Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Moncrieff proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Government's environmental failures harming the environment and the economy.

I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Many members in this House may not know this—I will start with a small snapshot of my life—but I grew up in South Australia and spent my childhood playing on the beaches of the Yorke Peninsula, crab fishing in Ardrossan, eating King George whiting for breakfast and flattening out calamari with beer bottles. Mum used to fry them in the pan for breakfast, freshly caught in the Gulf of St Vincent. And what I want to talk about today is the disappointment of the South Australian people, who have been let down miserably by this government, because, today, that beach, in the great electorate—magnificent electorate—of Grey, is a very, very different place. I want to talk about a matter of great national importance: the government's failure on the algal bloom that has been blooming for months and has significantly affected coastal South Australia in the Gulf of St Vincent but also in the Port River region and on Adelaide beaches.

Scientists in South Australia have been asking this government for 18 months—18 months!—for $4 million over 10 years to fund monitoring of the Great Southern Reef and the algal bloom that has been reported as killing 13,800 marine creatures since March of this year alone and affecting over 400 species. Notable marine species are squid, which I talked about; octopus; cuttlefish; benthic sharks; rays; sea dragons; lobsters; reef fish; and seagrass fauna. Beach monitoring has logged nearly 5,000 wash-up events as of June 2025, with thousands more seen offshore. The Albanese government has, under two ministers, failed to respond to the scientists for 18 months. The Albanese government failed to respond when the marine life started washing up dead on the beach in March. This calamity has harmed the environment, and it has harmed the local community and the local economy.

My colleague Senator Ross Cadell has been working hard to support the local fishing businesses, and he knows that industry leaders like the oyster farmer Steve Bowley and Port Wakefield—there's a great bakery there. I'll shout-out the people that work at the Port Wakefield Bakery and the Kitchener buns that they have there. Oyster farmer Steve Bowley and Port Wakefield fisherman Bart Butson have spoken openly about the pain their communities are feeling with disappearing stocks, months-long shutdowns and no end or certainty in sight. It's been over 80 days since Steve sold one oyster—one oyster!

The new member for Grey, Tom Venning, has spent time with members in his electorate who have been affected. The member for Grey knows that it's been over 80 days since fisher Paul Germain has caught one single fish—one fish! And the member for Grey knows that Bart Butson, the local fisher at Port Wakefield who fishes in the Gulf of St Vincent, saw hundreds of dead cuttlefish floating on the sea and, from that time, has started to see southern calamari disappear—and now there are none to catch whatsoever. The significance of that is that they make up at least 30 per cent of the catch, and sometimes the whole catch, for these fishers. Trade has ceased—completely ceased—for commercial fishers at Port Vincent and at Stansbury on the Yorke Peninsula. And it's a crying shame.

The member for Grey also knows that the wider impact on local businesses is devastating. Tourists are cancelling their holidays in caravan parks. They're deserting local operators and hospitality venues. Stansbury publican Rob Rankine is 18 per cent down on last year for the corresponding 11 weeks. That's over $1,000 a day of turnover he has lost. That is his livelihood; that is what he lives on. And it has stopped. Shopkeepers' revenues are down 15 per cent. Businesses can't cope with that. The Albanese government has failed the local fishing and tourism industries. There's no certainty—none whatsoever—of when this situation will be overcome, unfortunately.

South Australians—all Australians—should be disappointed in this Labor government because all of this could have been prevented. It could have and should have been addressed much sooner. I mean, if our marine life had started washing up on Bondi Beach, on Coogee Beach, on Cottesloe Beach—goodness me! Member for Fremantle, if it had been there, I'm sure the minister would have been there much quicker. If this had been the Great Barrier Reef, it wouldn't have taken the minister so long for. Instead, it took 18 months for the Albanese government to do, well, something. Under pressure from his colleagues, the minister did a mercy dash down to South Australia just before we reconvened in the parliament. He made a quick dash down there, to stand up and do a presser—

An opposition member: Look at the dead fish.

Look at the dead fish quickly. I'm sure he didn't walk along the Ardrossan jetty. He tried desperately not to show up. Where's the minister representing the minister now? He's not going to speak to this. Again, Labor is missing in action when it comes to the environment. You failed in the last term. Labor failed on their environmental policies last term. They did not reform the EPBC Act. They stalled—absolutely stalled.

