Renee Coffey (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment. What is the Albanese Labor government doing to protect the environment and make approvals more efficient? What stood in the way?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) | Link to this | Hansard source

Isn't it good again to have a member for Griffith who cares about delivering for the environment? It's been the case that all the major environmental outcomes for this country have been delivered by Labor governments. As a Queenslander, the member for Griffith knows all too well that the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park exists because of the Whitlam government. Members know that the saving of the Franklin, the Daintree and Kakadu and the largest environmental protection decision in the history of the planet in the protection in the Antarctic all happened through the years of the Hawke-Keating governments. When we were last in government, there was the second largest conservation decision in the history of the planet: the marine national parks that were put in place and, earlier, the expansion of those marine parks in our first term.

Today, after a long campaign by many members, who I look at on the backbench of this party and this government, the Albanese Labor government establishes the first day of the National Environmental Protection Agency. For a long time, we needed a modern and efficient regulator so that people had clear understanding of our environmental laws to make sure that those laws were followed. Thanks to the reforms that were passed last year, we now have a strong regulatory toolkit, we have stronger powers for environmental protection, we have an expanded auditing framework, and we have increased penalties for serious and deliberate environmental harm. It means you get consistency. It means you get transparency. It means you get integrity in environmental decision-making at a national level.

The EPA will be a strong, independent regulator. It'll better protect our unique natural environment for generations to come. It'll act as the agile, independent umpire that Australia's environment needs. It's the cornerstone and something that both business and environmental groups were calling for—environmental reform that this government came to the table to deliver. But the three right-wing parties once again all did the exact same thing: voted no to better protections for the environment; voted no to having a streamlined, independent system; and voted no to making sure that Australia would have a national environmental protection agency. But 1 July involves many changes that are positive for this nation, and the EPA stands high as one of them.