Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I think we just saw a very good example of why the coalition was unable to strike a deal with the government on these reforms. What we're talking about here are major reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, Australia's main national environmental law, which is all about protecting the environment and putting in place a process for projects to seek environmental approvals. That's what we're talking about here, and that's what we've been seeking to talk about for months now, with both the coalition and the Greens.

I've said repeatedly that the biggest challenge the government has faced in reaching an agreement with the coalition is that they are completely distracted by their own internal leadership turmoil and their ideological preoccupations. There is no better example than what we just heard from Senator McKenzie, the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, who spent half her speech talking about something completely unrelated to the legislation that we're talking about. Instead she spoke about her and the National Party's, and now the Liberal Party's, obsession with nuclear power. That's what the National Party and the Liberal Party have been wanting to talk about over the last few weeks while they've been trying to work out who sits in the big chair and how they keep Barnaby in the National Party.

Is it any wonder that the government have agreed to pass these reforms with the Greens, who we don't always agree with? There are things that the Greens wanted in this deal that we have said no to, but at least they could work out what they wanted—unlike the coalition, who were in absolute shambles through these negotiations. Even today, they're wanting to bang on about nuclear power and their other ideological preoccupations rather than what we're actually here to talk about. So thank you, Senator McKenzie, for demonstrating to the Australian people, who are watching this, exactly why doing a deal with the coalition was, frankly, impossible.

Again, there's this running theme of hypocrisy from the coalition speakers. We had Senator McKenzie getting in and doing the usual gripe of: 'We could have sat through the night to pass this legislation. Why are you ramming it through?' Only this week, Senator McKenzie was out there in the media saying she was pushing the opposition leader to push these reforms into 2026, but now she's so desperate to pass these reforms that she was prepared to stay here all night. I think the Australian people can see through what's going on here.

This is a coalition that don't know what they want, that can't focus on important reforms for the Australian people, that can only focus on themselves and their ideological preoccupations and that are therefore unable to work out what on earth they want to do when reforming environmental laws. I'm not going to look at anyone here, but there are a number of coalition members who agree exactly with what I'm saying and who are disappointed about their own team's effort over the last few months and their inability to reach an agreement with the government. There are a lot of members of the business community—traditional supporters of the Liberal Party, in particular, and of the National Party—who are aghast at the way the coalition have handled these negotiations and their inability to advocate for the interests of the business community.

What's happened with these reforms, as I said, is that it's the government who have requested that amendments be made to this bill to address some of the major concerns of the business community and who have insisted on inserting those amendments into this bill as part of an agreement with the Greens party. There are changes here in this bill around protecting the environment, and we're happy to support those. There are also changes here that are about giving business more certainty, which they were looking for, and there was no-one in the coalition who made that happen, because they were all deciding amongst themselves who was talking to who and what they would agree on. It was the government who made those amendments. Let's be very clear about that.

Finally, I want to pick up on the misrepresentations and falsehoods being peddled by the coalition, particularly around forestry. Senator McKenzie claimed that the reforms here are getting rid of regional forest agreements. That is completely untrue. I invite Senator McKenzie to actually read the legislation to see that that is completely untrue. Just like Senator Duniam's claims that these changes shut down native forestry, it is completely untrue, Senator McKenzie, that the reforms are getting rid of regional forest agreements. These changes, as I've said, implement the direct recommendations of Graeme Samuel to apply the national environmental standards to regional forest agreements, under which native forestry and plantation forestry occur in New South Wales and Tasmania, and they require the accreditation of those agreements. Exactly the same rules apply to the mining industry, the renewables industry, housing development and every other industry in this country. It is important that people get the facts about what is in this bill and what is not. So far, we haven't heard a lot of facts from the coalition.

I'd like to take the opportunity to table three supplementary explanatory memoranda relating to the government amendments to be moved to the Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025.