While Labor's drop-in-the-ocean funding announcement is certainly welcome—it is welcome; the people of South Australia welcome that tiny little bit of funding, of $10,000 per business. I mean, at the press conference, the minister didn't even know what the money was for! He was just covering himself for the sittings in parliament after pressure, no doubt, from his Labor colleagues, from the coalition, the Liberal Party, from the Greens, and from South Australia. That's what he was waiting for before his mercy dash down to South Australia.

During the last term, the then environment minister, the member for Sydney, proved completely unable to deliver Labor's promise of an overhaul of the EPBC Act. She promised, multiple times, that the overhaul would be finalised by the end of 2023, but it was continually deferred. What we are left with is a very long process that doesn't serve the environment and doesn't serve jobs. It doesn't serve industry. It doesn't serve our great nation—our flora and fauna—but it doesn't serve jobs or industry either. These determinations are taking too long, and it's deeply concerning that Labor's lack of action is causing investment in Australia to decline. It's decreasing Australia's attractiveness as a place to do business and, most importantly, it is costing livelihoods and jobs across the nation.

It's important that we have an effective process that looks after the environment, because we care about the environment. Our environment has been going backwards under Labor.

Opposition members interjecting—

Come on, the endangered species list has increased! You do not have a record on the environment that you can talk about. We care about the environment, and it's important to have an effective process that looks after the environment and looks after the economy with a sensible balance.

Labor has failed on the environment. You've failed Australians. You've come into government and failed us again today. The minister representing the minister is missing from the chamber. Australians deserve better than this Labor government, which is clearly and ultimately missing in action. It failed to turn up on the South Australian algal bloom, it failed to deliver any outcomes, and it is failing Australians miserably.

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Claydon, congratulations on your return to that role. It's good to be back in the first week of a new parliament. We come to the new parliament with a hope, on behalf of the Australian community, that all of us return here with a commitment to work with a sense of shared purpose, and there's no more important area for us to apply that shared purpose than the protection of our environment and action on climate change. I waited for 10 minutes to hear a commitment from the shadow minister to reforming Australia's national environmental protection framework. I waited for 10 minutes to hear the shadow minister say anything about their commitment to taking action on climate change and their commitment to net zero—and we know that, all week, parts of the coalition have been tearing themselves apart in a desperate attempt to throw that commitment into the bin. But we got 10 minutes of nothing.

I was glad to hear that the shadow minister for the environment is concerned about the algal bloom in South Australia. That's a concern that is entirely shared by the Australian government. That's why the Minister for the Environment and Water went there as a priority. That's why we've already committed $14 million; that's been matched by the South Australian government. It follows the $25 million we invested, in the previous term, in science that is specifically dedicated to the restoration of environmental conditions in the Great Southern Reef, and the $5½ million we committed through the National Environmental Science Program.

We know that that algal bloom is influenced by climate change. We are a government that takes climate change seriously. We are a government that increased Australia's emission reduction commitment by more than 50 per cent the very instant we were elected in 2022. One of the first things we did in the new parliament in 2022 was to legislate net zero by 2050. The coalition are on the verge of abandoning their grudging commitment to net zero as we speak; they are going up into the Sky studios and tearing each other apart as they try to find ways to abandon climate change action and return to their natural condition, which is climate denialism. Nothing would be more dangerous for Australia than for that to occur.

It is a core responsibility of the Australian government to protect and conserve Australia's unbelievably precious environmental condition and biodiversity. We are, all of us, and especially everyone in this place, the stewards of a remarkably diverse continent nation with one of the largest ocean domains of all countries—a landscape and seascape that's home to ecosystems and species that are present nowhere else on planet Earth. The responsibility to protect our environment is an obligation to the proper care and good stewardship of country and the biodiversity that it sustains for its own sake on its own terms. But it's also an obligation to ourselves because there's no way that our human communities can be healthy and safe, and there's no way that we can maintain and advance our own shared wellbeing, separate from a healthy environment and a healthy climate. That's why it has been an article of faith for this Labor government to pick up from a period of extreme and extraordinary neglect by focusing on environmental restoration and conservation and by focusing on climate action.

It is abysmal that on this topic, of all topics, there should be no capacity for honesty or self-reflection from the shadow minister for the environment about their record. But, because I know the Australian community are sick of us going along with that kind of pointless aggression and sick of that kind of self-imposed amnesia just for the sake of trying to score political points, I'm going to talk about the positive; I'm going to actually talk about our program and our record. I could spend another 10 minutes, if I had another 10 minutes, detailing the abysmal failure of those opposite over nine long years, but I'm going to talk about our record.

