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

Thank you for the contributions on this motion. I appreciate everyone comes to this debate with a love for our beautiful country and our beautiful environment, and I am certainly one of those people—not only because I live in one of the most beautiful parts of our country but because I am very privileged to be the Special Envoy for the Great Barrier Reef and I get to experience all of the really important work that is going on there, not just in the water but also in the catchments.

I want to touch on a few of the issues that have been raised, particularly around commitments that have been made to the international community and through COP15 in particular. I share the sentiments of many of the public who are incredibly proud of the work that our government and our ministers have been doing on the international stage to return this country to the negotiating table. We were in a position where, certainly, our reputation under the former government had been destroyed and our credibility on climate and on the environment was in complete tatters. What our ministers have been able to do in various conferences of the parties across the last few months is restore Australia's reputation, and we did that by making sure that Australia was leading from the front, campaigning for strong targets and clear measurements of progress. In doing so we have managed to ensure that, for the first time ever, we have a global agreement to protect 30 per cent of the world's land and 30 per cent of the world's oceans by 2030. That is an incredible achievement and something that our minister for the environment in particular should be incredibly proud of—to restore Australia, in such a short time, to that level of respect and ambition.

These targets are something for us to strive for, and we are doing the work to make sure that we have policies to achieve a nature-positive planet. We have ensured that our nature-positive plan to rewrite our national environmental laws is front and centre of our environmental policy in this early part of our government. I know that, after 10 years, people in this sector and people who care about the environment are really eager to get on with the job. I know, as many people in this chamber understand, that the Samuel review, under the former government, sat there gathering dust. So I know that there is an urgency felt by many people in this place, but can I assure you that this work is happening. It is happening and we are moving forward to make sure that we have national environment laws that protect our forests, protect our threatened species, protect our Great Barrier Reef and protect the jobs that rely on many of these places. We are delivering a plan for zero new extinctions on this continent. We are legislating to protect the ozone layer. We are delivering a commitment to protecting 30 per cent of Australia's land and oceans by 2030.

We're also backing this up with funding. There is $1.2 billion for the reef in the last budget alone. We are funding to save native species, to employ Landcare rangers, to expand Indigenous protected areas and to protect against invasive species. To say that we are not funding this important work couldn't be further from the truth.

This debate, obviously, gives me an opportunity to talk about where we've come from and what we're up against in this country. We know that there is a clear difference between this government and what we're doing on climate and the environment compared to those on the other side of the chamber. It is very important that people in this place understand that the Liberal-National government, when it came to energy and climate, destroyed and delayed 22 failed energy policies. They didn't land a single one. They vetoed renewable energy projects that would have created regional jobs, they hid energy prices until after the election, they joked about Pacific Island neighbours going underwater and they sat on the Samuel review.

They haven't changed now that they're in opposition. In opposition, our friends on the other side of the chamber, the LNP, have voted against emissions reductions targets, against the electric vehicle legislation and against cost-of-living relief for working families on energy, and they will vote against safeguard mechanisms. They continue to ignore the science. It is 2023 out there, but when it comes to the opposition it's still 2003.