Deputy Speaker,
Caring for and repairing nature is a high priority for the Albanese Labor Government.
Which is why we are delivering on our Nature Positive Plan with the establishment of the nature repair market.
This market will make it easier for businesses, organisations, governments and individuals to invest in projects to protect and repair nature.
The Australian Government has committed to protecting 30 per cent of Australia’s land and seas by 2030.
The same goals have been adopted globally under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.
These goals reinforce the findings of the 2021 State of the Environment Report and its story of environmental degradation, loss, and inaction.
We need significant investment in conservation and restoration for a nature positive future.
Business and private sector investment can contribute to reversing environmental decline.
This was highlighted in the findings of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act review by Professor Graeme Samuel AC.
Private companies, conservation groups, farmers and other landholders are increasingly looking for ways to achieve positive outcomes for nature.
A recent report prepared independently by Price Waterhouse Coopers estimates that the market for biodiversity in Australia could unlock $137 billion in financial flows by 2050.
We are responding to that demand in this Bill.
The nature repair market will be based on science and enable Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders to promote their unique knowledge, on their terms.
Establishing the market in legislation will ensure its ongoing integrity, encourage investment in nature, and drive environmental improvements across Australia.
The Bill will enable the Clean Energy Regulator, an independent statutory authority with significant experience in regulating environmental markets, to issue Australian landholders with tradable biodiversity certificates.
The certificates can then be sold to businesses, organisations, governments and individuals.
All landholders, including Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders, conservation groups and farmers can participate in the market.
Projects will deliver long-term nature positive outcomes, through activities such as weeding, planting native species and pest control.
They can be undertaken on land or water.
This includes lakes and rivers, as well as marine and coastal environments.
Open participation and extensive opportunity for project locations will support Regional Australia through jobs and nature positive economic activity.
The nature repair market will enable participation and create employment and economic opportunities for Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders.
It will promote and enable free, prior and informed consent for projects on their land or waters.
There will be opportunities to design projects that reflect the knowledge and connection to country of our First Nations people and to utilise their skills and knowledge for a nature positive future.
The market will operate in parallel with the carbon market, facilitated by having the same regulator.
The alignment will encourage carbon farming projects that also deliver benefits for biodiversity.
There will administrative efficiencies in this approach and more importantly clear and accurate oversight of claims made in both markets.
Our Government acknowledges the recent review of carbon crediting led by Professor Ian Chubb.
Lessons learnt from the carbon market have informed the Bill and will continue to be reflected upon as environmental markets develop.
The Bill provides for biodiversity certificates to have integrity and represent an actual environmental improvement.
Buyers can then invest in the market with confidence.
A key integrity measure is an independent expert committee responsible for ensuring projects deliver high-quality nature positive outcomes underpinned by a consistent approach to the measurement, assessment and verification of biodiversity.
The integrity of environmental outcomes is also enabled through assurance and compliance requirements.
This includes monitoring, reporting and notification on the delivery of project activities and progress on the environmental outcome.
The Regulator will have monitoring and enforcement powers to ensure that projects are conducted in accordance with the rules.
The Nature Positive Plan reflects our commitment to restoring public accountability and trust.
Transparency will be a core element of the scheme.
Comprehensive information about projects and certificates will be available on a public register.
Additional information will be regularly published by Regulator and there will be active release of relevant data by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
This will enable Parliament and the public to monitor the scheme and provide an opportunity for citizen oversight.
It will support certainty and value to the market.
The Department is committed to working with the ACCC and ASIC to ensure that certificates issued in the nature repair market are not victims of ‘green washing’ claims.
That the statements made about certificates accurately reflect the projects and investment they represent.
And that projects in the carbon and biodiversity markets are not affected by misleading claims.
Our Government is committed to consultation and engagement on our environmental reform agenda.
We have listened, and will continue to listen, to feedback on the design and operation of this market.
We are working with Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders on a co-design approach for developing priority methods and supporting appropriate incorporation of traditional knowledge and management practices.
The Bill mandates public consultation on methods and the instrument for measuring and assessing biodiversity.
The draft legislation establishes the Nature Repair Market Committee.
The Committee is responsible for providing advice to the Minister following public consultation on the submission and their advice.
The Committee will have 5-6 experts with substantial experience and significant standing in one or more areas of expertise including agriculture, science, environmental markets, land management, economics or Indigenous knowledge.
The Nature Positive Plan presents a different approach to biodiversity offsets.