We began, after our election in 2022, by reforming the EPBC Act. We strengthened and expanded the water trigger. We brought legislation in here to introduce an independent EPA; it was a reform that was blocked by those opposite and the Greens. We provided $550 million to better protect threatened species and animals. We provided $200 million for improvements to creeks and waterways around this country through the Urban Rivers and Catchments Program. We invested $1.3 billion to double the size of the Indigenous Rangers Program, an extraordinarily successful program both in protecting country and lifting up the wellbeing of First Nations communities. We provided $230 million for 12 new Indigenous protected areas; that covers country the size of Tasmania. We stopped uranium mining in Jabiluka; instead, we added Jabiluka to Kakadu National Park. We doubled funding to look after our national parks, including Uluru and Kakadu.

And, as the party that created the national network of marine protected areas when we were last in government, we came to government with a clear resolve and a focus to take that work further because we know how important our ocean environment is, whether it's off Queensland or Ningaloo and Exmouth Gulf in Western Australia—or in South Australia, as has been discussed today. That's why in 2023 we tripled the size of the Macquarie Island Marine Park. It was the largest act of ocean conservation in the world in the calendar year 2023. And then, in 2024, we quadrupled the size of the Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve. That was the largest act of marine conservation anywhere in the world in the calendar year 2024. Australia now protects 52 per cent of our ocean domain. We have one of the largest EEZs in the world. We are responsible stewards of one of the largest areas of ocean territory in the world, and we now protect 52 per cent of our ocean domain. That is better than any other country on the planet. We should be proud of that. We are proud of that.

But we know there is more work to be done. That's why we wholeheartedly support the ratification of the new treaty to protect the high seas. That's why the Minister for the Environment and Water continues to look at new programs to support our seascape, our coastal and estuarine environments and our terrestrial environment. But we can't allow those opposite to come in here in the first week with that pointless aggression, that self-imposed amnesia, that 'Let's treat the Australian community to a little bit of the Men in Black mind-cleansing device,' because that would be irresponsible. People need to know what the Australian government is doing on their behalf as stewards of our environment. It's the expectation the community has; it's an expectation that we will deliver upon. But they cannot be allowed to forget what happened under nine years from those opposite.

Forty per cent was cut out of the department of the environment. You cut funds to the CSIRO. You presided over an approval and compliance process that resulted in nearly 80 per cent of all approved activities failing to meet the conditions of their approval. You ran a threatened species strategy with 20 target mammal species where the trajectory of 12 of those species declined. For the eight species where there was an improvement in the trajectory, four of them had an improvement in the trajectory only to the extent that they declined less quickly. Sixteen of your targeted species actually declined in population under the strategy that you didn't properly apply and you didn't properly resource.

You utterly ignored the Graeme Samuel review, which you commissioned. You asked Graeme Samuel to tell you what needed to happen with our national environmental protection framework, and he told you. He said: 'It's failing. It is presiding over a trajectory of decline. You need to fix it. You need to introduce proper compliance and controls. You need to improve the standards.' What did you do? Nothing. You did nothing for nine years. You hid—

Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Because you blocked it in the Senate!

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's rubbish, Angie! You never introduced anything, and you know that. You introduced—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am raising a point of order. To the minister, I ask that you pass your comments through me in the chair. To the shadow minister, no more of that.

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, what the member for Moncrieff said is untrue. They never introduced any legislation to deliver reforms of the EPBC Act. They never introduced that legislation. For the shadow minister for the environment to suggest that they did and that we blocked it is not just collective amnesia. It's not just the Men in Black mind-cleansing device. It is an untruth. They didn't do anything when Graeme Samuel gave them the blueprint to reform our failed national environmental protection framework. We will not make that mistake. We will not neglect our obligation to the Australian people. We will not fail to be the proper stewards of Australia's remarkable environmental condition and biodiversity. We will do the job you never had the courage or strength or resolve to do as a priority of the work of the Albanese Labor government.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Claydon, you're probably the only one in the House today who would remember Professor Sumner Miller asking the question as he sold chocolate, 'Why is it so?'

Government Member:

A government member interjecting—

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly—I'm not doing that voice, though. And it's a question that I'm asking today. Why is it so? Why do we have a mass fish kill in the Gulf of St Vincent in South Australia? Why is the environment suffering?

Labor's track record on the environment is merely virtue signalling, knee-jerk reactions and posturing, when the evidence is plain to see, rotting away on the Adelaide and regional South Australian beaches and ruining the local fishing industry, as the shadow minister pointed out. Let's face it: Labor are motivated by politics, not outcomes. When you want to see the fruit of Labor's approach to the environment, it smells suspiciously like rotting fish.

