Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

In the past few years it's been reported that Australia has joined the top 10 nations in the world for large-scale land clearing. This is not a list I believe Australia wants to be on. Perhaps I'm contradicting the remarks, through you, Mr Acting Deputy President Leyonhjelm, of Senator Williams who came before me. He talked about the scale of clearing on his own property. I say to the chamber today: I want there to be an Australia in which all Australians have the opportunity to see and enjoy Australia's native koala population, just as Senator Williams is able to do on his own property—and it's lovely to hear about the care he takes of his local koala population. But the simple fact is land clearing has had an enormous impact on Australia's environment yet Australian environmental law is unable to deal with land clearing without legislative change.

We in the Labor Party took to the last election a policy to amend the EPBC Act to specifically regulate land clearing. Unfortunately, though, the coalition on the other side have no intention of picking up on this issue. When it comes to environmental protection, we have a government that are completely asleep at the wheel. It is a national disgrace and action needs to be taken. I was listening to the remarks of the new environment minister, Melissa Price, who says that protection of endangered species is one of the government's key priorities. Well, I tell you, you cannot protect endangered species in this country without doing something real about land clearing. We have land-clearing rules which were introduced by state governments back when John Howard was Prime Minister. They were a critical part of protecting Australian biodiversity and of reaching the targets under the Kyoto Protocol. But we have seen the unwinding of those land-clearing laws by both New South Wales and Queensland conservative governments and this has left large tracts of Australia unprotected.

I'm pleased to say that Labor will not allow this large-scale land clearing to continue. We on this side of the chamber are a party for the environment. We put in place the largest network of marine reserves. We put in place solutions to solve 100 years of conflict on the Murray-Darling Basin. We were the ones who put a price on climate change and we also delivered the Tasmanian forest agreement.

We have the most at-risk populations of koalas in Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT and they deserve our protection. The numbers of koalas have plummeted because of road collisions, dog attacks and land clearing. The rate of land clearing has tripled in the state's north since the axing of the New South Wales Native Vegetation Act in August 2017. Think about that: those laws just changed a little more than a year ago and yet we have seen the rate of land clearing in New South Wales triple. It only goes to show how important those land-clearing laws are.

Koalas will face extinction in New South Wales by, it's speculated, about 2050 due to land clearing according to Martin Taylor, a conservation biologist. Senator Williams, you might like to take your own farm as an illustration of the welfare of biodiversity of koalas representative of the whole country, but I think we should be a bit more scientific than that. We shouldn't accept that koalas a couple of decades from now will only exist in captivity. We need to save koalas in their wild environment where they belong. We know koala populations across the country have declined dramatically. In New South Wales, the population's declined by a quarter over the last 20 years and is now home to fewer than 10 per cent of the nation's koalas, with just 36,000 of them remaining in the wild.

Since 2011, the Liberal government has done, frankly, more to harm koalas than to save them. We've seen in New South Wales land-clearing laws that could see eight million hectares of core koala habitat destroyed, signing off on clearing codes that will allow 99 per cent of koala habitat on private land to be cleared, selling off core koala habitat land to developers for $250,000 at the Mambo wetlands in Port Stephens. We've seen the redirecting of route of the Pacific Highway upgrade at Ballina through key koala habitat. We have also seen a refusal to support the Great Koala National Park; it was called simply a political gimmick. We can't allow housing development in core koala habitat in the Macarthur region, including the upgrade of Picton Road, without adequate protections for the only chlamydia-free koala population in New South Wales. They are carting koalas off in sacks from the Liverpool Plains to make way for the Shenhua coalmine and allowing logging operations that do not properly take account of the koalas in state forests with further weakening of the protections currently in place.

Adding to the threats facing koalas, the Liberals and Nationals introduced land clearing laws that will take a chainsaw to trees and wildlife conservation across the state, including 99 per cent of identified koala habitat open to clearings. They continue to ignore koala protection as a serious issue in our nation. It's all very well for Senator Williams to highlight the issue of bushfire on koala populations, which is indeed important, but what we're trying to point out here is the multifactorial nature of the pressures on the koala species. Senator Williams is wrong to point out we should just do something to protect koalas by preventing bushfires. Of course we want to prevent bushfires. We want to prevent bushfires by doing things like acting on climate change. Indeed, prescribed burns in my own home state have an important role to play. We know that managed fire is important, but you on the other side cannot point to managing fire as a panacea to the litany of issues that are affecting Australia's koala population. Issues like habitat loss and fragmentation of that habitat have indeed been the major causes of the decline in koala numbers in our nation.

In the 2016 election, we committed to a number of policies to enhance vegetation protection in Australia. We know that koalas are important, and not only for their intrinsic social and environmental value; saving koalas helps grow jobs in tourism in Australia. We want to prioritise the creation of national parks that protect our koala population. We want to see eucalypt forests and rainforests that are home to significant koala populations assessed as soon as possible for priority additions to the national park estate. On this side of the chamber, we want to remain at the forefront of national environmental leadership and protection in Australia. In developing policies for the next election, we will ensure that policy initiatives support the conservation of one of our greatest national icons, the koala.