Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to this amendment to the EPBC Act. The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Board of Management Functions) Bill 2025 extends the existing arrangements for management of several jointly managed Commonwealth reserves, the Kakadu National Park, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park and Booderee National Park—all of which are located on Aboriginal land. These reserves are managed by the Director of National Parks under a lease with Indigenous people and through a board of management with majority traditional owner management representation. Each of those boards of management is currently chaired by a traditional owner. The management plans for these reserves are about to expire, which is why we're addressing it with this amendment to the EPBC Act 1999.

As the minister has said, it's very appropriate that we legislate to continue the critical role of the traditional owners in the decision-making processes around the management of their land. However, the House needs to note that this amendment is necessary only because the Albanese government has not yet addressed the broader reforms to the EPBC Act as it promised in its last term. The current Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is failing on all fronts. It does not adequately protect our environment, and its uncertain and unpredictable assessment and decision-making processes are hindering investment. The Clean Energy Investor Group recently reported on major bottlenecks in environmental assessments under the EPBC Act, finding that many projects now wait more than two years for federal decisions—projects which might only take 18 months to build. The uncertainties of these approval processes can mean that there's no reliable pipeline of work for communities or for traineeships and apprenticeships in important and related industries. These bottlenecks are delaying the transmission projects which are required to support renewable energy projects and to facilitate the clean energy transition. These delays in EPBC reform have become the single biggest barrier to timely, environmentally responsible renewable energy development in Australia. This is why, in recent years, in the face of the escalating impacts of climate change and rapid loss of biodiversity, we have seen industry, community and environmental organisations all uniting to call on the Albanese government to deliver this once in a generation opportunity to reshape the laws around our environment and nature as a matter of urgency.

These laws need to enable faster, more efficient and more transparent assessments to improve nature protection. They need to build greater confidence and trust within our communities, including within Indigenous groups, in decision-making around our land, air and waterways. They have to include a real commitment to the protection of our extraordinary cultural heritage, particularly with respect to that of Indigenous Australians, who represent the oldest continuing civilisation on this planet. Meaningful reform of the EPBC Act has to include the establishment of an environmental protection Australia as an independent regulator with power to oversee national environmental laws. It must include national environmental standards with more transparent and reliable data collection to inform community engagement planning, assessments and decisions and to direct adequate resources to agencies to enable faster, more transparent decision-making and monitoring.

The Commonwealth environment protection framework must take an integrated approach to the environment. The matters of national environmental significance listed under the EPBC Act currently include land and water. They must be expanded to include air.

The air we breathe affects every aspect of our health, our quality of life and our environment. The new EPBC Act has to establish air quality standards to protect public health, to prevent environmental degradation and to regulate emissions of hazardous air pollutants. The appalling revelations this week that huge quantities of hazardous methane have been leaking from a huge storage tank very close to Darwin for 20 years is all the demonstration that we need that Australia's environmental protections are failing.

The likely impact on human health and the surrounding environment of this and other forms of air pollution by gas fracking and storage in the Northern Territory and other sites around Australia is a deeply serious concern. Methane is a volatile organic compound. Volatile organic compounds are associated with a range of health problems. They irritate the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, leading to exacerbations of lung disease like asthma and COPD. Long-term exposure to VOCs causes injury to the liver and to the kidneys. It increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and of cancer. Methane is the major precursor of ground level ozone, which we generally refer to as smog, which is a toxic air pollutant that causes chronic irritation of the lungs. Just this week in the Medical Journal of Australia, researchers have described the significant public health impacts of mining in this country. They found that exposure to agents released during mining operations such as cadmium, iron, manganese, zinc, arsenic and lead are associated with neoplastic—that's cancer—and non-neoplastic diseases in adults and children. Mining of lead is specifically associated with a decrease in fertility for men and with intellectual disability and impaired immune function for children.

Asbestos mining is associated with higher morbidity and mortality due to respiratory and non-respiratory cancers. Recent analyses have a higher risk of severe respiratory and circulatory diseases in communities which are proximate to coalmines. Children and women in mining regions are especially vulnerable, with a higher risk of perinatal conditions and of respiratory, blood and immune diseases. Unconventional gas extraction, or fracking, is associated with a higher risk of hospitalisation of all courses and with circulatory, respiratory, blood and immune diseases—again, particularly affecting children.

And, as a potent greenhouse gas, methane acts to speed up climate change, which results in an increase in extreme weather events, decreased agricultural productivity and an increase in the global burden of disease. Climate change will increase the pressure on air quality. Bushfires like those in 2019-20 expose huge areas of Australia to dangerous levels of smoke, which has a really significant impact on the air that we breathe. It was estimated that we lost 445 Australians to smoke related lung injury in that black summer alone. A warming climate will also lead to increased smog in summer. Droughts will lead to dust storms.

