QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for the Environment and Water) (14:28): I appreciate the question from the senator for stunts—sorry, the senator for South Australia. It's been at least a few months since you've brought some sort of species into this parliament as part of a stunt, so it can't be too far away. What I can commit to is that the Albanese government's Environment Protection Reform Bill, which we will be introducing to the parliament this fortnight, will deliver stronger protections for the environment and simpler processes for business.

I know it's a foreign concept for either the Greens or the coalition to think that you can do both. We know that the coalition live to deliver only to business at the expense of the environment, and we know that the Greens care about the environment and don't care about Australians getting the housing, the renewable energy projects and other economic projects that we need better approvals for.

But the Albanese government is about delivering both. One of the reasons we're about delivering both is that that is exactly what Graeme Samuel recommended in his review, which was presented to the former coalition government five years ago, where he said that we need to address both environmental protection and approvals processes. I have said all the way through this process that this is a package deal.

You don't get one without the other. You don't get gains for the environment without gains for business, and you don't get gains for business without the environment. It is possible to do that.

I know it suits the Greens political party's political ends to treat this as a binary issue where you can only choose between the environment or homes. You can choose between the environment or renewable energy. You can choose between the environment or jobs—that's what the Greens want you to say and want you to think, but we've broken through that nonsense binary argument when it comes to climate change by recognising that you can take action on climate change while protecting jobs.

Similarly, these laws will demonstrate that you can take action on the environment to protect it while supporting jobs and business outcome as well. The PRESIDENT: Senator Hanson-Young, first supplementary?