Let me take you upstream from the Murray mouth, which was gushing a couple of years ago with nutrient-rich floodwaters, which some say was a major contributor to the algal bloom event in the Gulf of St Vincent—a flood, I might say, that the experts said would never happen on that scale again. Based on that metric, Labor had been buying back water from the Murray-Darling Basin from our food producers and now have more water than they know what to do with.

Up in the Murray-Darling Basin, through the Gannawarra, Loddon and Northern Grampian shires, we have a different environmental threat: Labor's rampage towards political targets—I emphasise political, not environmental, targets—in the name of net zero. In the name of saving the planet, Labor are throwing the environment under a bus.

Government members interjecting—

You, on the opposite side of the chamber, may laugh, but the people in my electorate are absolutely not laughing. We've seen throughout my electorate and elsewhere in regional Australia farmers and local landowners, Indigenous people and local communities speaking up about the environmental devastation and scarring of the landscape due to wind turbines, transmission lines, blanket solar panels and flammable battery project all in the name of net zero. Watch the Minister for the Environment and Water's approach to the Port of Hastings' so-called Victorian Renewable Energy Terminal.

In my home state of Victorian, the Allan Labor government are so hell-bent on their net zero targets and so insistent on ignoring voices of common sense, even those within their own tent, that they want offshore wind. But they can't get it. I emphasise and remind the House that Victoria Labor's goal, if they cannot get offshore wind, is to take up to 70 per cent of Victoria's prime agricultural land to create an industrial wasteland of transmission lines, turbines and panels, all to 'save the planet'.

Mallee community members have come to me distressed about the destruction of their local environment and the risk posed to local threatened and endangered species by Labor's reckless energy plans. It's interesting that, when the consequences of Labor's bad policy start washing up on the beaches of a capital city, suddenly the media take notice. Well, kudos to Sky News, Peter Credlin, Chris Kenny, the Institute of Public Affairs, the Daily Telegraph and others who are giving our farmers, our landowners, our communities a face and a voice in metropolitan media.

I want to finish with 92-year-old Ellen Shepherd, from Horsham, who wrote to me overnight, having seen me on Kenny's program. She said net zero is 'tearing families apart'. She said:

It's tearing neighbours apart, destroying our wonderful farming land and in some states, turning huge swathes of bushland into dust bowls for hundreds of kilometres.

The city slickers, especially those of the Teal brand, don't know and don't care about the severity of these issues throughout this vast land. They live in cloud cuckoo land and get a few more thousand, if they require it, from their moneyman—Simon Holmes-a-Court. As he did for one particular Independent at the Tasmanian election I noticed.

She goes on:

I listened to Ken Henry at the NPC; the hypocrisy in some of these speeches takes my breath away. He adores Koalas, but doesn't see how they are affected in their habitat by the screaming bulldozers tearing their very living away from their lives in many parts—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Your time has expired. I give the call to the member for Richmond.

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker Claydon, and can I start by congratulating you on your re-election as the Deputy Speaker. I'm really excited today that my first contribution to the 48th Parliament is to talk about our environmental reform and how it drives our economy as well. It is no surprise, of course, that what we've heard from the other side is the usual rhetoric we've been hearing forever from them—all climate deniers. You can look at that when you look at the legislation that we've brought into the House. Of course, our first bill yesterday was to cut HECS debt by 20 per cent. What was the first major piece of legislation from the coalition? A bill to scrap action on climate change. Just as we saw with the nine years of inaction when they were in government, they still don't accept the science of climate change and they just want to take the country backwards.

As I said, we had almost a decade of inaction with them. I think there were 20-odd plans they had. They were always changing their minds when they were in government, and of course they went to the last election with their $600 billion nuclear plan. Well, how did that go? The Australian people clearly rejected that. They are sick of this ongoing climate denial from the Liberals and Nationals.

In contrast to all of that, we are absolutely committed to making Australia a renewable energy superpower, and the Australian people support that as well. They endorsed our policies at the election because they involved protecting jobs and protecting the environment. We can do both—we absolutely can—and we're committed to making sensible reforms to better protect our environment and deliver certainty to industry.

As we heard today, the independent Samuel review found that our current laws aren't working to protect the environment for industry and business, so our priority is to fix those laws. The current ones are outdated, and we need the support of the House. They should get on board with this. It's vitally important for our future. If we want to be a renewable energy superpower, if we want a future made in Australia and if we want to protect our iconic natural environment, we all need to be on board with this.

