Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is nothing more distinctively Australian than our stunning natural environment, and there are few places more iconic than the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains—a World Heritage area in my electorate. In fact, it's the 25th anniversary of the declaration of the area as a World Heritage area on 29 November. This is an area that gets four million visitors a year. They come because we are known around the world for our wilderness in Sydney's backyard. We need to protect it. Our environment and economy are intrinsically linked. For the Blue Mountains, our tourism relies on a healthy natural environment. It matters in the Hawkesbury and along the Nepean too. For the Hawkesbury especially, the agricultural sector relies on a healthy natural environment. Australians want governments, businesses and environmental groups to work together to protect our environment and to reap the economic benefits of sustainable development.

This last election, people put their trust in Labor. They clearly rejected the extremes of politics on both sides. We know it's really important to build connections from all sides. That goes to the type of government Australians have told us that they want. We need to be able to accept the science and to build coalitions across the community while solving the problems and keeping the lights on. This Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025, and cognate bills, delivers modern, fit-for-purpose national environmental laws that ensure big gains for both the environment and for business. The Albanese government is committed to reforming our environmental laws to deliver stronger protections, reduce duplication and boost accountability and transparency in decision-making.

The legacy of every Labor government in my lifetime has been to improve the environment for future generations. That is an endless task. In June 1987, Bob Hawke went to the Daintree to announce that he was going to seek World Heritage listing for that site. I flew with the prime minister that day, as a young journalist, to report on the announcement. It was incredible to witness history. That decision and announcement in the election campaign that year, came on the back of the Hawke decision to save the Franklin River from being dammed a few years earlier.

The Keating government began the establishment of Indigenous Protected Areas, which now cover 112 million hectares of land and sea. Rudd signed us up to climate action through the Kyoto protocol, and Gillard continued that work. The Albanese government is aiming to protect and conserve 30 per cent of Australia's land and 30 per cent of our marine areas by 2030. And we've committed more than $1 billion in funds for that plus the Indigenous Protected Areas Program to protect critical biodiversity areas, as well as our ambitious plan to stop species extinction.

One of the projects we've done in Macquarie is a million-dollar grant for the Hawkesbury Environment Network and incredible platypus work by Western Sydney University researcher Dr Michelle Ryan and her colleagues. And a new koala project will soon begin with Science for Wildlife and the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute, worth nearly $3.5 million, to research and look at land and threat management to help establish a koala stronghold in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. This has the potential to support 20 per cent of New South Wales koalas.

So, Labor makes a difference to the environment. We protect it, and Australians endorsed the Albanese government's policy agenda at the election. That agenda involved protecting jobs and the environment. That includes making sensible reforms to protect our environment and deliver certainty to business. It's been five years since Graeme Samuel tabled his report for the former environment minister, currently the Leader of the Opposition, and our laws remain fundamentally broken. They aren't working for the environment or for industry. These new laws are a targeted and balanced package of reforms to the EPBC Act, centred on three pillars. No 1. is stronger environmental protection and restoration. No. 2 is more efficient and robust project approvals. And No. 3 is greater accountability and transparency in decision-making.

These are stronger environmental protection and restoration laws that won't just deliver better protections for our special places but also will restore and regenerate them for future generations. There will be more efficient and robust project assessments and approvals that will allow us to better respond and deliver on national priorities like the renewable energy transition and the housing that we need. There will be greater accountability and transparency in decision-making to give all Australians confidence that good decisions are being made.

Let's work through some of the changes. First of all is the National Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA. Under the proposed reforms we'll establish the first ever national EPA, delivering on an election commitment that was proudly campaigned for by my branch members and by many other people in my community: the Labor Environment Action Network, or LEAN; the Blue Mountains Conservation Society; Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action; the Australian Conservation Foundation in my local area; the Macquarie Alliance for Climate; the GetUp members in the Macquarie electorate; and the Hawkesbury Environment Network. They all want to see this change.

The EPA would exercise a range of powers independently of the minister, such as compliance and enforcement of the laws and project conditions and the auditing of state and territory processes for project assessments and approvals against the new national environmental standards. What are they? Well, reforms will allow the minister to make national environmental standards that set boundaries for decisions so they deliver improved environmental outcomes. Their aim is to protect, conserve and restore important environmental areas and species to genuinely make up for the environmental damage that's done and deliver a net gain for the environment to support better decision-making and to help the public understand and comment on projects.

We recognise that some impacts can't be approved unless the project is in the national interest. The reforms include a new definition of 'unacceptable impact' specific to each protected matter. Among other things, they'll provide a safeguard against impacts that cause irreversible loss of Australia's biodiversity and heritage and clearly define what types of environmental harm must be avoided and cannot be offset. That includes World Heritage areas like the Blue Mountains. It includes threatened species and it includes wetlands of international importance. Significantly, this bill ensures that projects must leave the environment better off by introducing the concept of net gain for environmental offsets. This is a shift from the current rules, which focus on no net loss. Projects will be required by law to avoid, mitigate and repair damage to protected matters wherever possible. Any residual significant impacts on nationally protected matters must be fully offset to achieve a net gain for the environment. That's the improvement. The net gain can be achieved either by the proponent directly delivering an offset or through an upfront financial contribution to a restoration fund. This shifts the dial towards avoided impacts and restoration, giving our native populations the opportunity to regenerate, recover and become more resilient.

I want to give a bit more detail about environmental offsets. Sometimes, projects can harm the environment in ways that can't be avoided. When this happens, this is how we offset to compensate or make up for the damage. Under the proposed changes to the EPBC Act, it will require project managers to avoid harm in the first place—that's No. 1—and then offset that remaining impact to deliver the net gain. The proposed changes will allow certain biodiversity certificates issued under the nature repair market to be used for environmental offsetting. So project proponents have some options. They can deliver an offset themselves, they can pay for the government to do it via a restoration contribution payment, or they can do a combination of both. A new restoration contributions holder will manage the funds to deliver the net gain and ensure transparency.

The reforms also introduce new emissions disclosure requirements. In keeping with Professor Samuel's recommendations, there's no climate trigger in this bill, but major emitting project proponents will be required to disclose estimates of scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions as part of gaining federal environmental removal. Proponents will also be required to disclose their plans to reduce those emissions and explain how those measures are consistent with government laws and policies.

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