Mr TED O'BRIEN (Fairfax) (09:23): In some ways I empathise with the member for Sydney this morning, because it can't be easy to do what she has just done at the dispatch box: to try to make a silk purse out of a pig's ear. Having promised in opposition in 2022 that they would make an annual statement on their so-called international environmental leadership if they were to be elected to government, the Labor Party has created a horrible burden for the minister to carry. That's because there is literally just about nothing for which Labor can take credit or from which it can derive any genuine pride from its entire handling of the environment portfolio over the past 2½ years. As the opposition has made clear on a number of occasions over the course of this parliamentary term, we have always been more than happy to provide bipartisan support for various worthwhile and valuable international initiatives and decisions. That particularly includes work on international oceans leadership and matters like the progression of the high seas treaty. However, there is much in this term's agenda of the Minister for the Environment and Water with which we haven't agreed at all. That's also a very commonly held view among many stakeholders with whom the coalition interacts. Indeed, let's be clear here: Labor's management—or, maybe more to the point, its mismanagement—of the environment portfolio has been a complete debacle. The minister has truly displayed a reverse Midas touch. Things are so toxic now that they have degenerated into complete disdain, from the Prime Minister towards the environment minister and from her back to him. Everyone knows that things between them have always been rancorous. Now these matters have become truly tumultuous. James Campbell, writing in the Herald Sun, has revealed that the antipathy is so bad that some friends of the environment minister say that she is now engaging in deliberate underperformance. The minister's central promise to the Australian public once she became the minister was that she would introduce new federal environmental laws into parliament before the end of 2023. As it was, to do that she'd given herself a year's extra leeway beyond what had been recommended by the independent Samuel review. That said, the new laws should have been devised by the end of 2022. Yet even now we still don't have them, almost another whole year on from the minister's own deadline extension. The Prime Minister has basically now belled the cat and conceded we won't even see them before the election next year. One of the things we are unlikely to see this side of the election is the promised new federal environmental protection authority. What a disaster that issue has become for the Prime Minister and the environment minister—not to mention for the Australian public. After two years of delay, the minister finally introduced proposed EPA legislation to the house at the end of May this year. As usual though, it turned out that she hadn't met with many stakeholders at all about it, let alone taken their views, interests or expert knowledge into account in the bills that were put forward. Instead, it seemed that just about the only people with whom her office had consulted at that point were the teals and Senator David Pocock who were—in turn and, I have to say, astoundingly–taking advice from the disgraced Albanese government funded Environmental Defenders Office. This is the EDO that seeks to destroy vital, job-creating projects all over the country. Yet it is being funded indefinitely by the Albanese government. It's currently on track to receive at least $15 million in funding from Labor to 2030. What a circus! What a disgrace! In September the Prime Minister said he was working on turning the proposed federal EPA into a compliance body only. However, the environment minister then openly said at a Minerals Council of Australia function the following week that she was doing the complete opposite. In particular, she revealed that she was working on attaching climate considerations to the EPA's work, a development that would inevitably have crushed business activity and jobs across Australia, particularly in our resource-rich states. Fast forward two months to this very week, and it turns out that, unbeknown to the Prime Minister, the minister was still trying to strike a deal with the Greens and Senator Pocock. Reportedly, one such deal would have done enormous damage not only to the Australian forestry sector, in the main, but also to many other sectors. We have since learned that, in fact, a press conference had been called—at least planned for although not publicly announced—for yesterday to announce the deal. That is how far they went. They planned a press conference to announce this deal. Thankfully, though, many parts of Western Australian industry began hearing about what was happening. They heard about this and there were rumblings as early as Monday this week and, urgently, they expressed their concerns to state politicians. They were able in turn to get a message the Prime Minister about what the minister was up to. By Tuesday night, the deal was dead, but not before it had created enormous concern for many of our country's senior business leaders, their companies and also their workers. This now adds to a very long pattern of missteps, division and mistrust generated by this terrible federal government. It is highly ironic that we should now be presented with a ministerial statement today that is supposedly about the Albanese government's leadership in the environment portfolio. They have displayed anything but leadership. This, of course, is only a mere taste of what would be on the menu for Australians if the Greens and/or the Teals became partners in a Labor minority government after next year's federal election. There would not only be a complete lack of certainty, predictability and authority in decision-making, but ferocious internal rivalries, disagreements and terrible ideas and priorities would be on constant display. The voices of the political left would prevail and our national economy would be annihilated in the process. One of the minister's very few successes over this term has been a completely inadvertent one. She has been successful in uniting individuals and groups who would normally hold very different views on environmental portfolio issues, all in the name of being equally annoyed, frustrated and bewildered by her actions. Among many other errors, she has failed to deliver on Labor 's clear commitment to introduce a standalone federal Indigenous cultural heritage laws during this term of parliament. Similarly, there is still no sign of the national environmental standard on First Nations engagement and participation in decision-making. That two years ago was cited in Labor's Nature Positive Plan as a priority. None of the other promised new environmental standards have materialised either. This is not the standard that much of the work had already been completed by the former coalition government by the time we had left office in the first half of 2022. The minister has also failed to deliver a $90 million promise on Landcare rangers and she has decimated gillnet farming in Queensland and salmon farming in Tasmania, callously jeopardising the livelihoods and futures of thousands of workers and families dependent on those industries. Her handling of recycling and waste matters has also been a calamity, and she has baffled and exasperated most Australians with her unilateral decision to block the construction of the tailings dam at the proposed McPhillamys goldmine. She has embraced the coming Montreal international framework without objections even though it contained many risks for Australia; although, frankly, she has completely failed in her attempt to practically implement it here, including in respect of its 3030 target. In so far as she is providing any semblance of international direction is to point companies potentially wanting to invest here due north, in the complete opposite direction. This is not a government that displays any genuine international leadership and, in the environment portfolio specifically, and as much as it pains me to say it for the country's sake, it frankly doesn't offer any leadership in any form or of any kind at all.