Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Protecting our natural environment—what does that mean? We hear about individual preferences from certain people—be it Senator Bragg and his rabbits, Senator Whish-Wilson and skate or various other groups—looking at one particular element without understanding how important it is to look at this holistically, to think very, very clearly about what the totality looks like. It's not just about that individual piece and individual program; it's the totality. It's reducing pollution, it's improving recycling, it's increasing renewable energy generation to help protect the planet, it's the development of biofuels—and so much more. This government has invested significantly and made a lot of inroads since 2022, when we were elected, and, if you cast your mind back to when we were in government the time before that, we did the same thing. Committing to looking at it holistically and improving the state of the environment is critical; it is really important.

The investments from this government have been in Indigenous rangers, the 30-30 target that Senator Ghosh was talking about previously, Indigenous protected areas, renewable energy, threatened species, protecting plants and animals, managing our feral animals and weeds, greater Barrier Reef investment, the new EPA and better environment protection. There's just so much that we have done and so much that we are still doing, and there are so many plans that we have articulated about that holistic approach.

It's easy for Senator Pocock as an objection politician to look very narrowly at and to think very narrowly about particular issues. I appreciate a lot of the work that you do and a lot of the stuff that you commit to in this chamber, absolutely. But what we have seen over many years—when we were in government last time and being in government this time—is things that genuinely are going to make a difference being slowed down, thwarted or blocked on the basis that perfection is the answer and good is not good enough. If there were no barriers, then protection would be lovely. If there were no hurdles to jump over, no objections from across the chamber, then, sure, let's all go and be perfect. But doing a good job, making progress, is where we're at. Making progress is what we focus on, and this budget is making progress.

Since 2022 we've delivered significant and targeted work to generate real momentum towards reducing and reversing environmental decline. We know that, on the curve over there, it's never good enough. We know that. From your perspective, it is never, ever good enough. But we are committed to protecting our environment now and into the future. And we have been so much more ambitious and so much more successful than our colleagues on the benches across the chamber. But, if we had more support from our objection politicians in the corner over there, then we might well make more progress.

I know that I've wittered on about this quite a lot, but climate change would have been a whole different ball game if people had made different decisions in 2013. We might have seen much less damage to the environment, had those things gone ahead. But that's not what we saw, and so we're always going to disagree on this. It is great to have people pushing the boundaries, pushing the edges—absolutely. That's what helps move things along. But the progress we have made has been significant. There is so much more to do, but we need to continue to make progress. I could cite a whole range of examples here of where I've seen that holistic approach, like protecting great swathes of land so that we can see regeneration. We can see our environment improving in areas where it has been catastrophically devastated. These are the kinds of progress points that we need to look at. These are the kinds of things that are going to make a difference.

As a last point, on Senator Bragg's commentary about the Murray-Darling, later this year and early next year we'll be really looking forward to his support when the issues around the Murray-Darling Basin, following the review, come into this chamber. We'll be very much looking forward to his support.