Emissions and air pollution, smog and dust don't respect lines and borders on maps. They affect us all. Santos's addition of thousands of tonnes of the most damaging of all greenhouse gases to our atmosphere, unmeasured, unreported and unregulated is an immediate and emergent proof of the need for supervision and enforcement of air quality standards at a national level. The environmental impacts of greenhouse gas induced climate change are devastating. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that, in the near term, forests and terrestrial ecosystems, fresh water, coastal coral reefs, kelp and seagrass, and marine ecosystems are all at high or very high risk of biodiversity loss and that continued and accelerating sea level rises will submerge low-lying coastal ecosystems, with devastating implications for our Pacific neighbours. Our coral reefs, our wetlands, our bushland and our unique wildlife are at risk. We cannot have meaningful protections for our environment if we do not include safeguards for air quality.

The world is watching. We've put our hand up for COP31, and it is a wonderful opportunity for us to demonstrate real commitment to global climate leadership and our value and strength in the region. But meaningful reform of our environmental legislation—to protect our land, sea and air—is vital to our international reputation, as well as to our national heritage. To that end, I commend the bill to the House.

Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes:

(a) in the words of the First Nations Heritage Protection Alliance, the current approach is 'largely focused on regulating the destruction of First Nations Cultural Heritage, rather than its protection'; and

(b) that decision makers have prioritised the profits of gas cartels and climate wrecking projects at great cost to the world's oldest continuous culture, including the entirely legal destruction of 46,000-year-old caves at Juukan Gorge by Rio Tinto in May 2020 under outdated laws; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) deliver on the long overdue cultural heritage reforms that support and empower the traditional owners and communities to preserve their connection to their ancestors and protect their rich, historic and vibrant culture from inappropriate developments; and

(b) ensure that First Nations communities have autonomy and control over decisions concerning their own heritage by guaranteeing free, prior, informed consent is a fundamental element of all EPBC decisions".

The appalling destruction of the Juukan Gorge site in 2020 by Rio Tinto was all the more shocking because it was entirely legal and it was not an isolated event. First Nations cultural heritage is being destroyed, damaged, degraded and displaced every day across this country. Rio Tinto was widely condemned after it was legally allowed to blow up the 46,000-year-old caves in May 2020 under WA's outdated Aboriginal Heritage Act. The Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura peoples were left devastated, while Rio Tinto tried to save face by overhauling its executive team and admitting it had breached traditional owners' trust.

The inquiry into the destruction of Juukan Gorge recommended stronger overarching heritage legislation, co-designed with Indigenous people, that provides minimum standards for all states and territories. Australian legislation to protect First Nations cultural heritage is failing; it is just not working to support the rights of First Nations people. Many sacred First Nations sites across the country are currently under real and serious threat, like the sacred rock art at Murujuga and in Darwin, sacred forests in the Pilliga, caves along the Great Australian Bight and burial grounds and songlines in the Tiwi Islands. Rather than keeping First Nations cultural heritage safe, our laws are enabling its destruction. Current cultural heritage protection arrangements are creating real uncertainty for First Nations people and for proponents. Cultural heritage is considered way too late in assessment and approval processes, often even after those processes have been basically completed.

Labor committed to strengthening cultural heritage protection laws nationally. Tragically, rather than doing that, they have so far been complicit in the destruction of cultural heritage, by prioritising the profits of the gas cartels and their climate-wrecking projects. This comes at a great cost to traditional owners and is an affront to First Nations people around the country. We are talking here about the destruction of some of the world's oldest rock art, created by members of the world's oldest continuous culture—and our laws allow it! It is legal!

Labor must deliver long-overdue cultural heritage reforms that support and empower traditional owners and communities to preserve their connection to their ancestors and to protect their rich, historic and vibrant culture from inappropriate developments. We must ensure First Nations communities have autonomy and control over decisions concerning their own heritage by guaranteeing free, prior and informed consent as a fundamental element of all EPBC decisions. The fight for better protection of cultural heritage is one that all Australians can get behind. First Nations cultural heritage is Australian cultural heritage. We need real reforms to the EPBC Act that protect First Nations cultural heritage, our forests, our seas and our animals for future generations.

But we have a deforestation crisis on our hands! Congratulations to us! Here in Australia, we are responsible for more deforestation than almost any other country on earth. And the Labor government wants to make it worse.

