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

Thank you, Senator Pocock. I acknowledge that you have raised previously with me some issues around the restoration fund and what we've seen occur in New South Wales. I'm not going to provide the assurance that you're seeking in relation to the forestry fund and how it might be used. We need to work through the detail about the design and use of those funds with all of those stakeholders in the way that I outlined.

In terms of environmental offsets in the restoration fund, this is an important reform that's part of this package. Again, it's something that was recommended by Professor Samuel in his review. Just very briefly, for those who aren't across it, people would be aware that when a project is seeking environmental approval, if that project is likely to have a significant impact on nationally protected environmental matters, then one of the changes that we're making in this legislation is to require by law, for the first time, a proponent to avoid and mitigate or minimise its environmental impacts before moving to offsets. What we've said is that those environmental offsets need to produce a net gain for the environment, so another positive outcome for the environment as a result of these reforms.

We have offered, through this legislation, an alternative way of delivering environmental offsets for proponents to what exists at the moment. One of the issues we have at the moment with environmental offsets is that the requirement on individual project proponents to find their own environmental offsets that are like for like—similar to what environmental impacts they are having—frankly doesn't always generate a very good environmental outcome. That's why we've taken the opportunity in these reforms to make some changes around environmental offsets. The purpose of setting up this fund, the restoration fund, is to give proponents an alternative to finding their own environmental offsets if they simply cannot do that, if they don't have the capacity as an organisation to do that, because that is a particular skill that not all organisations have. What we've said is that, for proponents, there will be the option to make a financial contribution to this restoration fund commensurate to what they would have needed to find in terms of their own environmental offsets.

One of the benefits of going down this path is that we believe—and certainly Professor Samuel believed—that this has the capacity to actually deliver a better environmental outcome than what we see with individual proponents finding their own individual offsets. If there were 10 different project proponents who all had to find their own little environmental offsets, put together, that might not actually produce much of an environmental outcome. If those 10 project proponents make a financial contribution to a fund that's managed by government, those funds can be pooled to, for example, purchase land and regenerate vegetation on land in a much bigger and more meaningful way than each of those proponents doing their own thing. I know you understand that, Senator Pocock, but I just thought I should explain the rationale.

In terms of New South Wales, I have seen the reports, news reports and audit reports, identifying issues with the New South Wales restoration fund scheme. We, of course, intend to learn the lessons of what's been done in other funds and design this fund in as robust a way as we possibly can.

To just quickly answer your other question, I think what you meant to say was, 'Why are we not requiring like-for-like offsets in the restoration fund?' That's really because what we're seeking to do is to develop those landscape-scale or across-a-region environmental benefits, rather than one on one. That may produce like-for-like outcomes, or it might not produce like-for-like outcomes, but I reckon it's going to produce a much better environmental outcome, and that's really what's behind the scheme.