Nicolette Boele (Bradfield, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

At the end of the last century, 1999 to be exact, the nation was experiencing the long-term millennium drought, or the 'Big Dry', which was starting to worsen. That was the same year that Prime Minister Howard and the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Hill, introduced the coalition's signature climate change policy, the Greenhouse Gas Abatement Program. It was also that year, in March, that Cyclone Vance, one of the most powerful cyclones to hit the mainland of Australia, crossed the coast, causing significant damage in WA. For me, I started work at the Australian Conservation Foundation as their very first climate change campaigner, and I found myself thrown into the deep end of negotiations around laws to reform water rights in the Murray-Darling Basin and environmental reforms that we now know today as the EPBC Act—all 19 syllables of it.

Twenty-five years young, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act—when originally birthed—was intended to provide a national framework for protecting the environment and conserving biodiversity, especially matters of national environmental significance, like our reefs, our precious forests and our Ramsar wetlands. It aimed to clarify the roles of the federal government and improve cooperation between states and territories.

How effective have these laws been in protecting the places that we love? Let's go to my happy place, science, and then straight to a less happy place, the facts. Australia's biodiversity has declined significantly over the last 25 years between 2000, when the EPBC Act was enacted, and today. Threatened species' populations have dropped, on average, by two to three per cent per annum. Key threats include habitat loss, invasive species and climate change.

While some conservation efforts have shown success in slowing decline, these have been insufficient to reverse the overall downward trend. Overall, threatened species' populations have declined—birds by 61 per cent on average, with terrestrial birds seeing the steepest drop at 62 per cent; amphibians have seen a 97 per cent decline in relative abundance; and plants have seen a 68 per cent decline in relative abundance. The number of species listed as threatened has increased significantly, with 130 species added in 2023 alone, bringing the total to 2,098; 741 species have been added to the threatened list since 2000. That's a 53 per cent increase. In my beautiful electorate of Bradfield, threatened species have almost doubled, from 40 to 79 in the short period between my two runs for public office in 2022 and 2025. What have been the main drivers? It's habitat loss, it's invasive species, and it's climate change.

Let me go to the first of these: habitat loss. In the 25 years since 2000, Australia has lost 9.22 million hectares of tree cover, about 22 per cent. While not all of that is old-growth forest, roughly 37 per cent of the loss is considered permanent deforestation resulting from land use changes, like agriculture and infrastructure. The remainder is from other disturbances, like logging and wildfires, that may not be permanent but degrade forests. One would think that any amendments to the laws here in 2025 would most certainly seek to address this calamity, like, for example, removing the exemption for large-scale logging in New South Wales, which is still possible under regional forestry agreements.

Now I go to the second main driver of species loss: climate change. Let me stress, climate change—or, more precisely, the inadequate management of rising average global temperatures and the impacts that this brings to habitats and species survival—has been one of the main drivers of Australia's threatened species list blowing out. The average global temperature between 2000 and 2025 has shown a significant upward trend, with the 20-year period of 2001 to 2020 warming by approximately one degree Celsius, relative to 1850 to 1990 averages. The last decade, 2014 to 2023, is the warmest on record, at about 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Recent data indicates that the most recent 12-month period, July 2024 to June 2025, was 1.55 degrees Celsius warmer than 1850 to 1900 averages.

We are breaking records here, and not in good ways. It's almost as if our environment, the places we love, have gotten worse since we introduced the laws enacted to protect them. It's little wonder that there are so many people interested in the success of these laws, including, I bet, future generations and the natural world on which we all depend. As it was drafted, passed and gazetted, the EPBC Act 1999 gave the minister for the environment the powers to intervene in decisions of national significance for our environment. Yet this happened only once over that entire period. All the while, literally hundreds of new coal, gas and fracking projects were approved, causing—rather than ceasing—habitat degradation and destruction and climate change impacts.

The government is at pains to tell us that this reform is once in a generation, and that means we truly need to get our skates on. It's very difficult for me not to be drawn into a joke about the Macquarie skate right here, but I shall not, because it's a bit too serious to joke about. We've already heard that the law is not working for nature. It's not working for renewable energy, for housing or for anyone. But I can tell you who it is most likely working for. That's the fossil fuel industry—literally hundreds of new approvals over those 25 years.

