ABC RN Breakfast interview with Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek

SUBJECTS: Preventative detention, Nature Repair Market.  

HAMISH MACDONALD: Overnight the government passed its nature repair bill after reaching a deal with the Greens. There are two big changes to the government's original bill, with the Greens having expedited the inclusion of a water trigger and taking offsets out of the scheme.

It is a significant piece of legislation, but of course it's been a chaotic final sitting week where the focus has largely been on the response to the release of indefinite immigration detainees that's created an 11th hour headache for the Parliament. Tanya Plibersek is the Environment Minister. She joins me now. Good morning to you.

TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Hi Hamish, how are you?

MACDONALD: Very well, thanks. We will of course get to the Nature Repair Bill. I do need to ask you though about the situation with immigration detainees. Your government has been assuring the public from day one of this that strict conditions are in place to keep the community safe. One of these men, a convicted child sex offender, tried to contact minors via social media since being released. How was this able to happen?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, it shows why our strong laws are important so that we can actually criminalise this sort of behaviour, and it is extraordinary that last week the Greens and the Liberals and the Nationals voted against criminalising an individual going near a school or contacting a victim or their victim's family, and the Opposition actually voted against that twice last week. So we're very pleased that we got our stronger laws through the Senate last night. The laws that we passed through the Senate last night are based on the existing high risk terrorist laws that were introduced under the former government. We're very much hoping that Peter Dutton will vote for those laws today when they come to the House of Representatives.

MACDONALD: Given the timeline on this, are you saying that this particular incident would not have happened had the Coalition voted differently last week?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: No, I'm not. I don't have the specifics of the case to be able to say something like that, but I'm saying it's disappointing that last week instead of voting for strong additional protections, the Liberals, the Nationals and the Greens teamed up to vote against those stronger protections.

MACDONALD: It is the responsibility of any government though to keep the community safe. Are you able to provide that assurance today given that there is a significant number of these individuals who've been released out in the community now?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: And that's why we need to get our stronger laws through the Parliament today. It's also why we immediately stood up a joint Australian Border Force and Australian Federal Police operation, it's why we announced a $255 million boost to those agencies and to law enforcement to make sure that they've got the tools they need to keep Australians safe. It's why we introduced that tougher legislation last week that the Opposition voted against.  And I think it is very much worth pointing out that there is a difference between talking tough and doing the things that will keep Australians safe.

MACDONALD: So but, Minister, this was a question about --

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: We've now got legislation in the Parliament --

MACDONALD: -- right now. I mean are you able to --

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: We've now got legislation in the Parliament that will allow courts to take people who are serious risks to offend, to re offend, with violent crime or sexual crime, and put them back into immigration detention. It is very important that the Opposition support those laws today.

MACDONALD: So will it go through the House of Reps today or tomorrow? I thought the schedule was for tomorrow.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: We're hoping that these laws will pass today, and we'd like to see these strong tools available to the government.

MACDONALD: So between now and whenever these laws pass, are you able to offer that assurance to the community that we're safe from all of these individuals?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I can say to the community that community safety is our government's first priority, and that's why we've got the Border Force and AFP operation, that's why we've put a quarter of a billion dollars into these agencies to make sure that they've got the tools they need to keep Australians safe, it's why we're pushing for this legislation. It's why it's so extraordinary that the Liberals and the Nationals and the Greens voted against stronger protections.

MACDONALD: Minister, you have made that point a few times now. Can you give us an understanding of how many of these individuals the government expects may return to some form of detention or behind bars once this legislation passes? What's the proportion that we're talking about of the total that have been released?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I'm not going to speculate on that, that would be a matter for the courts. The very purpose of these laws is to make sure that we've got something that is robust that won't be challenged again in the High Court. It will be a court making a decision about whether someone is a --

MACDONALD: But based on a government request, right, so how many will the government be requesting.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I'm not going to go into these details and, you're very welcome to have the Immigration Minister on to talk about those details.

MACDONALD: I should be very clear that we have been repeatedly requesting interviews with both the Home Affairs Minister and the Immigration Minister Andrew Giles, but they have not made themselves available. Let's turn now to your bill. It's fundamentally changed from being a Nature Repair Market Bill to now the Nature Repair Bill. What's the difference? The Greens say they've negotiated offsets out. What does that mean? Help us understand it.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, this is a really exciting opportunity to see more private and philanthropic investment go into nature repair in a way that prevents greenwashing. So what we'll have is landholders like traditional owners, farmers, private land holders more generally, paid to restore and protect nature on their land. And it means that, for example, if you're a farmer and you've got a remnant rainforest on your land, you can get paid for keeping the feral species and the weeds out of it. If you're a traditional owner in Central Australia, you're doing cultural burning and reintroducing threatened species into your land, you can get paid to do that work. We are really excited about this as an opportunity to bring additional investment into nature across Australia.

MACDONALD: If you need to take a glass of water or a sip of water, please do that. I know it's early in the morning.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Thank you, I'm sorry about that.

MACDONALD: Sometimes it takes a little while for the voice to warm up. I'm talking to Tanya Plibersek who's the Federal Environment Minister also responsible for water. Who will monitor this?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: It will be monitored in the same way that Australian carbon credits are. It will have specific methodologies in the same way that a carbon credit does. Those methodologies will be recommended to me as the Minister, and the same sort of conditions will apply. We'll make sure that the methodologies are consistent. The methodology will have, for example, the size of the area that's being protected, it will have the threatened species that are on that land. The Clean Energy Regulator will regulate in the same way that they do with Australian carbon credit units to make sure that there is consistency, transparency, that the projects can be verified, that they will be tracked and that they will be monitored.

MACDONALD: But I mean you'd be aware, obviously, of the issues with the carbon credit system, you're responsible for water as well, you would have seen what water trading has done to the market and how open that has been to rorting, and malfunction maybe is a more generous way of putting it. How certain are you that a system like this can work, given that we're talking about very small scale stuff?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I think this is the benefit of the approach we're taking. There were problems with Australian carbon credit units, and that's why we got the Chubb Review to do a really good review of methodologies to make sure that people are getting what they pay for when they pay for carbon offsets. We'll take the same integrity approach to this market. You mentioned the water market. In fact we're investing millions of dollars to bring integrity to the water market as well, because we don't want cowboys operating in the water market. Everything we've done in the carbon market, the water market, and now the nature market, is consistently aimed to make sure that we are avoiding green washing. Already, businesses are investing in --

MACDONALD: How are you doing it though?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, because we'll set up methodologies guided by ecologists and scientists. You won't be able to get funding unless you're using an approved methodology. The methodologies will be publicly available, they'll be tracked. The Clean Energy Regulator will have a database where you'll be able to see openly what sort of projects are going on and what sort of methodologies are being used, and who is using them and if they're not operating well, we'll see the same sort of clean up opportunities that we saw with the carbon market where we now know, we see that it wasn't being appropriately regulated in the past. We've had the Chubb Review and we're putting it on to a firm footing now, so that people can have every confidence.

MACDONALD: Tanya Plibersek we’ll let you go.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Thanks.