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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I'd like to add that Labor is committed to fixing our environment laws so that they work better for our environment and better for business. This means that our laws need to improve nature, and protect our unique native plants and animals.

And our laws need to be less bureaucratic and provide more certainty for business.

That's what the community expects and that's what we're delivering.

We'll do this in a commonsense way that supports both national productivity and environmental protection.

Everybody agrees that the current laws don't work.

We said that we would improve certainty for business—certainty that helps drive investment in jobs, in communities and in nation-building projects.

That's what we're doing.

We've also said that we want a country in which nature is being repaired and is regenerating rather than continuing to decline.

And that's what we are doing.

This bill would address a critical problem in our current laws—a problem that's playing out right now in a small community in Tasmania that is supported by a well-established industry; a problem that is putting jobs, investment and individual livelihoods at risk.

This bill would support the government's commitment to provide certainty, clarity and fairness for ongoing industries, workers and communities affected by reconsideration of decisions under the EPBC Act.

The bill would remove the ability of the minister for the environment to reconsider a past decision on an action that meets certain very specific criteria.

Reconsideration powers have been available to the minister since the beginning of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act a quarter of a century ago.

These powers exist to enable the minister to respond to a limited range of circumstances, based on new and changing environmental information.

It's important that the minister be able to do this.

But these powers can also create considerable uncertainty and affect communities that have come to depend on a lifeline industry.

The economic and social impacts of changing a decision can be severe, putting jobs, community and individual livelihoods at risk—industries and communities like Macquarie Harbour.

This is a timely example, but it's potentially not an isolated event. This means that swift action is required now, but also to ensure that these circumstances do not occur again.

The bill recognises that an established and lawfully operating project, where proponents did the right thing and referred their action to the environment minister, and which have been investing and operating for five or more years on the basis of that decision, should not be put at risk.

The bill would only capture a very small subset of decisions that can be reconsidered, and they are in that category 'not controlled action if undertaken in a particular manner', or NCA-PM decisions. These decisions are made when the minister decides that an action does not require approval, because the action would be undertaken in the particular manner described.

The bill would also recognise the important role that states and territories play in managing environmental impacts, through their own plans, policies and laws. The amendment specifies that a project must have a state or territory management arrangement specified in its 'particular manners' to meet the criteria.

The Australian government is committed to working in partnership with industry, communities and states and territories to protect our environment and support the conservation and recovery of our threatened species.

We have invested more than half a billion dollars in targeted threatened species recovery, including under the Saving Native Species Program, the Natural Heritage Trust and the National Environmental Science Program. This is complemented by other government investments for Ramsar wetlands, World Heritage properties and protected areas that support biodiversity conservation and the recovery of threatened species.

We have invested $37.5 million in priority conservation actions for the Maugean skate population in Macquarie Harbour—investments to improve water quality and environmental conditions within Macquarie Harbour and support critical species conservation actions including a successful captive breeding program.

We are also actively working with salmon industry stakeholders on further steps that can be taken to better protect the environment and ensure the industry has a sustainable and long-term future producing high-quality salmon.

This bill strikes a balance between the important task of protecting our environment, and the need to provide certainty and stability to businesses which have already made substantial investment to get a project up and running, and most importantly protecting jobs.

This is good, sensible and balanced regulation.

The proposed changes would commence the day after royal assent and would apply to any reconsideration decision made under section 78 after the amendment commences, regardless of how long ago the original decision was made.

This is in accord with the very long list of achievements that this government has made in better protecting the environment. So far, we have protected an extra 100 million hectares of Australian ocean and bush, an area the size of Germany, Italy and Norway combined, and in the budget tonight we'll also be committing an additional $250 million to protect an additional area of Australia's landmass around the size of New Zealand, which would take us to 30 per cent of Australia's landmass protected by 2030, a commitment that we were pleased to make in Montreal at the global biodiversity conference.

We've quadrupled the size of Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve. That was the biggest act of ocean conservation anywhere in the world in 2024. We've tripled the size of Macquarie Island Marine Park. That was the biggest act of environmental conservation anywhere in the world in 2023.

We've doubled funding to better look after our national parks, including Kakadu and Uluru. We are progressing World Heritage listing for more of Australia's most special places, including places like Cape York, the Flinders Ranges, and Murujuga in Western Australia, which is the site of 50,000-year-old rock art. We've stopped Jabiluka from being mined for uranium and we're looking forward to adding it to Kakadu National Park instead.

We've saved Toondah Harbour in Queensland from destruction, including the protection of internationally important wetlands which provide an important stop for migratory bird species.

