David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

We know that environmental laws are broken. Over the last 25 years, we've seen more than seven million hectares of threatened species habitat bulldozed or destroyed—an area larger than Tasmania. Nearly 750 fossil fuel projects have been approved. There was only one knocked back: a coal mine put forward by Clive Palmer. Hundreds of species have been pushed to the brink of extinction, and, in fact, we've seen a number of species go extinct.

I'm concerned when it comes to this debate around nature, the decline of nature, that our framing of it is not up to the task. Steve Irwin, a great Australian, reminded us that we don't own planet Earth; we belong to it, and we must share it with our wildlife. Almost 100 years before, one of my heroes, Aldo Leopold, said:

Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

I think we have to reframe how we discuss environmental issues. This is in our self-interest to have strong environmental laws that actually protect the environment that we are totally reliant on. We are part of nature, and if nature goes down, we're going down with her. The government has introduced half-baked, loophole-ridden laws. They need to be tightened up. We need laws that are actually going to protect the incredible places and species that make this continent so unique.