Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to be speaking on this private senator's bill this morning. It's clear that every speaker who comes to the chamber today to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Regional Forest Agreements) Bill 2020 is choosing to highlight different areas that this bill touches on, such as different parts of the industry or our environment. I would like to take this opportunity to really reflect on the context of the work to reform the EPBC Act and what this bill does in highlighting the failures of the previous government to do that.

The bill itself, being brought here today by the opposition after 10 years in government, really highlights that they failed to reform the EPBC Act and protect our environment when they had the chance to do that. They had a decade to deliver certainty to industries and to build a framework to protect our environment. Instead, the Liberal-National Party defunded the environment department, hid crucial reports and presided over a decline in the state of the environment. For too long, they used the environment and climate change as opportunities to wedge the Labor Party and create political division. Our Labor government will reform the EPBC Act. We will respond to the Samuel review and we will establish an environmental protection agency. The Albanese government is focused on tackling spiralling costs of living that are making life tough for too many Australians, and, while we get on with the job of delivering for Australian people during these difficult economic times, the Liberal-National Party is focused on these types of bills—redundant, cheap political stunts still aimed at wedge politics.

The EPBC Act is the Commonwealth's central piece of environment legislation, and it provides a national legal framework for environmental and heritage protection and the conservation of biodiversity. This bill would amend the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and the Regional Forest Agreements Act so that all forestry operations covered by the RFAs will be exempt from part 3 of the EPBC Act. The private senator's bill before the chamber today was brought about after a decision of a single judge of the Federal Court in Friends of Leadbeater's Possum v VicForests, in which the court found that whilst operations in accordance with the RFAs are exempt from provisions in the EPBC Act forestry operations were not considered. This decision, as has been explained by my colleagues this morning, was appealed by VicForests, and the full court of the Federal Court upheld that appeal on 10 May. Further to that, the High Court has denied leave to appeal that decision. That means that this bill in itself, in its current form, is redundant. The relationship between the bill and the court decision is important in terms of context for this bill today.

But it's the further context that needs to be considered, about how this bill came to be introduced in the previous government and where we were in terms of legislative reform of the EPBC Act at the time this bill was introduced. The bill was introduced to the Senate under the previous government and a Senate inquiry was held, and lots of evidence was taken, but the bill itself was a sign of disunity and dysfunction from the previous government. It was introduced by a Morrison government senator but it did not reflect the Morrison government policy at the time. The theatrics from the government benches epitomised the former government—a government focused on dividing Australians instead of delivering for them.

The act itself requires an independent review of the operation of the act to the extent to which the objects of the act have been achieved—so every 10 years someone is required to review the act. That happened; the Samuel review commenced on 29 October 2019. It was led by Professor Graeme Samuel, and an interim report of the review was presented to the previous government in June 2020. The final report of the Samuel review was presented to the government in October 2020. I raise this because it's incredibly important to understand that, in relation to the final report, Professor Samuel asserts that the act itself is outdated and presents a barrier to holistic environmental management. To address these deficiencies, the final report called for extensive reform of the EPBC Act and a fundamental shift in Australia's environmental management from a transaction based approach focused on individual projects to one centred on effective and adaptive planning. This report was delivered at the same time this bill was introduced into the Senate, and the previous government were yet to provide a formal response to the independent statutory review. They never responded to the report. They never amended the legislation. They failed at every step to do what was required of them to reform the act and to deliver protection for our environmental systems.

Proponents of this bill believe the measures are necessary to ensure operational certainty for industry and for clarifying how the provisions work. But we know, as we've said, since the High Court denied leave, that that is not required now. But what is required, and what has always been required, to balance protecting our environment and providing certainty to proponents and to industries, and what should have been done already by the previous government, is a response to the Samuel review and a reforming of the entire EPBC Act. That is the work that should have been done by the previous government. So to be here now and to be looking at a piece of legislation that seeks to amend a small part of this act points to the failure of the previous government to address entire reform when it comes to the way our environment is regulated, the way it is protected and the way that industries work with the environment.

When the bill was previously considered, Labor senators held the view that EPBC reform should proceed not in an ad hoc, unconsidered, piecemeal manner but by way of a private senator's bill, given the significance of the nation's environmental laws and the importance of getting those reforms right. The fact of the matter is that those opposite had a decade to reform the act and they failed to do so. Even the former government's Liberal controlled Senate committee at the time refused to support this bill. They couldn't deliver reforms. They could never do the hard work to bring Australians together. They were solely focused on political pointscoring. Nothing much has changed in opposition. This bill brings that into focus. And can we really take seriously anything that those opposite say about the environment?

The independent Samuel review concluded that our environmental laws needed reform. At every opportunity that the previous government had to genuinely reform Australia's laws, they failed to do so. They are the same people who buried the State of the environment report. The previous minister, who is now the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, received it before Christmas but decided to keep it locked away before the federal election. Now that the report has been delivered, we understand why. The State of the environment report, when it was finally revealed to the Australian people, showed that we've lost more mammal species to extinction than has any other continent; that threatened communities have grown by 20 per cent in the past five years, with places literally burnt into endangerment by catastrophic fires; that the Murray-Darling fell to its lowest water level on record in 2019; and that for the first time Australia now has more foreign plant species than it has native ones. I can see why they kept this report secret, because it shows just how damaging the wasted decade of environmental neglect was to this country. The former government cut funding to the environment department; repealed climate legislation; failed to deliver for the Murray-Darling Basin; and ignored the Samuel report, which said that our laws were broken. That's why they hid the report and it's why they never stepped in to reform the EPBC Act as a whole.

Last week, the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, mapped out our government's approach to reform of this important law. The government will formally respond to the Samuel review this year. We will then develop new environmental legislation for 2023 and create a new Environmental Protection Agency to enforce the law properly. While the government consults on this generational reform, we will not be accepting any stunts from those opposite when it comes to the environment and the EPBC Act. As our first acts in the new parliament we are legislating more ambitious emissions reduction targets, setting a goal of protecting 30 per cent of our land and oceans by 2030, and reforming our environmental laws to finally build trust, integrity and efficiency into the system. After nine years of wasted time, nine years of going backwards on the environment, Labor is finally taking a step forward.

This private senator's bill today demonstrates again the lack of urgency, the lack of priority and the lack of care, when it comes to our environment, from those opposite. All they do care about is coming in here and playing wedge politics with our environment, with industries that rely on the environment and with our forestry workers. They're not here to deliver the reform that our country requires; they're here to play politics and to make sure that nobody ever takes a step forward in the things that need to be done. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.

Debate interrupted.