(Second Reading Debate, 22 November 2024, Legislative Assembly, NSW Parliament)

Biodiversity in New South Wales is under threat. We have some of the worst extinction rates in the world, and habitat loss is rapidly accelerating. Experts estimate that we are losing 50 million trees a year. We are not on track to save the over 1,000 species and over 100 ecological communities at risk of extinction by 2050. Loss of biodiversity will have severe impacts on food production, air and water quality, carbon emissions and resilience to climate change. Our future is under threat. Yet our biodiversity offsets scheme, which is meant to deliver new biodiversity outcomes whenever there is a loss from development, is acting as nothing more than a mechanism for environmental destruction. Most biodiversity loss is permitted, regardless of how serious. Numerous reviews have found that the scheme is a driver of biodiversity decline rather than of biodiversity gain.

I welcome the Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Biodiversity Offsets Scheme) Bill 2024 and acknowledge the Government's commitment to reversing the loss of native bush and achieving a nature net positive future. The bill will put integrity, accountability and transparency into the system. New requirements under the bill for proponents to provide early reports identifying how they have complied with their obligations to avoid and minimise destruction before offsets can be made available will encourage proposals to reduce destruction in the first instance. New public registers of decisions around offset obligations, exemptions and serious and irreversible impacts will ensure public scrutiny of the system, and amendments in the other place ensure that reporting will continue until offsets are delivered. The transparency will improve accountability and help us improve how offsets are delivered in the future.

Regulations will limit the very fraught Biodiversity Conservation Fund, which has become nothing more than a way to pay for destruction regardless of whether a future offset of equivalent value could be achieved. It will be harder and more expensive to pay into the fund and there will be a three‑year time frame to expend funds so that offsets cannot be delayed indefinitely. Offset discounts for State significant development and State significant infrastructure will have more oversight, with concurrence required from the Minister for the Environment. Most importantly, the bill will require the Minister to establish a strategy to transition the scheme to net positive. Biodiversity offsetting has been nature negative. In every situation, at best, the mechanism has only ever ensured that the amount of biodiversity protected is equivalent to the amount that is destroyed. If we are to avert mass extinction in the next few decades, we need a nature‑positive scheme. I welcome the non‑regression clause passed in the other place to ensure ambitions and targets can only ever be improved.

Further work is needed to guarantee real environmental gains. We urgently need to map high‑value conservation land and guarantee that it cannot be destroyed for an offset. Exclusions that enable government projects to destroy biodiversity without offsets need to be removed and exemptions for low‑impact development need to be tightened to ensure that only genuinely low‑impact development is included. We need to strengthen the like‑for‑like offsets to limit trading of different species and different ecological communities or trading for conservation actions. Amendments passed in the other place will exclude proponent‑led variations, helping to reduce trading between species and ecological communities. I worked with my lower House independent colleagues—the member for Wakehurst, the member for Lake Macquarie, the member for Wollondilly and the new member for Pittwater—to advocate for those amendments. We appreciate the strong working relationship with the Government to achieve some good outcomes in the other place.

It is especially important that, as we reduce access to the Biodiversity Conservation Fund, we do not give proponents a loophole through variations to water down their conservation obligations. While more reform is needed, I understand the bill is a first step in a process to achieve a world‑class, nature‑positive offsets scheme. I thank the Minister and her office, especially Emily Dyball, for working collaboratively across the Parliament, including with the lower House crossbench, and for committing to improving biodiversity protections. I will continue to work with the Government and my crossbench colleagues to help save the State's threatened species and ecological communities from extinction. I commend the bill to the House.