Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia's environment is under significant pressure. It's experienced significant harm and has been badly damaged in lots of areas. The trajectory is not a good one; the trajectory is for further decline. To the traditional causes of that harm—loss of habitat and the introduction of invasive species—we add some new risks. Climate change is now presenting a really significant risk to our environment and to biodiversity, and we have new biosecurity concerns. As a result of climate change, we have greater frequency and intensity of natural disasters. We saw the catastrophic bushfires on the east coast of Australia where some three billion animals were lost, in addition to an enormous amount of forest habitat.

The Albanese Labor government isn't going to sit by and watch that downward trajectory continue. We're not going to allow the pattern of neglect, denial, wilful blindness and maladministration of the previous government to continue, and the May budget shows that. There are a whole series of investments that start to turn around what was, frankly, one of the most appalling areas of underperformance of the previous government.

The previous government knew quite well what was happening to the Australian environment. They had lots of evidence before them. They commissioned the Samuel review into the EPBC Act, Australia's protection framework, and the Samuel review said:

Australia's natural environment and iconic places are in an overall state of decline and are under increasing threat. They are not sufficiently resilient to withstand current, emerging or future threats, including climate change.

The EPBC Act is out dated and requires fundamental reform. It does not enable the Commonwealth to effectively fulfil its environmental management responsibilities to protect nationally important matters.

That's the report that the previous government commissioned, and that's the very clear evidence that was provided to them. And what did they do? They didn't do anything. They did literally nothing. There was no EPBC reform whatsoever. Graeme Samuel gave them a pretty straightforward and sensible recipe for remedial action, improved national standards and the creation of a national environmental protection agency. And they did nothing—zero. So we're left, as in so many areas, to start to clean up the mess. In this budget, $120 billion will go to the creation of that independent environmental protection agency. But it wasn't just the Samuel review. They had the Australia state of the environment 2021 report. We didn't see it in 2021, because it was one of those reports they preferred to keep to themselves, partly because they knew the story it told. The story it told was of environmental harm and decline, and, on their part, inaction.

We know that over the past two centuries Australia has lost more mammal species than any other continent. We have one of the highest rates of species decline and extinction risk in the OECD. There are more than 1,900 Australian species and ecological communities that are threatened or at risk of extinction. If you want to look at the Murray-Darling Basin, by itself it's home to 16 internationally significant Ramsar wetlands, 35 endangered species and 98 species of waterbirds alone. Rivers and catchments are in poor condition across the Murray-Darling. Native fish populations have declined by more than 90 per cent in the last 150 years.

A member of parliament government yesterday was talking about the nature repair market bills before the House, saying that they were a part of a piecemeal approach to a perceived ill. When you've seen a 90 per cent decline in the fish population in something as magnificent as the Murray-Darling Basin, can it possibly be said that that's a perceived ill? It's just ridiculous. This government won't have that.

This government is taking action on a number of fronts, led by the Minister for the Environment and Water: an extra $260 million to support Commonwealth national parks; $163 million to the fantastic people and institutional architecture that underlie the Australian Institute of Marine Science, so they can continue their fantastic work; and nearly $120 million for community groups, councils, NGOs and First Nations people to take on projects to clean up and restore urban rivers and waterways because at least half of threatened species are present in urban areas. The nature repair market, the EPBC reforms, the national environment protection agency—we've done all these things in a little bit more than 12 months because we can't let Australia's environment and biodiversity fall off a cliff, and that's exactly what those opposite did for 10 years.

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