We're investing $1.3 billion to support the successful Indigenous Rangers Program, including doubling the number of Indigenous rangers, who are doing an absolutely magnificent job of managing feral animals, getting rid of weeds and managing fire risks, particularly in Indigenous protected areas, and we've expanded those Indigenous protected areas with a $230 million investment. We're establishing 12 new Indigenous protected areas that will cover an area larger than Tasmania. The important thing about these new IPAs is they're not all central desert; they're in all sorts of landscapes including very biodiverse regions on the North Coast of New South Wales, which are underrepresented in our national reserve system.

We're investing more than half a billion dollars to better protect threatened plants and animals and tackle the feral animals and weeds that are killing our native species, including doing phenomenally innovative work like using the Felixer cat traps and also using drone technology and satellite technology to identify weed outbreaks, to go out into the landscape and literally manage species like feral cats in the landscape automatically, without human presence, so that we can place these cat traps and so on right through the landscape and protect much larger areas from the threats of feral animals and weeds.

We're investing $200 million to clean up our rivers and catchments in our urban areas to transform concrete drains into renaturalised streams and creek beds where threatened species that exist in our urban environment can re-establish and move through the landscape. Indeed, the manager of government business has one of these projects in his electorate that I was very pleased to visit last year.

We have already increased recycling capacity in this country by 1.3 million tonnes every year. An enormous amount of rubbish that would otherwise be going into landfill is instead being recovered for productive uses. We're stopping paper, glass, metal and also those soft and difficult-to-recycle plastics going into landfill. Instead we are investing to recover those materials and to extract the value out of them, to remake products in Australia.

We're establishing the world's first nature repair market to make it easier to invest in nature restoration. I was very pleased recently to see the extensive public discussion about the first proposed methodology under that nature repair market which would, again, give us wonderful opportunities to see not just government investment but also philanthropic and business investment in nature restoration.

We've passed strong laws to protect the ozone layer. We've also delivered Australia's first national environmental chemicals standards, banning or ensuring the safety of 900 industrial chemicals so far, with more added every year. That includes those forever chemicals that have been particularly problematic in the Australian landscape. We know how troubling PFAS, PFOA and other chemical types leaching into our environment has been, particularly around former Defence sites and also around our airports. Making sure that we have proper controls on these forever chemicals will be very important for future generations of Australians.

We boosted the first tranche of our environmental laws with a strong water trigger to make sure that the impacts of coal and gas projects on water are considered. As I mentioned earlier, the second tranche of our environmental laws passed this place at the end of the first half of last year, in July last year. That included the establishment of Australia's first environment protection agency with strong new powers and penalties, taking maximum penalties under environment law from around $15 million to $780 million.

That second tranche of environmental law included much stronger data and transparency as well, taking state-of-the-environment reporting from every five years to every three years, having a constant set of upgraded data available for people to track how the Australian environment was going and, of course, making sure that independent and world-first definition of 'nature positive' was included in legislation as well.

We also have passed strong laws to force big polluters to cut their emissions, because we know that Australia can get to net zero carbon pollution by 2050, and we know that that is critical for our natural environment. We know that climate change is a significant risk to our natural environment and that getting to net zero is a critical part of reducing that risk. This is Australia doing its share when it comes to the global effort—or what should be a global effort—to reduce carbon emissions.

Since coming to government, and since I have been the environment minister, I've approved more than 80 renewable energy projects. Those 80 renewable energy projects have taken us to an unprecedented amount of renewable energy in our national grid. The last figures we saw, from the end of last year, had renewable energy at 46 per cent of the grid. Since coming to government, we've added 15 gigawatts of renewable energy to the grid. Now, 15 gigawatts of renewable energy is more renewable energy than the Leader of the Opposition's nuclear reactors would ever produce under the plan that he's announced to the Australian people.

And that renewable energy is already done. That's not something that will happen in 25 years time, after we spend $600 billion of taxpayers' money. That's done now. We've approved more than 80 renewable energy projects, which are enough to power 10.4 million Australian homes. There are only 10.8 million households in Australia. We've approved almost enough renewable energy to power every single household in Australia. This is a transition that's real. It's happening right now; we're in the middle of it. The thousands of jobs that are working on that renewable transition are real; they're happening right now. People are doing that work in communities, including regional communities, right around Australia.

I'm pleased to present this Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025 to the House, and I commend its passage.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with the resolution agreed to earlier, the debate is adjourned, and the resumption of debate is made an order of the day for a later hour this day.