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

I present a revised explanatory memorandum to this bill and move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Australia is an island nation, a maritime nation, with the ocean wrapped around our national identity in a sustaining and defining embrace.

First Nations people have a profound and enduring connection with sea country, which is central to cultural and spiritual identity, social and economic life, and wellbeing.

The ocean is critical to our economic prosperity and health. It connects us with our region and the rest of the world.

In June 2023, the United Nations adopted the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction, also known as the high seas biodiversity treaty.

The treaty provides greater environmental protection for the ocean by providing a global framework for protecting and sustainably using marine biodiversity outside our maritime borders—that is, the high seas and the seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. Around 60 per cent of the global ocean is beyond national jurisdiction, but only around one per cent is currently protected.

The treaty will complement existing international and regional instruments, frameworks, and bodies. It will enhance cooperation between parties as well as between the existing global and regional ocean governance regimes and will play a critical role in achieving the global target to protect 30 per cent of the world's marine areas by 2030.

The treaty will also complement Australia's own domestic and regional practices in sustainable ocean management and protection. More than half of Australia's maritime jurisdiction is now protected in marine parks. That includes about a quarter of our marine estate—2.2 million square kilometres—in highly protected areas. At last year's United Nations Ocean Conference Australia went further, committing to work towards lifting that to 30 per cent highly protected by the year 2030.

Australia was proud to sign the high seas biodiversity treaty on 20 September 2023, the day it opened for signature, after playing an active role in its inception and development over two decades. Today I am proud to introduce the High Seas Biodiversity Bill. This implementing legislation will enable us to ratify the treaty, noting that the treaty entered into force on 17 January this year.

In 2024, the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties recommended that Australia take binding treaty action and become a party to the high seas biodiversity treaty. This bill creates a new regulatory regime to implement into Australian law relevant obligations under the treaty, relating to marine genetic resources and digital sequence information; area based management tools, such as marine protected areas; and environmental impact assessments.

Marine genetic resources and digital sequence information

Part 2 of the bill establishes oversight for the collection and utilisation of marine genetic resources from areas beyond national jurisdiction and related digital sequence information.

The bill implements a notification based regime requiring certain persons to provide information on the collection and utilisation of marine genetic resources and digital sequence information. This information will later be provided to the clearing-house mechanism, an open access platform managed by the secretariat under the agreement. The bill also imposes reporting and record-keeping requirements on relevant repositories and databases and will provide for an online register to receive required information, enable public access and promote transparency. The register will be operated by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

Area based management tools, such as marine protected areas

Part 3 of the bill creates a framework for Australia to recognise and declare area based management tools, such as marine protected areas, and their associated management plans, established by the treaty's Conference of the Parties, and for Australians to comply with them.

The government is preparing for the first generation of high seas marine protected area proposals, as contemplated by the treaty. Work is underway to lay the groundwork for Australia to lead and support others on such proposals, including gathering the underpinning science and data and engaging with stakeholders.

Environmental impact assessments

Part 4 of this bill will put in place an environmental impact assessment process to manage the risk of harm to the marine environment in areas beyond national jurisdiction from planned activities by Australian entities. It also implements obligations with respect to planned activities within Australia's jurisdiction that may have significant impacts on the marine environment in areas beyond national jurisdiction.

The purpose of part 4 is to ensure that the potential impacts of such activities are assessed in accordance with the treaty, before the minister makes a decision on whether to authorise the activity.

Closing remarks

To secure the health and resilience of the high seas and all other areas beyond national jurisdiction, we must cooperate and coordinate with other countries and act to implement relevant provisions of UNCLOS.

Ratifying the high seas biodiversity treaty demonstrates Australia's commitment to international law and the multilateral system more generally.

The Albanese government is committed to working with key partners in our region and beyond to safeguard the health of our shared ocean domain—which must be protected for its own sake and for the sake of environmental conditions and marine biodiversity on its own terms—and to support a sustainable blue economy for future generations.

