Jamie Chaffey (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025 and the six associated bills. After having years to approach the matter of a much-needed overhaul of the EPBC Act, we're here in this place, forced to deal with this extremely complex piece of reform in a pre-Christmas flurry. Perhaps the Albanese government is hoping that we don't have enough time to dissect the 1,500 pages and take a close look at the fine print. This is a piece of work that Labor promised would be finished by the end of 2023. This shows a lack of respect from Labor, who first tabled these seven bills separately to make up what is the revised EPBC Act. And then yesterday, when the debate started, the first order of business for Labor was to gag debate and use their numbers to bundle all the bills together so we could have a faster debate. This is for no other reason than to rush this reform through by the end of this sitting week. This reform is far too important to all Australians to rush. Even the Environmental Defenders Office, in a media release less than a week ago, issued their first impressions, while their lawyers pored over the details in the hundreds of pages.

These are very important bills—they will have an important impact, eventually, on all Australians—and they require thorough examination. This should not be done at the end of years of delay in such a big hurry. One thing that just about all stakeholders, from the environmentalists to the developers, do agree on is that they do not like what they've seen in this piece of reform. Part of the concern is the amount of control that falls into the states' and territories' hands. Through the net gain clause, along with the federal government, now the state and territory ministers can write their own increased cheques on the cost of biodiversity impacts. This will have devastating effects. How is it better, how is it cheaper, and how is it fairer? How can anyone embarking on a development have any certainty about what they can or can't do when the rules change from case to case and from state to state?

Let's get to the crux of another matter. How on earth are we able to measure and implement the increasing escalation of biodiversity offsets that will now be calculated by some mysterious formula called net gain? How can we debate the issue when we have no clarity on what 'net gain' means? Net gain is a concept that will take more agricultural land out of food production and will cause biodiversity offset costs to skyrocket even further. We also have no clear definition on what makes up the 'unacceptable impact'. If we don't know that, how can developers? How are they able to go and work out what it is for them? The concept of 'national interest' is another pitfall waiting to swallow future development that will never see the light of day due to these reforms. The Albanese government claim they want to speed up approvals and get productivity moving. We're going in the wrong direction.

Nobody denies that people are doing it tough right across regional Australia, particularly in my area of the seat of Parkes. Our country is in the grip of a cost-of-living crisis. We are in the grip of a housing crisis as well. The Albanese Labor government has committed to addressing the housing shortage by building new houses. The National Housing Accord target is 1.2 million new homes over five years. And yet here we are, with the Labor government trying to dress up the unworkable act by not only failing to impress those who have environmental concerns but also shackling developers even more. This is another move that is not cheaper, not better and not fairer.

Already across the Parkes electorate I'm hearing horror stories of the unwieldy monster that is called the Biodiversity Offsets Scheme. Let me tell you a story of the Wilcannia Weir, the much delayed and very necessary piece of infrastructure needed to ensure the water supply of a remote town with a majority-Indigenous population. The new weir was originally costed and funded at $30 million back in 2022. Now, just three years on, the cost for that same weir has blown out to over $100 million. I'm advised that $17 million of that price is going to biodiversity offsets. That's more than half of the original cost for that project. Again, it's not cheaper, not better and certainly not fairer, and there is still no weir.

Here are some more eyewatering examples of the Biodiversity Offsets Scheme at work. These are projects that have not gone ahead or have been seriously downscaled, with the offset costs being a major contributing factor. The first is a new residential subdivision of 600 homes planned for Moree Plains Shire to capitalise on the Inland Rail project. This carried a Biodiversity Offsets Scheme price tag of $120 million. That is more than the $90 million value of the entire project. Another project in Moree, a 300-student agricultural college with an offset price tag of $3 million to $5.5 million, was stopped. The project was lost. A 40-home residential subdivision plan for Armidale had a $3 million offset. The project was reduced down to 10 homes. In the Parkes Shire, 40 new homes attracted $2 million in biodiversity offsets, and that project didn't go ahead. In Tamworth—this is an extremely sad story in a housing crisis—a 46-lot residential estate was lost because of a $16.2 million offset cost. A 96-lot residential subdivision was lost to a $19 million offset cost. A 24-lot subdivision was lost to a $3 million offset cost. A 50-lot subdivision north of Tamworth was lost to a $6 million offset cost. A 28-lot subdivision was lost to a $2.8 million offset cost. That's a total of 244 new homes lost to offset costs in the Tamworth area alone, and it will get worse under this revised act because of the net gain clause.

Where is the transparency behind this enormous offset price tag and what is the cost to our housing, jobs, infrastructure and so much more? Where is the evidence of all of this wonderful environmental offset that has been paid for by the other millions and billions of dollars that have come from the offset schemes right across our great country? We have a government that is committed to approvals and committed to productivity, but who is taking oversight of a scheme where the offset costs are sometimes higher than the value of the actual project? Something here doesn't add up.

In addition, the Inland Rail, a critical driver for investment, growth and job creation, is facing an offset cost of $1.375 billion. Something's wrong. In Narromine shire, a requirement to build a small part of a new road under the Newell Highway, disturbing a minimal 36 hectares, carried a $20 million offset cost that somehow was revised down to $10 million. There is a $500 million biodiversity offset on a project to raise the wall of Wyangala Dam, to droughtproof and flood-proof the whole of the Central West. That project is still under assessment. And the Transgrid project is looking at a $1.2 billion cost for biodiversity offsets for the HumeLink transmission line between Wagga and South Australia—a massive amount that will increase power costs even more.

This change to the act will not improve it; it will make it worse. This is not a matter of not caring about the environment. As I've said, there are voices from each side of the debate chiming in over these reforms. This is a case where reforms are long overdue. This is a complex case where reforms are being crammed through before Christmas. They have far-reaching implications for housing, productivity, the cost of living and livability in regional Australia. More time, more consideration and more transparency are needed in this place.

Better, cheaper, fairer? Labor's proposed reforms to the EPBC Act will have long-lasting negative impacts if the Albanese government continues to ram them through this House. These reforms are not better than what we've got now, and they're certainly not fairer.

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