Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025, National Environmental Protection Agency Bill 2025, Environment Information Australia Bill 2025, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Customs Charges Imposition) Bill 2025, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Excise Charges Imposition) Bill 2025, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (General Charges Imposition) Bill 2025, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Restoration Charge Imposition) Bill 2025

Ms ALDRED (Monash) (12:07): It's a pleasure to follow the member for Newcastle, because, while we differ on a number of aspects of the Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025, as a new person to this place, I do appreciate the real sense of collegiality that she has shown towards me in the last six months. I'd like to record my sincere appreciation for that. It's a pleasure to rise to speak on this bill.

I want to reflect—next week is the 50th anniversary of the dismissal of the Whitlam government and the subsequent election of the Fraser Liberal government. Some milestone achievements that were part of that government have been reflected in the parliament this week. We have, of course, the Freedom of Information Act, which was a crowning achievement of the Fraser Liberal government.

It is disappointing to see the watering down and undermining of that act this week, but it was a crowning achievement of a Liberal government. And there were many milestones that the Fraser government implemented in respect of the environment. We had, of course, the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 1975.

The Great Barrier Reef was declared a marine park. We ended sand mining on Fraser Island. We had the declaration of Kakadu National Park.

We ended whaling in Australian waters and prohibited oil exploration and drilling on the Great Barrier Reef, and there were a number of internationally important conservation agreements, including a convention against trading endangered species, a convention on the conservation of seals in Antarctica and a convention on the international importance of wetlands.

I come from the Monash electorate, which is part of the great Gippsland region—which is the size of Switzerland. If you look at that entire regional area, there are some very important biodiversity and environmental aspects to that place. In my good friend the member for Gippsland's area, we've got the largest inland lake system in the Southern Hemisphere, around Lakes Entrance.

My good friend the member for Leichhardt has some family connections to Central Gippsland, which is known for its clean, green horticultural produce. We've got, in my electorate, Phillip Island, which, prior to COVID, attracted over a million international ticketed visitors a year, which I'm very proud of. It is right up there with Kakadu National Park, the Great Barrier Reef and other attractions.

We also have some very special biodiversity and native wildlife species. We've got the orange-bellied parrot, which has its migratory flight path from King Island in Tasmania through our region to South Australia, also known as the Neophema chrysogaster. So environmental conservation and protection is something very dear to my heart.

I turn my remarks to debating this bill, the Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025, the first in a series of seven bills now being considered separately as part of the government's overhaul. From the beginning of this process, the shadow minister for the environment, the member for Moncrieff, has said one thing very clearly, and that is that environmental reform is too important to get wrong.

As I referenced earlier, the Liberal Party have a very proud history and heritage on this issue. Australians deserve reform that really tackles a number of imperatives: it protects our environment, and it supports jobs, investment and productivity. There should be room for all of those imperatives in the way that we approach policy and legislative reform.

Unfortunately, this bill falls short on those areas. In fact, we've seen three years of promises and delays. The government has now finally brought forward a 1,459-page legislative package, and it's expecting industry, stakeholders and parliamentarians to digest it in just three weeks.

That's not consultation; that is chaos. We've seen far too many examples of that recently. We've seen the rushed approach to the FOI legislation.

We've seen the underresourcing, for example, or cutting of opposition staff members, who play a really important role, I think, in making sure we can respectfully and robustly have a contest of ideas in this place that lands somewhere on balanced, reasonable legislation. Even the minister himself has, at one point, said that these reforms would take 12 to 18 months to finalise.

That's a pretty reasonable approach to take—a considered, methodical way forward. I have to ask: why the rush before Christmas? Why force through some of the most significant environmental reform in an entire generation with barely enough time to read through it?

I don't think that that's good for the democratic process. I don't think that that helps us mould a better legislative and regulatory reform process. And I really don't think that's doing justice to Australians, to regional Australians, who I represent, and to the environment.

Stakeholders have been pretty clear on this. This legislation, in its current form, is completely unworkable. Business groups, environment groups and local communities are all saying the same thing.

This process is rushed, it is inconsistent and it is overly complex. We're seeing too many examples right now of state and federal governments, Labor governments, just riding roughshod over local communities, over regional communities. At the moment, we've got yet another rushed renewable project in West Gippsland, in Darnum.

I'm very proud to represent a region that contributes 23 per cent of the nation's milk output and 26 per cent of Victoria's beef. We've got the best soil out of anywhere in Australia. It's prime agricultural farmland, yet we've got a big battery energy storage project that's just being lumped on paddocks in that community.

