Extinction rates are accelerating and the state is not on track to save the over a thousand species and over a hundred ecological communities at risk of extinction by 2050. Loss of biodiversity will have severe impacts on future food production, air and water quality, carbon emissions, and resilience to climate change.

The biodiversity offsets scheme is meant to guarantee delivery of new biodiversity outcomes equivalent to losses caused by development, but developers have been able to pay into a fund or vary their expected biodiversity obligations leading multiple reviews to conclude that the system is contributing to decline, not avoiding it.

The government committed to reforming offsets and introduced legislation to limit payments into the fund and impose timeframes for delivering biodiversity improvements from the fund. I worked with independent cross bench colleagues to get the laws to also ban developer led variations that have enabled one threatened species to be traded for an entirely different one. The minister will also be required to establish a strategy to transition the offsets scheme to net positive. During debate, I welcomed the new laws as a first step in a much needed overhaul to land management.