Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

():  I also rise to speak on the Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 and Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023. They aim to establish a world-first nature repair market in Australia. We'll just leave all the politics to one side for a minute and look at what we're trying to achieve here.

The bills provide a legislative framework for a voluntary national market in biodiversity certificates to enable private investment in high-integrity projects to protect, manage and restore nature. The market will be open to all landholders, including farmers, First Nations people, conservation groups and business. It will enable project proponents to undertake projects that protect or enhance biodiversity on a range of land tenures, including aquatic environments. Project proponents will be able to apply to the Clean Energy Regulator for a unique biodiversity certificate that could then be sold to an interested person or market. The market would be strictly regulated to prevent greenwashing and to monitor progress towards specified environmental outcomes. It is framework legislation, with significant elements of the scheme to be provided in a series of legislative instruments to be made by the minister, including rules, biodiversity assessment instruments and methodology determinations. Those legal instruments will be the subject of consultation. That process will be done in line with the review that is currently underway of our EPBC legislation so that they stand hand in hand. The Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023 would make minor amendments to the Clean Energy Regulator Act 2011 and the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 to facilitate the establishment, operation and regulation of the nature repair market.

How did we get here? What was the catalyst for this? It was the fact that we've seen our environment decline significantly and the fact that we've seen the state of the environment reports show declines for a number of years now. The Australia state of the environment 2021 report was a serious wake-up call. The devastating results that came out of that report sent out shockwaves, but nothing was done. That report found that significant investment is needed to reverse the decline in the areas of conservation and restoration. Part of reversing that decline is to create a very clear and regulated pathway for all avenues to be explored to restore our natural environment. That means bringing in businesses, philanthropists, environmental groups, First Nations people. It's about bringing everyone into this space and creating an environment where we can work together to protect our nature. The Samuel review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act also suggested that attracting private sector investment would be crucial and that a regulated nature repair market would encourage voluntary investment from the private sector towards the task of restoring Australia's natural environment.

Senator Duniam has told us that this bill has no friends, so I'll give you a quote from the National Farmers Federation, friends of Senator Duniam's. They said that they were delighted. They said:

Linking farmers with investors who will partner with them to invest in environmental protection is a significant step forward in how we protect and care for our country.

That's a very wise comment. There are a range of people who support the idea of a nature repair market, and that is evidenced in the 105 submissions that are on the website for the committee's inquiry and in the Hansard from those hearings.

Prior to these bills being introduced in the parliament, they were subject to two rounds of public consultation that further informed the development of the market framework. The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water noted that as part of this public consultation they conducted over 60 engagement events, including sessions focused on Aboriginal persons and Torres Strait Islanders, public information sessions and targeted meetings with individuals, organisations and Commonwealth and state and territory representatives. A request for submissions resulted in over 180 written responses to the department. So there has been quite a lot of consultation and a lot of transparency and scrutiny, contrary to the claim of Senator Duniam, who says there has been none.

On 30 March 2023 the Senate referred the provisions of these bills to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for inquiry. As I've said, we received 105 submissions. We got responses from individuals, environmental organisations, peak bodies, businesses, various interested groups and associations. The committee held two public hearings in Canberra, on 30 June and 11 September 2023. Overall, there was strong support from submitters for the intent of these bills: to give effect to a market based mechanism to enable people to engage in improving our environment and to do so while being able to engage in a financial market and a biodiversity market. Key areas of interest for the people who submitted included offsets, market design, integrity, governance, broader environmental reform, market operations and the role of First Nations. Throughout the submissions, the general support for the market remained strong. Despite some concerns about particular elements, there was a general thrust that people thought this idea was a good one.