We have made huge advances also when it comes to the energy transition, with record renewable energy generation and our policies across the economy helping drive down emissions and deliver on our targets, very importantly. Renewable energy generation has seen Australia reach new records. It is up in volume by around 30 per cent since we were elected, and that comes from government investment, policies and legislation. That's what the Australian people support, and I just cannot understand how the other side fail to recognise that again and again and again. We see it across the board.

We are the party that's delivered every single major environmental reform in Australia's history, from Landcare to saving the Franklin, protecting the Daintree and Kakadu, building the largest network of marine parks in the world and addressing climate change. It is the Labor Party that continues to do that. It's the Labor Party that continues this record investment in renewable energy. Since we came to government in 2022, we've passed strong laws to force big polluters to cut emissions so Australia gets to net zero carbon pollution by 2050. This and other actions have reduced our emissions. It is vitally important that that's happened, and it has happened only through the absolute commitment of this government.

As I've said, we saw almost a decade of inaction from the Liberals and Nationals. Time and time again, they've come in here saying the same things over and over again. Looking forward, we all have an opportunity to get all these important reforms done, so they should actually look at it and think about the impacts of their decisions on our economy. The decisions they make are destructive. The Australian people have said to those opposite that they do not support their climate denialism, and they have said it many, many times. Those opposite should reflect and listen to the people of Australia and what they have said to them and work constructively with the government to reform our environmental laws to sustain our economic growth into the future. It's vitally important. We can just look at all of those things they did when they were in government over those nine years—so destructive.

The Greens need a bit of time for reflection as well. We saw them blocking so much in the previous parliament, whether it was environmental reforms or housing reforms. Well, the Australian people have spoken to them as well. They're not interested in the constant blocking of reforms, particularly those environmental reforms. So I say to them as well: work constructively, get an outcome and put away the playbook of opposing everything. It's not on. People actually want constructive reform and everyone working together.

So, Liberals, Nationals and Greens, you all have an opportunity now in this parliament to stand up for your communities, deliver environmental reform and drive our economic growth. People want you to do that, so stop playing politics. Stop blocking everything—not just environmental reforms but across housing and so many other areas as well—and drive our economy forward.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to speak on the economy and the environment. Bad policy and bad implementation lead to really bad outcomes, and this is very clear in my electorate of Nicholls. It's not only the people of South Australia who are very disappointed with the Labor government; it's the people who live in the Goulburn and Murray valleys. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan was supposed to deliver a triple bottom-line outcome: social, environmental and economic. It was supposed to support those principles. We would have an improved environment and we would have an improved economy, because we could still produce food and we could therefore have better social outcomes. The people who are employed in agriculture and the people who are employed in all those great food-producing industries, like in my electorate, could continue to be employed and we could continue to export clean, green food to many places, including South-East Asia and China.

But the bad implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and the pursuit of ripping more water away from irrigation, which is basically a political objective, not an environmental objective, has led to some really perverse outcomes. I want to explain one of those perverse outcomes to the House, because I think we could all bring examples that we understand, because we live it. That's what this place should be about. But what happens when excessive amounts of water are pushed down the Goulburn and Murray rivers to meet targets in the artificially fresh lower lakes of South Australia? Those rivers have unsustainably high flows in summer, and that damages the vegetation on the banks of the river. In the words of a peak fishing body in Victoria, 'It's a river, not a waterpipe.' If you think it's bad now, it's going to get a lot worse, because, under the previous environment and water minister, the buyback of more irrigation water to push more water down our precious rivers was authorised. It treats them like a waterpipe and sends it all down to South Australia, which not only damages the economy in my area but also damages the environment, because when the water keeps going up and down in summer, the vegetation that the catchment management authority has been trying to protect gets damaged. The banks are eroded; the rivers are silted up.

I grew up on the Goulburn River, and I've seen it my whole life. It's all very well for city members to interject that this is fantasy, but people in my community have lived it. In fact, Congupna farmer David Miles, who's a great steward of the environment, said: 'We've had some massive high summer flows, and they ruined the banks. There were massive erosion problems and trees falling in. They were softening the bank, then letting it dry out a little bit, and then letting the river rise.' This is what happens when you make policy and don't understand the implication of it.

