Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025 and related bills. They are stronger than what Labor first put on the table, stronger because the Greens, backed by communities right across this country, who've been working for decades, joined and led this campaign. They're stronger because experts and advocates across the country refused to let them be written by big coal and gas, logging operations and lobbyists. But let's be absolutely clear: while we have secured important improvements for nature, this package of bills still fails. It fails to properly protect our climate.

Labor began this process with a wish list for corporate environmental destruction. Their first draft would have taken us backwards. It would have created a fast track for coal and gas, handed corporations new loopholes and locked in a system where approval came first and environmental protection was an afterthought. It was package of bills written for big corporations, not for people and not for country. The Greens said no. We held firm, and the community held firm with us. Because of that, we have won significant gains for our environment.

These bills now finally, after decades, end the special treatment for native forest logging. We've closed off the ability for coal and gas companies to use Labor's fast track pathways or to exploit the national interest loophole. These are real improvements. They take us forward and make these bills infinitely better than if Labor had done a deal with the climate deniers in the coalition.

But let me be equally direct: these significant but small wins for nature are not the wins we need for our precious climate. Labor have refused point-blank to include a climate trigger. They've refused to allow the environment minister to consider the climate damage of new coal and gas projects—dirty, polluting coal and gas projects—in this country. They've refused, despite overwhelming public support and strong evidence that our environment laws must confront the climate crisis head-on.

I come to this debate as a senator for Victoria, a state blessed with landscapes and species that deserve far more than incremental protection—the cool temperate forests of the Central Highlands, home to the precious Leadbeater's possum; Gippsland's forests, foothills, lakes and plains; the Victorian grassland earless dragon, rediscovered just recently on Wadawurrung country after being thought to be extinct; theburrunan dolphins of Port Phillip; and the superb fairywrens and bunjil, who often greet me on my return to Dja Dja Wurrung country, in Central Victoria, where I was born and raised. These are places and species worth fighting for. While these wonders of Victoria endure, they are under immense pressure. Their forests are still logged. Their habitats are still cleared. Their climate is still warming because Labor continues to approve new coal and gas.

I have seen the consequences elsewhere in this country, too. Just last week I was in Karratha, or Murujuga, a place of staggering beauty, where red cliffs cascade across the landscape and the world's oldest rock art watches on over country. Yet, just beyond that sacred landscape, that oldest art gallery in the world—40,000- to 50,000-year-old rock art—gas plants and fertiliser factories rise like a dystopian skyline, eroding the rock art and directly impacting First Nations communities and their country. What is Labor doing in the face of this destruction? Greenlighting new fossil fuel projects, extending the North West Shelf for 45 years and protecting not country but the profits of Woodside, Santos and BHP.

When I gave my first speech in this chamber, I said I didn't come here for incremental change. I came here to get big money out of politics, to stop the fossil fuel lobby writing our laws and to protect the places we love in Victoria but of course nationally and across this continent. That purpose continues to guide me today. The Greens have used every lever we have to make these laws less damaging and more protective. I'm really proud of that work, and I want to applaud my colleague Senator Hanson-Young and our Greens leader, Senator Larissa Waters, for the enormous work, alongside our community, that they have put into making these laws something that will go some way towards protecting our precious forests.

Going into this, the fact that the Labor Party was willing to negotiate with either the climate deniers on the coalition side or the Greens really demonstrates why people are feeling like they don't know what this government stands for. I'm really glad and really proud that we have done this deal, because I think the alternative is unfathomable. The idea of new so-called environment laws coming into play that would fast-track new polluting fossil fuel projects through a 30-day window—we simply could not let that happen, and you cannot describe something as an 'environmental law' if it is speeding up fossil fuel projects.

As I said, the Greens have used every lever we have to make these laws less damaging and more protective. But, until climate is at the heart of our environmental laws, until coal and gas are rapidly phased out and until fossil fuel corporations are removed from the decision-making table, our work is far from done. We acknowledge that. We acknowledge the giant shoulders that we stand on and the huge volunteer and member groups across this country who roll up their sleeves—week in, week out—to fight to protect nature and to fight to protect our beautiful and precious forests, our ecosystems and the species that are just careering towards extinctions at a devastating rate. The ENGOs, the environmental non-government organisations, are working across this country to protect our waterways, to protect our soil and to protect these important carbon sinks.

To our First Nations elders and communities who continue to fight for country up against massive vested interests every single day, I want to thank you for your tireless advocacy and efforts and reassure you that we stand beside you every single step of the way. We know that this isn't done yet. We know that we've got a really long way to go. To everyone fighting to protect land, water, culture and climate from Murujuga to East Gippsland, thank you. We won't stop until our laws defend the planet, not the polluters destroying it.