Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For the past few months environmental groups have joined the farmers' lobby and other stakeholders in negotiating the shape of New South Wales's conservation laws. At the end of last week, however, the environmental groups walked. They called out the Baird government's review as a process whose outcomes were 'predetermined by a radical minority'. In many ways the Baird government's approach is unsurprising, in the same way that it was unsurprising when the Newman government sought to wind back Labor's land-clearing legislation in Queensland. It is part of an unsettling trend where conservative governments seek to undo Labor reforms in order to satisfy sectional interests who do not speak for most Australians.

The Baird government's cutting of environmental legislation may be unsurprising, but it does not make it any less disturbing. The network of biodiversity and conservation protections that were legislated for by Labor state governments provide crucial safeguards for Australia's natural environment. They also provide crucial safeguards for Australian people.

In 2000 Australia was the fifth greatest land clearer in the world, and in Australia New South Wales was second only to Queensland. The then New South Wales environment minister and my friend Bob Debus called it one of the greatest environmental challenges, and Labor state governments took action. In my state of New South Wales, for instance, we enacted a suite of legislation in the early 2000s that stopped broadscale land clearing. Since the implementation of the Native Vegetation Act in 2003, New South Wales has seen an 88-fold reduction in areas approved for clearing from 80,000 hectares per year to just 911 hectares per year.

Similar legislation was enacted in Queensland under the Beattie and Bligh governments. It was rolled back when the Liberal National Party came to power. What happened in Queensland is a startling portent for what may happen in New South Wales under the Baird government. Two hundred and ninety-six thousand hectares of bushland was cleared in 2013-14—three times as much as in 2009. Clearing in catchments that drain onto the Great Barrier Reef increased dramatically and constituted 35 per cent of total clearing in 2013-14. Land clearing like this claims the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australian animals. It destroys forests and woodlands that provide many economic benefits, such as shelter for stock and crops and pollination. It makes no sense. It produces perverse outcomes.

The federal government's Emissions Reduction Fund is paying billions of dollars to reduce carbon emissions. However, the carbon release from Queensland's land clearing in 2013-14 was estimated at 63 million tonnes. This is more than was purchased during the first round of the Emissions Reduction Fund at a cost of more than $660 million. That right there is the kicker. It is the reason this is an issue of national significance. One of the main reasons that Australia has been able to meet its modest emissions reduction target is because of the carbon savings achieved by halting broadscale land clearing. This will be under threat if the Baird government takes the New South Wales state back to the rates of land clearing that we have seen in Queensland under the Newman government.

The land-clearing laws in New South Wales and Queensland were the result of tireless campaigns by environmentalists who were willing to work in partnership with committed Labor state governments. We know that if you want to make a difference you have to be part of a party of governments. That is why the most important conservation reforms of the last 50 years have the word 'Labor' next to them—achievements like protecting the Great Barrier Reef, the Franklin, Kakadu, the Daintree and the Antarctic and ending 30 years of conflict over Tasmania's forests and 120 years of disagreement over the Murray-Darling Basin. Policies like these and the New South Wales land-clearing laws make me proud to be Labor, and I stand with my New South Wales colleagues in opposing the Baird government's ambitions to unwind them.