It's not only that. I think that climate change is a significant challenge for the globe to face, and I am supportive of renewable energy in the right place, but what's happening in my electorate is that prime agricultural land is being taken over by wind turbines and solar panels. The trouble with that is that the communities are very against this. They think it's a terrible policy, because they've been stewards of that land. They've been building up the soil carbon levels for years; they've been growing wheat, canola and all sorts of different production. Now, we're going to have this incredible scarring of the landscape by 650 hectares, in one area, of solar projects. I think people don't understand the scale of what some of these solar projects are. Six hundred and fifty hectares is huge. And I don't object to using all sorts of technologies to try and reduce our emissions. I think it's really important. But when you start to take over prime agricultural land with all of these solar projects and then wind turbines, people don't understand just how much concrete has to be poured to house a wind turbine. When that wind turbine's life cycle ends, that concrete can't be used to install another turbine. Let's have a proper debate about the environment and the environmental degradation caused by the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and the reckless rollout of renewables.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I give the call to the member for Canberra.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. May I begin by congratulating you on your re-election as Deputy Speaker. I'm very pleased that my first contribution in the new parliament is to be speaking about the environment, something that's incredibly important to me and incredibly important to my constituents in the electorate of Canberra.

I just want to respond to the hypocrisy writ large from the coalition in bringing this as a matter of public importance today, when they did nothing for a decade in government. It is actually hard to see how the shadow minister kept a straight face for half of that speech, with some of the things that were put forward.

Like most Australians, I have been really concerned to see the devastating algal bloom in South Australia, seeing beautiful marine species washing up dead and the devastating impact that that is having. And I'm really pleased that our government has announced $14 million, partnering with the South Australian government and matching the funding they are putting in, to address this across priority areas including research and science, business assistance, community awareness and support, and clean-up efforts. This is critically important. But what those opposite seem to be ignoring by bringing this today is that what is driving this is climate change. That has been incredibly clear. It reminds me, having first been elected in 2019, what it was like to be here in opposition, with those opposite in government and doing absolutely nothing while a climate crisis unfolded—the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20 going on while those opposite ignored climate science.

To come in here and claim that they suddenly care about the environment—well, I welcome that if they do, but it's going to take a lot of policy change on their side. In fact, at the moment, in the first week of parliament one of the first things we hear from them is that some of their own members want to bring in a private member's bill to drop their commitment to net zero. It is unbelievable. The other day I saw a great headline in the Betoota Advocate, who so often get it right, saying that the coalition, after ignoring climate science for decades, is also ignoring election results. What doesn't seem to be getting through to those opposite, after not just this election victory for Labor but also the previous one, is that Australians want to see action taken on climate change. They want to see our precious environment protected.

I am proud to be part of a government that is doing that, and I am proud to be part of the Labor Party, who are responsible for every significant environmental reform in Australia's history. It's extraordinary to hear what those opposite have said in this matter of public importance debate today. This is a coalition that had a decade in government to fix environmental laws and instead they cut funding to the Environment Department by 40 per cent. They halved highly protected marine parks, they sabotaged the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and they let environmental standards slide into chaos. They had the Samuel review of our critically important environmental protection and biodiversity laws, and they ignored it and actually used it as an excuse to try and weaken the laws.

Well, I am proud that one of the first things we are doing as a new government is to again try to reform those laws, as we attempted to do in the previous parliament. This is something that is incredibly important. We cannot protect nature without getting those laws right. We cannot protect nature without responding to the climate crisis. We cannot protect nature without an aim of getting to net zero. I mean, it's extraordinary that we are still even discussing this. Instead, those opposite took a nuclear fantasy to this election, which was more of a distraction from the climate crisis and the need to respond to it and a distraction from our plans to invest in renewable energy and transition us to a sustainable economy.

I am so proud of what we have already achieved in our first term and that we are going to continue that as a re-elected government, because this is critically important. This is about the future of our planet. This is about life on Earth. This is about our economy and so much more. Those opposite seem to be completely in denial about what is required. (Time expired)

Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Too little and too late has become the norm, unfortunately, for this prime minister and the government he leads. It's becoming a familiar pattern now. Say one thing to the Australian people before the election and then smash them with something very different thereafter. The reality is that the failures of this government on the environment are also causing an economic calamity in South Australia today, and I fear that the same is in store for my electorate of Forrest. This was a bloke who promised so much—to show up and be accountable. But, like every other promise made by this prime minister, it lies broken in a sea of deceit. This is what the then leader of the opposition had to say in 2022:

Will I be perfect? No, but I'll tell you what I'll be doing is this: if I ever do make a mistake, I'll put my hand up. I'll own it. I'll take responsibility, and I'll set about fixing it.

