Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The High Seas Biodiversity Bill 2026 is domestic legislation that Australia needs to finally ratify the high seas treaty, which is now in force internationally. The bill establishes three core things: a regime for marine genetic resources, a framework for recognising and managing protected or specially managed areas of the high seas, and an environmental impact assessment regime for certain activities that may damage the marine environment. It is the world's first legally binding agreement to protect marine life in international waters, and it is a historic moment for international ocean conservation efforts.

After nearly two decades of negotiations, the high seas treaty will govern almost two-thirds of the planet's ocean ecosystems, which are under threat from overfishing, commercial shipping and pollution. The treaty helps protect the parts of the ocean that no one country owns, where there haven't been enough proper rules, and it makes it easier to create protected ocean areas and harder for people and nations to damage marine life without checks. It also means countries have to think more carefully about the harm their activities could cause before they go ahead. This matters so much. Currently, areas of national jurisdiction cover nearly half the planet. So this is a huge share of the ocean, yet governance has lagged far behind the science and far behind the scale of the threat to those areas. The treaty was designed to change that. So the bill is necessary now—and I welcome it—to ratify and domestically implement the rules that were agreed to within the high seas treaty.

Of course, I represent Warringah in this place, and we are so intrinsically tied to the oceans. A healthy ocean is not just some abstract concept; it shapes our local beaches, our marine life, our community, recreation and the character of the place. It is absolutely the heart and soul of so many communities around Australia and, in particular, the Warringah community. We all care deeply about nature, coastline, health and biodiversity. Every time I visit a school and they come and tell me about what they worry about, they worry about our oceans, about marine life and about plastics. The ocean is a really big part of their environment and their wellbeing. We know ocean systems are connected, so stronger protection offshore, far away from Australia, far away on that horizon, will help the overall resilience of marine ecosystems much closer to home. If you live by the coast, you have a stake in ocean stewardship beyond your own postcode.

The chronology is that Australia signed the high seas treaty in September 2023 and the treaty entered into force on 17 January 2026. This bill is the overdue domestic step needed for Australia to ratify the treaty and become a party with full legal effect. Australia helped negotiate this framework over many years under governments of different stripes, but we have been slower than we could have been in finishing the domestic job. It's also part of a wider failure, I would argue, in environmental governance. For decades, the law has been much better at slicing the ocean into jurisdictions than actually protecting the living systems that connect them. On 8 August 2025, along with other crossbench MPs, I wrote to Minister Murray Watt, encouraging him to ratify the treaty.

When it comes to our oceans, delay is not a pause button. It's a permission slip for continued degradation, and that's why action is so important. Only a tiny proportion of international waters until now has been protected, and that is the problem. The whole rationale of the treaty is to finally create a legal pathway for large-scale high seas protected areas and other area based management tools. Prior to the treaty, only one per cent of international waters were protected.

The government could take inspiration from how the international treaty is designed, as it includes mechanisms that should have been adopted in Australia's own environmental protection laws years ago—for example, the recognition of cumulative impacts. The treaty and the bill matter because they stop decision-makers looking at one activity in isolation, as if it exists in a neat little bubble. Instead, the environmental impact assessment process is meant to look at the combined and incremental harm caused by different activities together, including past, present and reasonably foreseeable future activities.

I would argue that this should be embedded in our domestic environmental laws as well, because of that cumulative impact—nothing happens in a vacuum. It's a much more realistic way to assess harm in the oceans, because ecosystems are usually damaged by layers of pressure piling up, not just by one dramatic event or one action. An example of why assessing cumulative impacts is so important is ocean acidification, caused by the ocean absorbing more carbon dioxide, which gradually changes ocean chemistry and makes it harder for many marine organisms and ecosystems to cope. You can't point specifically at one particular project when you talk about ocean acidification, but the cumulative impact is what is driving the problem.

Of course, the definition of 'cumulative impacts' used in this bill expressly includes the consequences of climate change, because we know the oceans are such a massive part of balancing out our global climate. That's why cumulative impacts are so important.

I think ratifying this treaty is really important—first, because we will gain influence where decisions are made. The treaty's first COP is expected within a year of entry into force. If we want influence over the high seas, protected areas and rules, then we need to be at the table as a signatory.

Second, environmental degradation can't just continue as the default setting. It means destructive fishing, shipping, pollution and worsening climate pressures, which don't ultimately respect any kind of national or political borders. We know those impacts are global.

Third, we gain economically and socially, especially because we are a maritime nation. We are ultimately an island continent surrounded by oceans. So the health of the oceans means the health of Australia. The health of the high seas is linked to Australian industries like tourism and fisheries—the ocean upstream effect. Ocean systems underpin climate and ecological stability. The ocean produces roughly half of the Earth's oxygen, largely through oceanic plankton, and absorbs more than 90 per cent of the excess heat trapped by human caused climate change. So much of our way of life depends on a healthy ocean, yet, still so little focus is given to it.

What this bill will do is ratify the high seas treaty. It embeds a precautionary approach requirement for ministerial decision-making, recognising that lack of full scientific certainty is not a reason to delay protective action. It creates a notification based regime for marine genetic resources and digital sequence information. It operationalises high seas area based management tools via 'specially managed areas' and 'special management plans' aligned to COP decisions with a clear 120-day deadline for Australia to make the domestic instrument after a COP decision. It establishes environmental impact assessments for activities under Australian control where impacts are potentially serious, including a threshold that triggers referral. I understand the Senate's amendments will make a material difference. They explicitly reference 'marine protected areas' in key definitional and operative provisions while also lifting corporate civil penalty settings.

The high seas are not someone else's problem but are a problem of all of us. It's a living system that shapes our coasts, our weather, our fisheries and our future. This bill is a chance to move from signature to stewardship, to bring international commitments into Australian law with real enforcement, real transparency and real ambition. There is now a clear mandate to pass the bill, fund it and use it to protect our oceans.

Of course, in talking about the oceans I have to commend the work of Jas Chambers and the Ocean Decade team, who are continually raising the issues of the care of our oceans and the balance between all the different uses—the balance between conservation and marine life but also healthy fisheries and all the other industrial uses, including offshore gas and shipping. There are a lot of different uses that are supported by the oceans. I think the oceans will ultimately have a lot of the solutions we need for climate change and for keeping our way of life, but we have to first embed into law that we want to protect them.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 17:30 to 17:56

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