too. What did we see in that bill, like we've seen in this bill? This will affect investments. I remind those opposite too that, as shadow trade minister, I'm very conscious of our export industries. Our four biggest export industries are coal, gas, iron ore and farming. I ask of those opposite, because of the types of electorates they represent, how many of them have a coalmine in their electorate? Maybe one member who's in here does, but not many.

Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do. Me. I do.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Good on you, member for Paterson. You understand the importance of the coal industry, iron ore, gas and farmers. They are all country people and those are all industries that are in the country. In this bill, like in the live export one we saw earlier, we again have city elites saying, 'Live export's no good; you shouldn't do that; it's nasty; I saw it on Four Corners and they're telling me that it's a nasty industry, so shut it down'—and they did.

This bill is going to do exactly the same thing. This bill is going to have a harmful impact on regional communities. It's going to have a harmful impact on our exporting industries. It's going to have a harmful impact on our sovereignty, and when you talk about that you even hear other countries start to talk about Australia as a sovereign risk. We are becoming a sovereign risk. What do we mean by that? International capital—money—when it looks to invest in projects around the world, sort of looks at Australia now and goes, 'Uh oh; a bit dangerous; there's a risk in investing in that country for multiple reasons.' That's been stated by many people across the world.

Very sadly, I stand here to speak against a bill that the Labor Party has introduced. This is a bad bill for our country. It's especially a bad bill for regional communities. It's a bad bill for the investment it will scare out of our communities. And, again, it doesn't surprise me, coming from a government that represents and is a government of city elites.

Debate adjourned.