I'd like to thank Senator Pocock for bringing forward this very important motion. Australians' identity as a people is very much intertwined with the natural world. From our rivers to our reefs to our river red gums, we are rooted to our country, and we are deeply committed to protecting our country—all Australians are. But that country of ours is under threat. It's under threat from human habitation, from land clearing, from invasive species and, of course, from climate change. We all recall the State of the environmentreport from a few years ago which laid it out, writ large, that our environment was under pressure and deteriorating at an alarming rate.

The Invasive Species Council has reported that invasive species cost this country around $25 billion a year. We know what they are. They're the usual suspects: feral cats, feral deer, foxes, rabbits—all these sorts of introduced species. There are weeds and yellow crazy ants. They're all basically eating away at our native habitat and our flora and fauna. That is contributing to this death by a thousand cuts.

We, as a government, have put more than $800 million since 2022 into threatened species and into protecting ecological communities, and more than $2 billion into extra biosecurity. We agree with the motion on the threat posed by invasive species, and we are doing something about it. This was also best seen, I think, in regard to our response to H5 bird flu. We knew this was coming. It wasn't a question of if but of when, and it has now appeared on our shores. But we did the work; we did the groundwork in preparing this country for what could potentially be an extinction event for some species in our land.

We've contributed more than $270 million into strengthening our preparedness and our response. Over $67 million of that has gone towards biodiversity protection, to help our native animals withstand and recover, and a further $20 million has gone into emergency funding for on-ground action and for Commonwealth-managed national parks. And, of course, it's all aided by our citizen scientists. We are backing the next generation of rabbit biocontrol. You see them in their thousands here in Canberra. While they may look cute, they are devastating to our natural habitat, to our native species and of course to our farmers. This year's budget puts over $110 million into extending the Saving Native Species program and continuing our H5 bird flu preparedness.

In terms of wins, there are some wins. There are some gains. We've seen, with respect to feral cat eradication, some gains on Kangaroo Island. These cats threaten a number of species, including the Kangaroo Island dunnart, which is a type of marsupial. It looks a little bit like a rodent. They also threaten the bandicoot, the echidna and the whipbird. Since 2019-20, the government has committed more than $9.7 million towards eradicating these feral cats on the Dudley Peninsula. We've seen more than 1,800 feral cats removed. The remaining population is now less than 150.

The key message here is that there needs to be sustained effort over a long period of time and there needs to be commitment to these programs. We cannot have governments chopping and changing over time. Labor has a very proud legacy of environmental stewardship. It was Whitlam who created the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. It was Hawke who stopped, along with the Greens political party, the damming of the Franklin and protected the Daintree. He also led the push to ban mining in Antarctica and established Landcare, which could do with a bit of a glow-up, I think! It was Keating who ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, and it was Gillard who ratified the Kyoto protocol, the precursor to the Paris Agreement. She also established the green bank, the CEFC, as well as ARENA The coalition attempted to disband that a number of times. She also finalised the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, and it was under the Albanese government that we have delivered, with the aid of the Greens political party, landmark environmental laws, passed last year, and the establishment of the National Environmental Protection Authority, which, as of a few days ago, issued its first environmental protection order to prevent a huge amount of land clearing in Far North Queensland that was going to adversely impact the Great Barrier Reef. This happened also thanks to the activities and the work of citizen scientists in Australia. So we are trying to— (Time expired)