In the first term of the Albanese government, Australia delivered the largest act of global marine protection in calendar year 2023 by strengthening the Macquarie Island Marine Park, and then we delivered the largest act of global marine protection in calendar year 2024 by strengthening the Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve. As a result of those key improvements to the national network of marine protected areas that was designed by the Gillard Labor government, Australia now protects more than 4.6 million square kilometres, or 52 per cent, of Australia's ocean. Twenty-four per cent of our ocean is under a high level of protection in no-take zones, and we are working towards protecting 30 per cent by 2030. As a nation whose character and wellbeing is deeply sustained by the ocean, our focus and active support for the High Seas Biodiversity Treaty is what the Australian community rightly expects.

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

I rise today to speak on the High Seas Biodiversity Bill and to outline the coalition's position on this important legislation. The coalition supports this bill. It's necessary legislation and it's legislation that will finally put in place the high seas treaty negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations, a treaty that has been a long time in the making and one that, frankly, has been unnecessarily delayed by the current government. This is not a new conversation. This is not a new issue.

Under the previous coalition government, Australia played a constructive and engaged role in the international negotiations that led to this treaty. We understood what was at stake, not just environmentally but economically and strategically. Critically, those negotiations ensure that Australia's exclusive economic zone, also known as the EEZ—one of the largest in the world; in fact, the third largest—was properly recognised in international law. That matters. It matters because our EEZ underpins our sovereign rights over vast marine resources, it matters because it allows us to manage those resources sustainably and it matters because it ensures that Australia retains control over how we protect and utilise our marine environment. As a nation, we have benefited enormously from that outcome. We have benefited in environmental terms through strong protections and careful stewardship of our oceans, and we have benefited economically through the responsible management of fisheries, energy resources and emerging marine industries.

The negotiations that delivered this treaty did not happen overnight. They were complex, they were detailed and they were led in large part under the previous coalition government right up until 2023. The current government became a signatory to the treaty in 2024, yet here we are two years later only now dealing with ratification—two years! What has the government been doing for the last two years? Not much it seems, because in that time more than 80 countries—around 85 in fact—have already ratified the treaty. So again, I ask: why the delay? Our government that says it can walk and chew gum at the same time; it seems it can't.

Why has Australia fallen behind when it comes to formalising an agreement that we helped shape? This process, as I outlined, started under the coalition. There was no progress and then, all of a sudden, there was this urgency to get it done. Our understanding is that this sudden urgency was not driven by domestic priorities but by international optics, because of the first ever Ocean COP slated for late 2026 and the government seeking to save face on the global stage, no doubt. It's disappointing because the parliament should not be driven by appearances; it should be driven by outcomes. It's especially disappointing given that the coalition has offered bipartisan support for this legislation throughout the process. We've been clear, we've been consistent and we've been constructive. We recognise the importance of this treaty and we recognise the importance of getting the implementation right.

This bill does more than simply ratify an international agreement. It seeks to establish new regulatory frameworks to give effect to the treaty's provisions, particularly in areas such as marine genetic resources and digital sequence information, area based management tools and environmental impact assessments. These are complex and evolving areas. Marine genetic resources, for example, represent a growing field of scientific and commercial interests. They have the potential to unlock new medicines, new technologies and new economic opportunities. But with that potential comes responsibility—responsibility to ensure that access is fair, responsibility to ensure that benefits are shared appropriately and responsibility to ensure that innovation does not come at the expense of environmental integrity.

Similarly, area based management tools and environmental impact assessments are critical mechanisms for protecting biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The coalition supports these objectives, but we are equally clear on this point: implementation must be practical, efficient and coherent. These new rules should complement existing global and regional frameworks, not duplicate them. We already have a range of international agreements and regional bodies governing ocean management. The last thing we need is a patchwork of overlapping regulations that create confusion, increase costs and undermine effectiveness.

