David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the save the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Save the Koala) Bill 2021. If you will indulge me, I will start with a personal story. I moved to Australia as a 14-year-old. We arrived in Brisbane not knowing many people in Australia but did have family friends who had moved to Cleveland, in Brisbane, a few years prior, and so I stayed with them. My first morning in Australia, a bit jetlagged, I was up early and out the door with my brothers and our friends, cruising through the parklands of Redland Bay, and I stumbled across a koala. It was head height in a tree. It had obviously been going from one tree to the next and was scampering up. I was transfixed by this incredible animal that I had seen so much on TV but never in my wildest dreams imagined I would see on my very first day in Australia. I assumed this must be pretty normal in Australia. 'There's wildlife everywhere. Koalas are everywhere.' Not so. In the 20 years since then, I think I've seen two other koalas in the wild, despite spending a fair amount of time looking for them.

Let's remember, when we talk about this bill, that we look up and see schoolchildren who have come up here to watch us. We do things in here to ensure that the children who come and tour this place, who watch proceedings here, who watch the Senate, will be able to see koalas. With the way we've been treating the environment—the way that both major parties have been treating the environment—that won't be the case. So we're in a dire situation here. The koala is a flagship species—it's a national icon—and what is happening to koalas in Australia is a travesty. When we focus on one species, like the koala, I think it's important to view it as a flagship species and remember that when we talk about protecting the koala and koala habitat, we're protecting a habitat for hundreds, probably thousands, of other species that call that same habitat home.

I appreciate Senator Duniam's sentiments about how much our attitudes towards land management have changed in Australia, and I think the koala is a great example of some of that. Australia went through a frontier period when natural resources were used as fast as they could be. Some would argue that that's still happening in areas. When it comes to the koala, between 2.5 million and three million koalas were shot to supply the fur trade in America and Europe from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Clearly there were a lot of koalas across the continent for that to happen. In contrast to these astounding numbers, the current koala population is believed to be between 40,000 to 100,000 animals. Yes, that was in the past, but we now have choices. And despite having those choices, we're not doing enough. That's why we're here today debating this Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Save the Koala) Bill 2021.

Over the last 20 years since I saw that koala in Redland Bay in Queensland, we've lost one in four koalas. They are now listed as endangered and, scientists tell us, are on track to be extinct by 2050, which is not that far away. They're being pushed closer and closer to extinction by clearing, cars, dogs and disease. Yesterday, the budget committed $57 million to assist in the conservation of koalas. I commend the government on that, and I'd like to recognise this is likely due to strong advocacy from people like Deborah Tabart and the Australian Koala Foundation. I'd like to congratulate her on her work and thank her.

But it's clearly not enough. We can do more and we must do more. Senator Duniam talked about looking to science to help us solve these problems. Thankfully, we have some of the world's best environmental scientists in Australia and some of the world's leading ecologists right here in Australia. This is a mega-diverse country. It's such a privilege to be able to share this continent with an incredible array of species. It turns out that a bunch of these leading scientists actually did get together, and they said, 'What will it cost to halt Australia's extinction crisis?' There is a firm commitment from the new government. I welcome that commitment and I thank them for it, but it's got to be backed up with action and it's got to be backed up with cold hard cash to ensure that these leading ecologists and land managers across the country can actually deliver on that promise. The Australian people hear a lot of these big promises and platitudes. When it comes to saving the koala, Australians want action.

Going back to these leading scientists—they put together a paper called Spending to save: what will it cost to halt Australia's extinction crisis? The authors were Brendan Wintle, Natasha Cadenhead, Rachel Morgain, Sarah Legge, Sarah Bekessy, Matthew Cantele, Hugh Possingham, James Watson, Martine Maron, David Keith, Stephen Garnett, John Woinarski and David Lindenmayer. I'll quote:

In Australia, the drivers of extinction broadly reflect the global profile, although invasive species have played a relatively larger role compared to most of the rest of the world. A potent combination of rapid habitat destruction—

Habitat destruction is largely what this debate is about. It continues:

and introduced predators, herbivores and pathogens, has resulted in Australia losing more biodiversity than any other developed nation in the past 200 years.