Well, eighteen months after scientists raised the alarm in South Australia, where is the government? This is a government which wouldn't even meet them at the time. This is a government from which we are still waiting for material action, because the little jolly down to South Australia a couple of weeks ago doesn't cut it with the locals. While this environmental disaster in South Australia has been ignored, I wonder whether we would have seen a very different outcome if it was in fact unfolding in front of the cliffs at Copacabana. Indeed, we might then have seen this prime minister come good, put his hand up, own it, take responsibility and set about fixing it.

I think all Australians expect their government to take the environment seriously. I think all Australians value the environment that we enjoy in Australia, across this broad continent, and they expect the government to steward it. And yet today, as we've heard from the members for Moncrieff, Mallee and Nicholls, this Albanese government is nowhere when the people of South Australia need help.

Local industry leaders from South Australia, like oyster farmer Steve Bowley and Port Wakefield fisher Bart Butson that the member for Grey has given voice to in this place, have spoken openly about the pain their communities are feeling, with disappearing stocks and months-long fishing shutdowns, and there is no end or certainty in sight. Whether it's the drought, the cost of living or, indeed, this crisis in South Australia, Labor is slow to act and quick to spin, with lots to say about those on this side of the House but very little in terms of a plan for the people on the ground.

On the environment and the economy, Labor always think that they know better, riding roughshod over regional Australians—in South Australia as well as in my electorate of Forrest. With the Minister for Climate Change and Energy having a lot to say about his plans for this country and his joy in travelling around to engage with local people and sell the story, we are yet to see him front the people of Forrest and explain why their genuine environmental and economic concerns over the Geographe Bay wind farm should be ignored. I was sent to this place to represent a community that was gravely concerned about being steamrolled by this government, a community who value the pristine environment of Geographe Bay, which is a whale migration superhighway, home to migratory seabirds like albatross and also home to two Ramsar protected wetlands on its shore. The Albanese government knows that offshore wind is three times the cost of onshore wind. And how do we know that? Because even the CSIRO admitted that in their GenCost report—one fact which couldn't be papered over in that same report.

It is bad enough that they are ignoring local environmental concerns, but setting my community up for this sort of economic failure as well as an ecological failure is just typical of a government and a prime minister that, with too little and too late, have badly failed the people of South Australia and are on track to fail my people in the south-west corner of Western Australia. We don't need higher power prices. We don't need the environmental catastrophe of a wind farm in Geographe Bay. For that, this government should be ashamed.

Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Claydon, can I start my contribution by congratulating you on your return to the deputy speakership. You are a very fine deputy speaker and a great friend, and I congratulate you. I know you'll do a wonderful job this term, as you did last term.

But, as enjoyable as it must be sitting up there being the Deputy Speaker, goodness, it must be nice being in opposition. If you are the opposition right now, you are not burdened by self-doubt or anything, frankly, that is going on in the world around you. You are not aware of the fact that you've just had a catastrophic election loss. You are not aware of the fact that your environmental record is completely shambolic and, frankly, an embarrassment, nor are you aware, if you are in the Liberal party room, of the fact that your own coalition partner is tearing itself apart on national television on the very day that you come in and bring a matter of public importance about the environment to this chamber. Can you imagine the tactics meeting of those opposite this morning, Deputy Speaker, where they were all discussing what they should put forward for the MPI? The member for Moncrieff—who clearly is so passionate about this MPI that she stayed for some of it—as well as the hordes of coalition members who have come here to support her came in and had a tactics meeting: 'What should we bowl up for the MPI?' Then the member for Moncrieff says: 'I've got one. It's about the environment, energy and the climate around us.' No-one in that room decided to say, 'Maybe today's not the day.'

I'm very pleased that the member for Riverina is in the chamber, because I'm very fond of the member for Riverina. He's a very smiley guy, but he was really smiling in the papers this week. He had a grin from ear to ear, talking about his campaign to take down net zero. I've never seen anybody enjoy himself that much. He was standing next to his old friend the member for New England. They were thick as thieves. The member for New England and the member for Riverina were both absolutely delighted with themselves at getting that sort of coverage and attacking the net zero policies.

You'd think, 'Well, goodness!' While those opposite—the Nationals especially—are still working out whether the planet is a sphere or completely flat, you'd think that maybe today is not the day to be bringing in an MPI about the environment. But, alas, life is good in the opposition. They are not burdened by self-doubt in this place. You would think: 'Okay, fine. Let's look at what they actually did in the environment and energy portfolio and anything that affects our amazing country and all of the natural wonders that we have to protect.' When they were in government, there were a couple of highlights. You may want to take a walk down memory lane on their record on the environment.