Good policy is not just about ambition; it is about execution. The government has also pointed to the global target of protecting 30 per cent of the world's marine areas by 2030. On its face, it's a noble ambition, and the coalition recognises the importance of protecting marine biodiversity. But we also recognise a pattern from this government—a pattern of announcing big targets without credible plans to deliver them. We've seen it in housing, where the government's target of 1.2 million homes is already falling short. We've seen it in other policy areas, where rhetoric has outpaced reality.

So, when it comes to this 30 per cent marine protection target, the question is not whether it sounds good. There are several questions that remain: How will it be achieved? What are the practical steps? What are the timelines? What are the impacts on industries and regional communities and on Australia's economic interests? These are not unreasonable questions; they are necessary questions. At this stage the detail remains unclear. We understand that some of the government's plans to meet this target are currently under review. We welcome that review and we look forward to seeing the detail of that review because, if this target is to be meaningful, it must be backed by a clear, credible and achievable plan.

In closing, the coalition supports this bill. We support it because it gives effect to a treaty that Australia helped negotiate. We support it because it provides a framework for protecting biodiversity in the high seas, and we support it because it aligns with Australia's longstanding commitment to responsible ocean stewardship, but that does not mean a blank cheque. We will continue to scrutinise the implementation of this treaty. We will continue to advocate for practical, efficient and effective regulation and will continue to hold the government to account for delays, for lack of detail and for any failure to deliver on its commitments. Australia has a proud record when it comes to managing our oceans. That record was strengthened under the coalition, and we intend to ensure that it's not diminished under this government.

Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've got a quick question for you: What covers 3.8 million square kilometres? Or, in another way of putting it, what covers 52 per cent of Australian waters? The answer is, of course, the network of Australian marine parks. This network includes parts of the Coral Sea off Queensland's coast, the waters around Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island, Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean, the Murray Marine Park off South Australia and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean—and so many more. I was raised by a marine biologist. In practical terms, what that meant was that not only was this my dad's area of study; the bottom floor of our house was filled with tanks with all sorts of different marine animals in them. It's a scary prospect when you're a little kid, but what we came to know in our household as we were older was that protecting marine life is incredibly important.

Protecting marine areas and ensuring sustainable management of the fishing industry is a priority for this Albanese Labor government too. In 2023, the government tripled the size of the Macquarie Island Marine Park, placing an extra 385,000 square kilometres of Australia's oceans under high protection. That was the biggest act of conservation in the world that year. It was followed in 2024 when Labor quadrupled the size of the Heard and McDonald Islands marine park. That was the biggest act of conservation on the planet in that year. With this proven record, it is no surprise that Australia is a world leader when it comes to marine conservation, and we're taking an active part in working with other countries to better protect more of the world's oceans. This is necessary because around 60 per cent of the world's oceans are beyond national jurisdiction, but only about one per cent of these waters is currently protected.

In June 2023, the United Nations adopted the agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction. It's a mouthful, but its role, its job and our reason for working with it is that it fundamentally helps to protect our oceans and the creatures that call them home. Thankfully, it is also known as the BBNJ agreement or the high seas treaty, which is how I'll be referring to it from now on.

Australia has participated in more than two decades of work and negotiations for this treaty, showing our commitment to marine conservation. We were a founding signatory to the treaty, signing it on the first day it was open for signature on 20 September 2003. We are co-chairing the process of preparing for the very first meeting of the conference of the parties involved.

The high seas treaty will create a comprehensive international legal structure dedicated to protecting and responsibly managing marine biodiversity in areas that lie beyond the control of individual nations, because the ocean and the environment don't see borders, but that doesn't mean that they don't deserve protection. It is designed to work alongside and to reinforce existing global and regional agreements, filling critical gaps in ocean governance where regulation has previously been limited. By promoting stronger cooperation and coordinated action among countries, the high seas treaty will play a pivotal role in safeguarding marine ecosystems, supporting sustainable use of ocean resources and maintaining ocean health. It will be a key mechanism in advancing the global commitment to conserve at least 30 per cent of the world's oceans by 2030.