In the house, Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown asks:

Australia’s biggest environmental organisation the Australian Conservation Foundation says you’re cutting of environmental laws with the Coalition today is a sell-out and means of nature is more poorly protected at the end of the Albanese government’s 3-year turn another start of it. Was the environment better protected under Scott Morrison than you and why has your government sold out the climate and environment?

Anthony Albanese:

I thank the member for her question and identifying a preference for Scott Morrison as prime minister. Compared with the Labor government that has put in place measures for the most serious climate change policy ever put in place by any Australian government in history. A40 3% target by 2030 with mechanisms to get there, the Safeguard mechanisms. The capacity investment scheme, the solar Sunshine program, hydrogen Headstart, all of these programs for batteries, the national restructuring fund to drive these through. Programs are critical minerals and rare earths through our production tax credits but they have the hide to coming here suggest that Scott Morrison, you may well have been the environment minister as well, that is possible.

We can’t rule that out. So much contempt he had for the environment that when he made himself treasurer, Finance Minister, industry Minister and everything else, he forgot to appoint himself as environment minister. That is how much contempt he had for the environment. We have protected, just on a Saturday, and extra 100 million hectares of Aussie ocean and bush, some $250 million program announced by our environment Minister in the budget to meet our commitment to protect 30% of Australia’s landmass by 2030.

That is what we have we have quadrupled the site of Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Park, the biggest acts of ocean conservation on the planet anywhere in the world in 2024. We have tripled the size of Macquarie Island Marine Park and blocked proposals like Clive Palmer big Queensland coalmine. We have doubled funding to better look after national parks, including Kakadu and Uluru and we are working with first Nations ranges to deliver that protection of the environment, taking account of 65,000 years of knowledge. We have throughout our environment invested $550 million to better protect our threatened plants and animals and to tackle the feral animals and weeds killing a native species. When it comes to the urban environment, we have our urban rivers program. We have a comprehensive plan and what’s more, a lot of it would have been implemented earlier if the Greens had just voted for it.