In fact, the Leader of the Opposition was the environment minister when they were last in government. I remember sitting in this chamber. I was one of the few members of the opposition at the time who actually had the privilege of speaking on her reintroduction of Tony Abbott's environment laws before she decided to completely scrap all debate. She wasn't willing to debate it at all in the House of Representatives. They rammed the bill through the House of Representatives and then pulled it in the Senate, thankfully, because they didn't have the numbers in the previous iteration of their own government. That was the legacy of the Leader of the Opposition when she was the environment minister. It wasn't to have a constructive debate on the environment; it was to ram through Tony Abbott's environmental laws, which would have completely removed the federal government from environmental approvals. They were going to give it all to the states, and what we know is that the states and territories have different standards on environmental approvals.

The amazing thing about it all was that the Leader of the Opposition, who was the environment minister, commissioned Professor Samuel to do a review into the environmental laws, and he said that the key problem was that this chamber needs to have federal environmental standards in order to ensure that there are national environmental standards that are adhered to and implemented. That was the key recommendation of the Samuel review. What did the Leader of the Opposition do at the time? She ignored her own review, brought in Tony Abbott's legislation, rammed it through this place and then had to walk back home to her own electorate without a bill, because the Senate rejected it.

All of this happened when they were last in government. Their record is abhorrent on the environment. But I have to commend them: on the day that the Nationals are still working out whether climate change is real, they decide to bring an MPI. Bravo! Keep it coming.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My next appointment is going to be in the Sky News studio, where I am going to be talking about, indeed, the other things that I've been talking about this week! I will take the member for Macnamara up on a few points. He talked about the Leader of the Opposition and her record as the Minister for the Environment. I can well remember when the opposition leader was environment minister. She talked a lot about the ocean and the need to protect the sea. She talked about pollution, and that is of great concern. She talked about landfill. We have at the moment a situation in Australia where a lot of local councils are very worried about the amount of space that they have in their tips for the amount of rubbish. We do, as a population—albeit only small compared to other countries—produce a lot of rubbish, and I think companies can do a lot better in the space of packaging to reduce what ends up in landfill. We could do a whole lot more in recycling. I heard the opposition leader, while she was environment minister, talking a lot about the need to have better and more recycling programs.

I also heard the environment minister at the time, the member for Farrer, talking about what I believe is the greatest challenge to humanity, and that is to be able to feed the world into the future. We have a lot of children, not just here in Australia but elsewhere in the world, who go to bed hungry of a night-time. When you see Australia and other countries having the capacity to produce more food, we should be doing that. What I am worried about—very, very worried about—is the fact that we have a great potential and ability to grow more food and yet, supposedly for the sake of the environment, we are taking productive water away from our irrigation farmers, many of whom are in the electorate of Farrer, formerly in the region of the Riverina, with the Murrumbidgee and Coleambally Irrigation Area. They have the ability and the capacity and the potential to grow so much more food, and yet, because of our supposed environmental laws with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, we're stopping them from doing so. Indeed, I moved a disallowance motion against the Murray-Darling Basin Plan when it first arrived in this House, and I'm proud to say I did that. I'm proud to say I did that with colleagues' support—indeed, even with, dare I say, the former Greens leader's support, although I think he was in the chamber for different views than mine.

We're also here talking about also the fish kill situation in South Australia. Let me remind members in the chamber of the fish kill event between December 2018 and January 2019. Fish kill events, unfortunately, are not new, but we haven't heard anybody in the chamber talking about the one at the moment at Lake Cargelligo in western New South Wales in the seat of Parkes. There is a situation unfolding there which is of concern. Fish kill events, unfortunately, also are commonplace, and they are not always due to climate change. They are due to a number of factors which have been occurring for millennia, and to blame climate change and to blame, as the member for Canberra did, the coalition for the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20 is an absolute folly. It truly is.

If we really want to apportion some blame, we could apportion some blame to Greens policies of making sure that the fuel load in our national parks, which are run by state governments, has not been looked at. There has not been backburning. The fire trails are not maintained as well as they should be. This does lead to combustion. When there is a spark or a lightning strike, this does lead to fires that get out of control. We blame climate change for all these things, but in 1952 there were a million acres of farm- and bushland in the Mangoplah fire, which started in Mangoplah, south of Wagga Wagga, and went right through to what is now Kosciuszko National Park. The Gold Coast cyclone of 1954 killed 99 people. Nobody was blaming climate change then. We need to do more for the environment—we do—but we need to do more for important things such as pollution, landfill, the ocean, food security and food availability to feed a hungry world. We're not doing enough in that regard, and that's what members opposite should be concentrating on.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the MPI has now concluded.