Plibersek in push to halt extinctions, but defends reef stance

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek will push for a global effort to prevent any new extinctions of wildlife by 2030, warning the world is heading down an “unsustainable” path unless a major international agreement is reached.

Plibersek, who will travel to Montreal on Wednesday for the COP15 biodiversity summit, will also push for all countries to adopt a target of protecting 30 per cent of their land and 30 per cent of their seas by 2030 through the creation of marine reserves, national parks, Indigenous Protected Areas and other protected areas.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek wants the COP15 conference to do for the environment what the Paris climate conference did for emissions reduction.Credit: James Brickwood

She also wants a “strong target on climate change” and a new global target to reduce the introduction of pests and weeds.

After the federal government reached an agreement with the states to lower power bills by capping the price of coal and gas, Plibersek said Australia needed to become a “renewable energy superpower” so that it can be more self-reliant from international energy prices.

Plibersek said countries needed to use the model of the Paris climate conference, which committed nations in 2015 to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, to set targets on biodiversity.

In an exclusive interview with The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age, Plibersek said “this conference in Montreal can really do for nature what the Paris Agreement did for climate change and carbon pollution reduction”.

“I think we need the same sort of recognition for nature that says what we’re doing at the moment is unsustainable,” she said. “We’ve got to halt biodiversity loss and begin to repair nature.”

While Plibersek in October announced a 10-year plan to prevent any more species from dying out in Australia, she said “we’d like to see that target adopted internationally”.

She said Australia would also back Pacific nations in pushing for an ambitious agreement on plastic pollution and the protection of their oceans.

But Plibersek said she would push back against attempts to list the Great Barrier Reef as endangered, saying: “I don’t want to see Australia singled out.”

UNESCO scientists last month issued a report that singled out Australia to say its climate policies weren’t ambitious enough to significantly reduce the threat global warming poses to the reef and it should be rated as “in danger” of losing World Heritage status.

“No one cares more about the Great Barrier Reef than Australians. One of the first things we did as a government is legislate stronger ambition on climate change,” Plibersek said.

“If the Great Barrier Reef is in danger, every coral reef in the world is in danger. I’ll be advocating for Australia’s best interests in any international discussions, and it’s in Australia’s best interests that the Great Barrier Reef is not listed as endangered.”

Plibersek on Thursday announced a major suite of reforms to federal environment laws that would create a new national Environmental Protection Agency which has greater oversight over development proposals and emissions. There will be new legally enforceable environmental standards to provide greater protection for threatened species and world heritage sites.

Plibersek said Australia’s environment had been “declining for decades” and it was now leading the world in extinctions.

“We’re at a really critical point – we are the extinction capital of the world now.”

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek with an endangered greater glider. Credit: AAP

Far from slowing down development, Plibersek said the changes would make it easier for businesses because it would make clear where they can and can’t develop.

There will be a “three-light traffic system” where developments would be fast-tracked in areas marked “green”, while “orange” areas would receive greater scrutiny and “red” would be no-go land for most developments.

With her intention to include the new national standards to forestry agreements, Plibersek didn’t deny she was expecting some pushback from the timber industry but “so far we’ve had really good dialogue”.

“There will definitely be times... where we won’t get agreement, where there will be people back in their corners,” she said.

“But so far, we’ve had broad agreement from environmental groups and business groups because everybody acknowledges that the system we’ve got now just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for business and it doesn’t work for the environment.”

The federal government has been facing months of pressure from Australians to do something about the rising cost of power bills on the back of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the disruptions in global energy supplies. On Friday Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a $1.5 billion plan to help households and small businesses from April next year under a deal with the states to cap the prices of coal and gas.

With the government’s target of having 82 per cent of the national grid powered by renewable energy by 2030, Plibersek said Australia needed to be working towards exporting it to the rest of the world.

“It’s not just that renewable energy is the cheapest form of electricity in human history – it is – but you see with Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the benefits of greater energy self-reliance,” she said.

“And there’s nothing that will make us more energy self-reliant than having a larger share of renewables – with firming, with storage with energy efficiency measures – but when we’re adopting those measures in our grid, that gives us an enormous comfort that we’re not sort of left to the vicissitudes of international energy prices in the way that we have been recently.”

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.