I am, by nature, a very positive individual. The glass, for me, is usually half full, so let me turn to the elements of the government's amendments that deserve a gold star. These include a shift in focus from a law based around process to one that makes outcomes clearer. That's why the codification of national environmental standards in these laws is so useful. All stakeholders will know and understand what good and bad look like. This also gives the consent authorities, be they future state and territory governments, the National EPA or the minister, a consistent yardstick against which to measure the merits or the shortcomings of a given project.

The second is stronger penalties for proponents who intentionally and persistently damage areas of high biodiversity and conservation value. The truth is that we can't put a value on platypus or Baudin's black cockatoo habitat, but we can use pricing signals to deter harmful behaviour. Stronger penalties will go some way to helping with that. But we are going to need a well-capacitated, independent regulator to prosecute. That's where the third gold, or rather silver, star comes in, with the establishment of the National EPA. In principle, this is a laudable amendment. We need to depoliticise decisions that have been made in the last 25 years under this law. The minister, in a political position which is more easily influenced by special interests, needs to be removed from as many of these decisions as possible. A competent, tightly codified and well-resourced, independent national EPA is most likely to be able to deliver for nature and industry.

You may have noticed that there was a silver star there, and perhaps I've been a little too generous, because this takes me to the frowny-face stamp, which is around the wide discretion provided for the minister to make decisions not in favour of nature but possibly against it. I'm referring to the national interest exemption, where the minister may consider Australia's national interest, be it defence, security or emergency needs, when ignoring the protections of nature. So far, the proposed law fails to define what projects could qualify for this exemption to protect the places we love. The acting CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation said that he was deeply concerned with the proposed exemptions, arguing its application was wide open to interpretation and could easily be misused. He said:

Too often the national interest is falsely conflated with the coal and gas industry and their commercial interests.

And, if it's not the intention of this government's environment minister to misuse it, what about that of a future government's environment minister?

To be clear, we've had laws that, for 25 years, have given the minister the power already to intervene to protect nature. This has only been flexed once, to my knowledge, and that was arguably more about politics than it was about nature. So, if the government is seeking to broaden the discretion provided to the minister to weigh in on decisions, then hold tight for even more decisions that favour industry over nature. As I've said before, if these laws don't protect nature, then which laws will? The way these amendments are drafted, there remain major loopholes, and restrictions on approving unacceptable impacts via ministerial discretion is just one of them.

What about the specifics? The proposed new laws do nothing to end land clearing or old-growth logging. The RFA and continuous-use exemptions and the failure to address large-scale deforestation remain, and this is despite knowing that habitat loss is one of the three main reasons for species extinction.

Despite the government's rhetoric on understanding the science of nature, there is very little regard, if any, for climate in these nature laws. There's no requirement that major polluting projects be assessed for their climate impacts, contrary to international law and the recent ICJ opinion. Nor is there a requirement for natural systems or ecosystem services to be assessed for their contribution to helping address climate impacts, be that in mitigation, adaptation or recovery. This is despite climate also being one of the top three reasons that Australia—and, in fact, the globe—has a species extinction crisis. The government is quick to criticise the coalition for not understanding the severities of the climate crisis, but the lack of climate consideration in these proposed nature laws makes me want them to take a look in the mirror. How is it possible that in 2025 strong nature laws are drafted without any consideration for the human induced climate crisis in which we and future generations must live?

Finally—because I'm running out of time, not because I'm running out of amendments to critique—I want to talk about the process of drafting and creating the national environmental standards. We won't see them before the bill is passed, and the Samuel review into the EPBC Act could not have been clearer that the NES is the fulcrum, the foundation, of reform. To quote the minister, this is a 'once-in-a-generation opportunity' to do what we can for nature. When we do, we help not just other species and future generations; we help ourselves here in this lifetime.

I support the intention of strengthening our nature laws. The government has made a good start, but, given the size of the crisis at hand and the responsibilities given to me by the people of Bradfield, I won't be supporting the amendments to our nature laws as proposed. My hope is that when these laws go to the Senate, our house of review, they will return here to this chamber with some additional safeguards attached, particularly for forestry protection, ministerial discretion and climate. When I see movement on these issues, I look forward to supporting the bills as amended, because our communities, our nation and our planet are depending on it.

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