Lily D'Ambrosio, the Victorian energy minister, has scant regard for the views and other productive activities of regional Victorians. That's an example of where Labor, again, are just riding roughshod over local communities. I also have real concern about the productivity that this bill will undermine.

The government loves to talk about productivity. It had a talkfest—it took the idea from Kevin Rudd's 2020 roundtable—on productivity recently. It certainly talks about productivity, but it's not really serious about implementing steps that are practical and enhance productivity measures.

In fact, this bill will take productivity backwards. We've already got a serious productivity problem. We're ranked second last in the OECD, just above Mexico.

Australia used to be near the top of the pops on productivity across the OECD, but, under successive Labor governments, we've seen that decline and be whittled away. This bill is just another spoke in the wheels of productivity in this country. In their first term alone, more than 5,000 new regulations were introduced.

I don't think this government has ever met a regulation it didn't like. I talk to a lot of businesses in my electorate that are drowning in a quagmire of green tape. It does not serve the environment, it does not protect regional jobs, and it does not enhance productivity.

This is not reform; this is regression. Economists have been tolling the bell on this. They have warned that underinvestment in research and development is already dragging our productivity down.

We invest a lot in research, particularly in the agriculture sector, in my region. I'm very proud that Monash hosts the Darnum research facility on dairy. We are trying our best to lift up productivity and kickstart innovation, and this bill really runs counter to all of those principles.

Without balanced reform, we're going to risk pushing that investment offshore. That means fewer jobs, less growth and a weaker economy. Let's not forget Labor's history in this area.

Under former minister Plibersek, the government promised a complete EPBC overhaul by the end of 2023. That failed to be delivered. It was a friendless proposal that collapsed under its own weight.

Minister Watt, the Prime Minister's so-called Mr Fix It, has inherited a mess, and, to his credit, he's tried to work through that mess. He claims that this new package is 'balanced reform', but stakeholders have been telling the coalition otherwise, and those stakeholders include environment groups and local community groups from metropolitan areas and regional areas like mine.

They tell us otherwise. Western Australia's premier even had to step in to stop Labor's last attempt at this bill. That's how bad it was.

There are a number of Labor premiers at the moment—from Chris Minns in New South Wales, who's very sensibly had some words to say about excise tax, to the WA Labor premier—who really are running counter views to a number of things that this federal Labor government are trying to achieve. After three years and two ministers, the government has produced a reform that's really worse than the 26-year-old law that it's seeking to replace.

The key reasons for that are that it's unworkable and it's massive overreach. There is a glaring issue, and that is the environment protection authority itself. This government came to its administration saying that it wanted to streamline regulation; that, where possible, it's always preferable to harmonise and streamline regulation; and that, where you're able to meet the intention of an agency, a bill or a piece of regulation, there's no point asking businesses, community groups and environment groups to have to grapple with overlapping state and federal regulatory burdens.

That's what we've effectively got with two levels of EPAs at a state level and at a federal level. The Graeme Samuel review, which was commissioned by the coalition, never recommended an EPA, because we've got that state based compliance structure. What it recommended was a compliance commissioner, not an approval authority.

I speak to a whole range of businesses in my electorate, mainly small to medium businesses, from agriculture, meat processing and dairy processing. They are really up against it right now. There's a whole lot of uncertainty in international markets.

Productivity is declining, but red tape and green tape are just killing regional businesses. This is going to be another spoke in the wheel for those businesses. There are no clear performance indicators.

There's no binding statement of expectations. There's no ministerial accountability for the CEO. So, under the bill, the CEO can be dismissed only by the Governor-General, and that's just absurd.

Any government body wielding this much power should answer directly to the minister. That is respecting the primacy of that office and the parliament as well as the function and role of the executive. We also have duplication, and that really is a huge point of frustration for many businesses that I speak to.

The bill needlessly repeats existing scopes 1 and 2 emissions-reporting requirements, and that's already covered under the safeguard mechanism. Labor claims to be cutting red and green tape, but this bill is creating more of both. It also contains 37 separate definitions of unacceptable impacts.

How can a business possibly operate under that kind of confusion? I address my remarks particularly to small- and medium-business operators because, unlike big corporations, they don't have a whole compliance department. They don't have a whole HR department.

If you're a small-business owner, you're the compliance officer, you're the HR officer and you're the marketing manager, and you've got to find time at the end of the day to be able to deliver for your customers. With respect, I just don't think that's a concept Labor understands, respects or can relate to. I've got a number of issues with this bill.

I do not think that it in any way meets those ambitions of protecting the environment or addressing productivity issues that we have in this country in a really reasonable way. I was quite pleased to listen to the previous contribution respectfully, and I'd encourage others to perhaps reflect on doing the same.