I seem to remember that, when the bills were first introduced into the lower house, there was a lot of positive commentary coming from the Nationals, particularly from Mr Littleproud. He said that the bill is 'basically verbatim our legislation'. So this is legislation that the Nationals had drafted and, in the words of the Nationals, it's very much the same. He went on to say that he was 'proud of the fact that it's stood the test of time—of a changing government'. That seems quite supportive, I think, at the point in time when this legislation was introduced, in March 2023. But I suppose it's more about playing politics, isn't it? It's not about sticking to the idea that we would protect our natural environment, that we would enable landholders to engage in this as another stream of income, that we would enable First Nations people to engage in this market or that we would enable people to go out and protect our environment and find some level of recompense for that work.

We also had the Nature Conservancy supporting the bills. They said:

We welcome the creation of a Nature Repair Market and its applicability to all landholders. Overall, TNC is supportive of the need to incentivise and reward landholders for the protection, good management and restoration of native vegetation, threatened species habitat and other natural values. There is a role for governments in ensuring there is consistency, integrity and transparency and a baseload of demand, particularly in emerging market mechanisms …

Just for fun, let me quote the National Farmers Federation again:

The NFF supports the proposed Nature Repair Market Bill and recognises the opportunities it will offer to farmers and landholders in contributing to ecosystem services and participating in a broader marketplace.

The Bill provides a critical step towards achieving sustainable and resilient ecosystems in Australia.

That sounds very supportive, too, I would say. Other supportive stakeholders included Climate Friendly, the Indigenous Desert Alliance, the Kimberley Land Council, Farmers for Climate Action, the Australian Sustainable Finance Institute, the Property Council of Australia, the Australian Business Council of Australia and the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation. That's quite a lot of support, really.

Importantly, throughout the inquiry, the recognition of the role of Australia's First Nations people in caring for country was well articulated through the evidence. The New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council highlighted that local Aboriginal land councils possess specific traditional ecological knowledge and land management expertise accumulated over millennia. Why would we not enable those people to not just continue to care for the country that they have presided over for 65,000 years but provide opportunities to extend that, where land has been taken from them? We know this. We could enable them not just to start building a means of continuing to protect that land but to do it with an economic base and have an economic benefit from that. I know from a lot of the hearings that we've had—we hear this a lot—that that is what First Nations people want. They want an opportunity for an economic benefit, and I believe we should provide that.

Who else have we got? Emeritus Professor Jon Altman pointed out that, due to the scale of First Nations landholdings across the country, the NRM bill would disproportionately impact First Nations people. Yes, it would. Wouldn't it be great if we could make that a positive impact? Professor Altman said:

First Nations people are not just another landowning interest group alongside governments and private landowners and leaseholders … First Nations people will be the dominant players in any real or imagined 'nature repair' or 'biodiversity' market in Australia today because of their rights and interests in a majority part of the continent, much in remote and very remote Australia, that is relatively environmentally intact and so has relatively high biodiversity 'value'.

That also sounds positive to me, as well. The department's submission outlined how, indeed, First Nations Australians can participate in the market:

… by undertaking projects that deliver biodiversity improvements or protect biodiversity on land which they hold through different types of tenure. This includes exclusive and non-exclusive Native Title, land rights, leasehold and freehold. First Nations people could also provide on-ground management services or advice to support nature repair projects managed by others.

That sounds like a good stream.

I would say that the claims on this bill that I've heard in this chamber so far don't seem to be supported by genuinely looking at the evidence and don't seem to be supported by looking at those 105 submissions or the 180 submissions that the department received when they did their consultation prior to the bills. It doesn't seem to stack up. Were there concerns raised about certain elements of the bills? Yes—but that's the point, isn't it? That's the whole point of having the inquiries. That's the whole point of having the committees: so you can refine, improve and identify where the challenges are and do something about them.

There were several crossbench initiated amendments agreed to by the House of Reps, and, as we've heard, there'll be other amendments being brought forward from various senators today. We will debate those in the committee stage of this process. It is in the view of the committee, in its printed report, that following the passage of the legislation there will be a lengthy period of design of methodologies that will underpin this repair market. We're confident that that will be a great process to develop what will be a world first and, I think, a fundamentally changed position for our country and for our natural environment: to protect nature.