Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Pocock, I think you are asking whether the nature repair market and the arrangements that we are putting in place to allow the private sector to make investments in nature repair are the full extent of the government's plans in relation to protecting our environment, and the answer, of course, is no. We understand that there is an enormous amount of work to do in relation to restoring and protecting our environment.

Part of this arises from a very extended period of neglect. The government previously led by Mr Morrison and, before him, Mr Turnbull and, before him, Mr Abbott got report after report—including the State of the environment report and the review of the Water for the Environment Special Account—that showed them that nature was in serious strife, in serious trouble, and that the measures that they were supposed to be pursuing to protect assets like the Murray-Darling Basin were not on track. Instead of acting on those reports and on that information that was provided to them, they hid them. They got an independent review from Professor Samuel that showed that the environment laws were broken and they did nothing serious about that independent review to fix those laws. They refused to act on climate change, a question that we have addressed in other debates. They announced 22 different energy policies and didn't land any of them.

So we understand that there is a lot of work to do. Establishing a framework where we can harness private sector investment to support the repair of our natural assets is one part of that, but so is government funding for nature repair and so are better laws to protect our environment when we are contemplating development and so are arrangements to create additional protected areas so that there are parts of the terrestrial environment and the marine environment that are actually protected and the animals and plants that live in them are looked after. All of these things form part of a comprehensive package to tackle issues around the environment. This is not the beginning and the end of the things that our government considers important.