South Australia’s First Biodiversity Act
Tuesday 3 June 2025
Second Reading Debate - Biodiversity Bill 2025
Ms CLANCY (Elder) (11:41): I rise today in support of this bill, which seeks to establish South Australia's first ever biodiversity act. When people overseas think of Australia, more often than not they think of koalas and kangaroos, or our deserts or coastlines. The Sydney Opera House likely sneaks into the top five if we are doing a Family Feud situation, but beyond that, it is our natural environments that make us special and we have already lost so much.
More than 10 per cent of South Australia's native species are threatened with extinction and Australia has the highest mammal extinction rate in the world. While so many of us in our community are rightly concerned about the threats caused by climate change, we also need to look to the dangers we face if global biodiversity loss continues.
South Australians take pride in our state's nation-leading history of advocacy for the environment and sustainability, and we can all take pride in this bill which puts South Australia back at the forefront of the protection of nature. From the largest of animals to the smallest of little microorganisms, biodiversity encompasses all species and the way they interact together in the ecosystem.
Biodiversity protection is so vital to protecting the way species work together to maintain environmental balance and, ultimately, our way of life. The loss of this balance causing ecosystems to collapse is the second highest long-term risk facing the globe, second only to extreme weather events.
Protecting biodiversity is not a niche environmental issue; this is an economic issue that impacts all South Australians, with more than 80 per cent of our exports and over one-third of employment in our state depending on nature. These are industries like food, wine, tourism and agriculture, all of which would not survive without protected, healthy ecosystems.
From the bleeding-heart environmentalists like me, to the steak-loving or red wine enthusiasts—I am also one of those; I love red wine—we all rely on biodiversity loss being taken seriously. This bill will ensure that conservation outcomes are fully integrated into how we all live sustainably and prosper. We can and we must not only protect what we have left but begin to restore and put back what we have lost.
This bill seeks to establish a new framework for how we protect, restore and interact with biodiversity in South Australia, consolidating biodiversity considerations previously spread across several pieces of legislation. For example, it brings together the Native Vegetation Act and key biodiversity provisions from the National Parks and Wildlife Act, to ensure they work together to provide stronger, clearer protections for nature.
Our first biodiversity act will also provide for stronger native plant laws and critical habitat protections in establishing a new process for listing threatened species and threatened ecological communities. We are also introducing tougher penalties for a stronger deterrence against environmental harm.
First Nations South Australians have played a crucial role in caring for and living sustainably on country for tens of thousands of years and this bill not only acknowledges that role but respects and enshrines that role into law. Furthermore, this bill provides for a new general duty ensuring that every South Australian plays a role in protecting biodiversity.
In addition to the bill before us today, we will be developing a state biodiversity plan, a strategic roadmap to protect and restore biodiversity in South Australia. This plan will set a long-term vision for biodiversity protection, guiding investment in conservation to ensure that funding goes where it is needed most. With the support of the Biodiversity Restoration Fund, the Biodiversity Conservation Fund and the new Biodiversity Administration Fund, South Australians can rightfully expect better transparency and accountability of the expenditure of funds on preserving our natural environment.
The importance of biodiversity is being increasingly well understood right across the globe, but we are still learning how to protect and manage humanity's needs without causing further loss to ecosystems. To support the bill before us today, our state government, and those that follow, must continue to listen and follow best practices and advice to ensure that our children, and our children's children, inherit a thriving, sustainable environment.
This bill will be supported by four committees, each appointed on the basis of their skills and expertise. These include a biodiversity council, a clearance assessment committee, an Aboriginal biodiversity committee and a scientific committee.
In closing, Mr Speaker, I would like to thank our Deputy Premier and Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, and her team, for their leadership and commitment to tackling climate change and taking biodiversity protection and restoration seriously. Your leadership continues to build South Australia's legacy at the forefront of the protection of nature and you should all be incredibly proud of the legislation before us today. We are very fortunate to have a Deputy Premier and Minister for Environment who is so fiercely protective of what makes our state so special—our natural environment and all that lives within it.
Through this bill the Malinauskas Labor government is showing our commitment to three simple but important objectives: protect what is irreplaceable; repair what is damaged; and share the responsibility. I commend the bill to the house.