Australia is a major global deforestation—shame, shame, shame—rivalled only by Brazil and Indonesia. Every year, hundreds of thousands of hectares of Australia's unique forests and bushland are bulldozed. In Queensland alone, shamefully, analysis from the Wilderness Society shows that every four minutes threatened species habitat the scale of the Sydney Harbour Bridge area is bulldozed for beef. When allowed to thrive, Australia's precious forests and bushlands provide habitat for threatened species like the koala, the greater glider and the red goshawk and serve as water filters and carbon sinks. My electorate of Ryan is absolutely blessed with large areas of bushland, beautiful creekways and wildlife, and many active volunteer environmental groups working tirelessly, in a volunteering capacity, to preserve, nurture and restore our precious natural environments.

But, as usual, the Albanese government is kowtowing to vested interests and lobby groups to further trash nature protections. As usual, they're trying to rush a deal through without addressing the deforestation crisis, and it is a very serious crisis in Australia. The Albanese government must strengthen federal environmental protections and close damaging deforestation loopholes that have allowed this terrible destruction to go on for way too long.

A report released just today showed that Australia's natural environment contributes half a trillion dollars to our economy annually. That's as much as the mining and finance sectors combined. But this huge contribution to our economy is under threat from climate change, of course, and other environmental damage. The report recommends that the government adopt Greens policy to spend one per cent of GDP, which is around $3.4 billion, on protecting nature so that it can still be enjoyed by generations to come.

We also got shocking revelations this week about just how much environmental damage big corporations are getting away with under the current laws—yes, legally. Is that a leak I smell? A gas leak? No, sorry; it's Santos again. Their LNG storage facility in Darwin has been leaking methane for 20 years, and they've been covering it up for 20 years with the help of the very regulators who are supposed to stop this from happening. This is an environmental disaster. No-one knows how much methane has leaked from this facility, but conservative estimates say that it's the emissions equivalent of adding 8,000 cars to the road.

And here's the worst part: the tank is currently sitting empty, but it's about to be used again as part of the huge climate-wrecking Barossa gas project. Even though it's empty, the environmental regulators are just not forcing Santos to replace or even repair it. They're also not forced to measure the actual scale of the leak, because that would be such an inconvenience for poor old Santos. How is this legal? It is absolutely outrageous. The Australian state is completely captured by the gas industry. By the way, Santos also gets away with paying no corporate income tax most years, and they pay no royalties on all of the offshore gas that they export overseas, reaping enormous profits for themselves. No matter how you look at it, ordinary Australians lose from this crazy deal.

And I'm sorry to keep bringing bad news stories this evening, but there's another really bad news story for the environment that we just found out about this morning. Labor has just approved another coal mine—a thermal coal mine, the Ulan mine in New South Wales. This is going to allow the extraction of another 18.8 million tonnes of coal. That's around 50 million tonnes of emissions that will result from that. What an absolute joke! What a slap in the face of all Australians for this government to do that while congratulating itself, while patting itself on the back for acting on climate! And, to add further insult to injury, this is also going to clear up to 37 hectares of precious native vegetation, putting threatened species like koalas and swift parrots further at risk.

Labor approved over 30 new coal and gas projects last term, and they're showing no signs of slowing down. They already approved the extension to Woodside's North West Shelf project within 15 days of winning re-election. That project will produce equivalent emissions to all of Australia's coal-fired power plants. This is criminal. The government keeps talking about believing in science. We know the consequences of climate change. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is endangering lives. Labor knows this; they're well aware of the science, but they continue to approve new coal and gas while being absolutely fully aware of the dangers of the dire consequences. Really, are these the acts of a responsible government that should be looking after all Australians?

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment moved by the member for Ryan and I reserve my right to speak.

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

I thank all members who have contributed to this debate. The government is committed to providing traditional owners with greater control over the management of their country. This Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Board of Management Functions) Bill 2025 will contribute to that goal. It will allow the boards of management of jointly managed Commonwealth reserves to continue making decisions after a management plan expires, provided those decisions are consistent with the plan. This would maintain the board's decision-making ability until the new management plan comes into effect.

This bill supports participation by traditional owners in matters relating to the management of their country, continuity of decision-making and consistency of governance arrangements for Commonwealth reserve management. In relation to the second reading amendment moved by the member for Ryan, the government won't be supporting the motion. This bill is a standalone and time critical to the EPBC Act. It's unconnected to broader reforms being progressed separately at this time.

The government is committed to delivering environmental and cultural heritage law reforms in this term of government. The Minister for the Environment and Water is working in partnership with the First Nations Heritage Protection Alliance and consulting with First Nations stakeholders, conservation and environmental organisations and industry. I thank the members for their contribution and commend the bill to the House.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Ryan has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the amendment be agreed to.

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.