Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party will not be supporting the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Climate Trigger) Bill 2022 [No. 2]. We've already changed the law, ending a decade of political infighting and instability caused by the former government. A strong new climate safeguard law, which was supported by the Greens political party and independents, means that coal and gas projects must comply with Australia's commitment to net zero. Our strong new climate laws developed with the Greens party and the independents allow the Minister for Climate Change and Energy to stop coal and gas projects adding to Australia's emissions. We are approving more renewable energy than ever before. Last week, we approved one of the biggest windfarms in the country. It will power 700,000 homes in New South Wales and save nearly five million tonnes of emissions every year. That's equivalent to taking 1.5 million cars off the road. This enormous transformation can't happen overnight, but we are working overtime to get there. When negotiating the new laws, the Greens environment spokesperson, Senator Hanson Young, said:

… a hard cap on emissions, meaning real pollution must actually come down and the coal and gas corporations can't buy their way out of the cap with offsets. This puts a limit on coal and gas expansion in Australia. Pollution will now go down, not up.

The Greens political party and the independents helped designed those laws, and then they voted for them. That drew a line under more than a decade of political fights that had stopped climate action.

The climate minister is responsible for emissions and the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, is responsible for looking at possible impacts of a project on nature—for example, national parks, koala habitat and water quality. There are serious criminal penalties for breaking our strong new climate laws, including jail time for company executives. When Minister Plibersek blocked Clive Palmer's massive coal project, she became the first environment minister in Australian history to stop a coal mine. She blocked it because of things such as the impact it might have had on water quality and the Great Barrier Reef National Park. She's doing exactly the environment minister's job as she should.

Any political party or politician looking to restart a fight about climate change would be wise to think twice. Australians have seen how political fights stopped action on climate change for more than 10 years, and nobody wants to see that again. In fact, the head of the Public Service under the former government, Mr Martin Parkinson, on the TV show Nemesis said: 'I mean, we've had a decade of drift in climate policy. We've had policies proposed and then upended. We've had science acknowledged and then ignored. And we've created a situation where more and more assets and more and more Australian lives are at risk from climate change than ever needed to be. I mean, to me, this is the single most irresponsible act that I've ever seen by governments.'

Years of political fights over climate change have cost Australia, big time. A decade of the former government, of the Liberals and Nationals, meant emissions were higher for longer. It put renewable energy projects years behind. Those opposite abolished the climate laws. They brought lumps of coal into parliament. They laughed at rising sea levels in the Pacific. They announced 22 different energy and climate policies and landed exactly none of them. You had the Greens party team up with Tony Abbott to knock off the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which would have prevented more than 80 million tons of emissions by now.

When Labor was first elected, Minister Plibersek released the official five-yearly report card on the Australian environment, the state of the environment report. The former minister, now deputy opposition leader, received it in 2021, but—surprise, surprise—chose to keep it hidden, locked away, until after the federal election. And we know why: it's a catalogue of horrors, and it shows it just how much damage a decade of the Liberal and National parties' neglect did to our environment. That report found that Australia has lost more mammal species to extinction than any other continent. For the first time, Australia has more foreign plant species than native. Habitat the size of Tasmania has been cleared. Plastics are choking our oceans—up to 80,000 pieces of plastics per square kilometre. Flow in most Murray-Darling rivers has reached record low levels.

Is it any wonder our environment fared so badly under the former government, when, in the last decade, on top of their climate denialism, they also ignored the Samuel review into our environment laws, sabotaged the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, promised $40 million in Indigenous water but never delivered a drop, set recycling targets with no plan to deliver them, cut highly protected areas of marine parks in half and cut funding to the environment department by 40 per cent. This sums up a decade of environmental neglect.

Thankfully, we have a new government, a Labor government—one that won't hide from the truth and will do what needs to be done to improve Australia's environment. We're not wasting a moment. As I've said, we've already legislated more ambitious emissions reduction targets. We're rewriting our environmental laws to build trust, integrity and efficiency into the system, with net zero by 2050 enshrined in law. There'll be a 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 and 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030. We're doubling the rate of renewable energy approvals, with 43 ticked off to power over two million homes, and a record 127 more renewable projects are in the pipeline. There'll be cheaper electric cars; higher fuel efficiency standards; huge upgrades to our energy grid, so that it can take more renewable energy; help for homes and businesses to get off gas and onto electricity; and $2 billion for green hydrogen. We're protecting the Great Barrier Reef with a $1.2 billion investment. We're delivering the $276 million promised but not delivered to the Kakadu National Park. We're investing $225 million to better protect threatened species. We've committed to protecting 30 per cent of our land and sea by 2030. We've released a national threatened species action plan, towards zero extinctions. We've legislated our first—a world-first—nature repair market, to reward farmers and other landholders for their work in restoring and protecting the environment. We've committed to expanding our blue carbon projects, to rewild our oceans but also to create carbon sinks. We're working towards a plastic-free Pacific in our lifetimes. We're working on expanding our recycling and circular-economy targets and actions—including prioritising mattresses and medical waste, as part of our product stewardship priorities. We're committed to delivering the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full, including the water for the environment. We have redefined the Water Grid Investment Framework, which will ensure we can secure drinking water for the towns that need it the most.

We will do all of this in partnership with First Nations Australians, because we recognise the great gift that comes with 65,000 years of successful environmental conservation. We're doubling the number of Indigenous rangers by the end of the decade. This will be a significant focus for the Labor government.

We are here for the long haul. We don't want to see ambition legislated today, only to see it extinguished tomorrow. It's Labor governments that do the big things to make this country fairer, more inclusive and more sustainable, because that's what action on climate change looks like and that's what's possible when we stop the political fights and get on with it.