It commits to offsets being the last resort, which we will enshrine in legislation.
Our Government is already designing and consulting on new national standards for Matters of National Environmental Significance and Environmental Offsets.
These will be legislated under the new nature positive laws.
The standards will provide certainty and confidence in the use of biodiversity offsets under Commonwealth laws.
They will no longer rely on averted loss but protection and restoration of ecosystems that provide a nature positive outcome where avoidance and mitigation cannot prevent a significant impact.
Projects under the Nature Repair scheme won’t be used as offsets unless and until they meet the new standards.
The nature repair market will be an opportunity to create supply of projects certified through purpose designed offset methods.
The register will be a comprehensive and public source of information on these projects and the biodiversity they are protecting.
This Bill will establish a new market for investing in nature positive outcomes.
It will support Australia’s international commitments to protect and repair ecosystems and reverse species decline and extinction.
It will generate investment and job opportunities for a nature positive economy and create new income streams for landholders, including Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders and farmers.
All landholders, including First Nations peoples, conservation groups, and farmers can participate in the market.
The rights and interests of First Nations people are recognised on approximately 50 per cent of Australia’s land area.
First Nations people have cared for country for thousands of years and the biodiversity we enjoy today is a product of their stewardship.
The nature repair market is designed to enable participation by First Nations people and ensure free, prior and informed consent to projects on their land.
Projects could include traditional land management to protect and improve biodiversity as well as land restoration.
Landholders can undertake projects that improve or protect existing habitat as well as projects to establish or restore habitat.
It’s not just about repairing what is broken, but also protecting land that is in good condition.
A lot of Indigenous land has never been cleared but still benefits from management activities and protection.
Projects can be on land, inland waterways (lakes and rivers), or in marine and coastal environments.
Example projects include: improving or restoring existing native vegetation, through fencing or weeding; planting a mix of local species on a previously cleared area; or protecting rare grasslands that provide habitat for endangered species.
Deputy Speaker, I began by saying that caring for land and nature is core priority of the Albanese Labor Government.
And I’m particularly proud about two commitments that Labor made in the Darwin that demonstrate this instinct.
The first was our urban river commitment for catchment restoration projects across Darwin and Palmerston.
The $3.82 million commitment was part of Labor’s $200 million Urban Rivers and Catchments Program.
Funded activities include revegetation, improvements in water quality, weed and invasive species management, the establishment of gross pollutant traps, native plantings, and landscape rehydration and soil erosion mitigation works.
I’m incredibly proud that Labor is helping restore the health of Australia’s urban rivers and catchments in Darwin and Palmerston, where we celebrate the value of our stunning natural landscapes.
And these are exactly the types of activities that this new market will incentivise right around Australia.
A second commitment of which I’m proud is the $9.8 million over four years that Labor promised to contain and eradicate dangerous gamba grass infestations in the Northern Territory.
Gamba grass is one of the greatest environmental threats in the Northern Territory.
Part of Labor’s $9.8 million commitment is going to scaling up the already successful work of the Northern Territory Gamba Army to remove the grass from public lands which present a high fire risk to lives, homes and infrastructure.
This commitment is helping keep gamba grass out of Kakadu national park as part of federal Labor’s ongoing commitment to protecting Kakadu from the threats of invasive species.
With these commitments, as with the nature repair market that will be created if this Bill passes, the Albanese Government is showing that it has a clear Nature Positive Plan and that it is getting on with the job of delivering it.
Finally, Deputy Speaker, I’d like to highlight the great work of Tierra Australia, which has been driving a proposal to deliver a scoping study and pilot project targeted at restoring the natural functions of the landscapes of Timor-Leste.
The proposal aims to deliver the hard evidence to underpin a business case for restoring the natural capital for the whole 1.5 million hectares of Timor-Leste.
This would enable the Government of Timor-Leste to monetise its reserves of terrestrial forest, mangroves, carbon stocks and its marine and terrestrial natural capital.
The objective of this plan is to deliver increased per capita GDP to the people of Timor-Leste, including to Indigenous and underprivileged people, through carbon income.
It aims to create jobs and a new local economy based on natural capital restoration and conservation in Timor-Leste.
This work would begin by employing locals to implement a pilot project in one of the small catchments flowing into Dili before scaling up to the whole country.
I salute Peter Burgess, the CEO of Tierra Australia, and Mike Clark for all their work on this important project.
Thanks Deputy Speaker.