These facts are sobering, and they should spur us to action.

In this paper, the authors concluded that, given what we know about the dire situation when it comes to biodiversity in Australia—and this is a 2019 paper—it will take around $1.7 billion per year to halt extinctions. So, while it's great to hear that in the budget there's $57 million for the koala—$225 million over the forward estimates—it's not nearly enough. We have to continue to invest in the protection of this incredible continent, which all of us should want to leave for future generations in a better condition, with more biodiversity, than when we entered this place where the big decisions get made.

That group of scientists go on to say:

Improving the accountability and transparency of expenditure on conservation of threatened species in Australia would also enable a better understanding of the effectiveness of conservation investment.

At the moment, because funding is so scant, our monitoring programs are not up to scratch. We simply don't have the data on many of the species that we think are threatened. We just don't have the data to back that up. Clearly, this is something that the Labor government are going to have to think a lot more about. They will need to come to the May budget with a significant increase if they are going to get anywhere close to their bold plan to halt extinctions.

I'd like to quote one of our leading ecologists, Dr Euan Ritchie, who recently, after the Labor government committed to no new extinctions, said:

It's well and good to say you love wildlife and be photographed cuddling koalas, but if you're still approving the destruction of their habitat, if you're still committing to fossil fuel use … it's very hard to see how those things are aligned with a zero-extinction ambition.

I'd really like to put that to the Senate today as we debate this important bill. Do we want to continue with the platitudes about how much we love our environment, how important it is, while we continue to chronically underfund it and give billions of dollars to a fossil fuel industry that is hauling in eye-watering profits, or are we going to change? Are we going to finally say: 'Our environment is fundamental to us thriving as people and as a country. We understand that we are part of nature; if nature goes down, we go down with it'? There's a huge element of self-interest in this. Investment in the environment is an investment in ourselves, in our futures. So let's not entertain the arguments that pit the environment and looking after the place in which we live against good lives for everyday Australians. Those two things are tied together. You can't have one without the other—as we're starting to see when we turn on the television and see people going through floods for the fourth, fifth or sixth time in a couple of seasons.

We should protect native species for their intrinsic value alone. They deserve to continue to exist. Many of them have been here for millions of years, long before humans arrived on this continent and certainly long before modern Australia, the last 200 years in which we've seen the catastrophic decline in our wildlife. But even if you don't buy the intrinsic-value argument, the economic argument is strong. It's very hard to argue with. Half of Australia's GDP, around $900 billion, is directly dependent on nature. Again, we are part of nature. If nature goes down, we go down with her. As I mentioned last night, we saw $225 million committed over four years to slow the rate of native species decline. This is a small increase in election commitment. I welcome it. More money for conservation is a good thing. But clearly we need to be upping our ambition.

A leading ecologist in Australia, Professor David Lindenmayer, and his colleagues at the ANU and elsewhere have done a huge amount of work that makes it just so clear how important it is to halt the clearing of our native forests. They are critical habitat for our native species, including koalas. They are also invaluable carbon sinks. We know that forests that are logged burn easily. It's potentially counterintuitive, but the research that shows that is very strong. So, there's a real incentive for us to bring an end to native forest logging, to move to plantations. There are enough plantations for us to make that transition. Native forest logging is largely not profitable anymore, and taxpayers are subsidising the cutting down of our native forests—in an extinction crisis, where we have a government committing to halting extinction.

This seems like a really sensible way forward to actually deal with this: bring native forest logging to an end, stop clearing koala habitat and ensure that the schoolchildren who come through this place are able to see koalas in the wild and that, in five years time, we have more koalas in Australia than we do now, and in 10 years time even more koalas. That's the kind of world I want to live in. I don't buy the argument that you can have either a prosperous economy or koalas. We're part of the environment. We're part of nature. I commend this bill and the work Senator Hanson-Young has done.