STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Mr LITTLEPROUD (Maranoa) (16:39): The Albanese EPBC reforms are the biggest overreach by any federal government into state jurisdiction in our nation's history. This is an act that is being weaponised against Australian farmers' ability to produce your food and fibre. We have some of the strongest tree-clearing laws in the world, and they've all been managed by the states, because that's the states' responsibility.

But what the federal government has tried to do is overreach that, add more complexity to that and make it harder for farmers to manage their landscape. Make no mistake: farmers do not undertake broadscale tree clearing in this country. They haven't done it for a number of decades now, because we have stringent state laws that prevent them from doing that.

It is against the law to do that. The only trees that are managed every year are what we call regrowth, and, if we don't manage that regrowth, what happens is our production goes down and your food prices go up. But what the Anthony Albanese government has done has meant that any farmer that hasn't brought down and managed that landscape in 15 years must now go and get federal approval.

They have to go and get an environmental survey at a federal level, costing tens of thousands of dollars, to be able to manage their landscape. That adds cost and complexity. We have farmers who know that the profit and loss of their property is intrinsically tied to the environment they manage.

They do it better than anyone else in the world, and the Albanese government needs to get out of the way and let them do it.