Speaker, when I was first elected to this Parliament, I came with some priorities.
One of those priorities was to be a voice for real action on climate change: to work within a government to advance our efforts towards clean energy, a circular economy, and critically – strong environmental protections.
It’s something felt deeply within my community of the inner north – and an ethos I’ve grown up with as a lifetime local.
We are a community with a long history of environmental activism. Whether that’s the likes of Sue Course and other residents who in the 1970’s lobbied to protect and renew the Darebin Parklands, saving it from becoming a freeway and factories.
Or the fierce resolve of Darebin Climate Action Now, who have engaged with me over the years on projects such as all-electric homes and the push to end native forest logging.
It’s also in the quiet diligence of our many Stationeers along the rail lines, our Merri and Darebin friends that volunteer to protect our waterways, and in the small but mighty resident groups that have achieved everything from establishing CERES environmental park in the 1980’s to saving two huge sugar gum trees on Ballantyne Street just a few weeks back.
Importantly, it’s also deeply enmeshed in the custodianship of First Peoples – whose care for the lands and waters for tens and thousands of years is seen in the scar-trees and sacred sites along the small creeks and the mighty Birrarung – and echoed in storylines that tell of creation and seasonal cycles, sharing the resources of the land and giving back.
Our is a community that knows and understands the moral obligation and the existential imperative to safeguard our natural environment for the future.
In Victoria, I’m proud to be part of a Labor Government that is at the forefront of that work.
I’ll never forget the day we ended all native forest logging in this state. The biggest environmental protection policy in Victoria's history.
A landmark decision to protect over 1.8 million hectares of forest into the future. To restore critical habitat for native plants and animals. To keep our air clean and lock away millions of tonnes of carbon in healthy forests.
The kind of deeply meaningful, tangible, progressive change that makes me proud to be a Labor Member of Parliament.
Ending native forest logging. Our Labor Government achieved that – despite huge resistance from those opposite.
The Bill before us today builds on that legacy and that determination to make real and lasting changes to the way we nurture our environmental future.
I say nurture because, at its heart this is a Bill about care.
Care for Country.
Care for Climate.
Care for Communities.
Victoria is blessed with natural beauty. Rugged coasts, deep forests, wild mountain ranges and native grasslands. They are important to us for so many reasons and in so many different ways.
Protecting them is vital: and it’s why we already have a world-class system of national, state and other parks which covers a vast 3.5 million hectares of our state. Together, they allow for conservation and recreation – in the understanding that caring for nature also means having the opportunity to connect with it, relish it, feel its magic.
The Bill will create three new national parks at Womat-Lerderderg, Pyrenees, and Mount Buangor. It will establish new conservation parks at Cobaw and Hepburn.
It will permanently protect Mirboo North as a conservation park, add Wellsford Forest to Bendigo Regional Park, expend the Wimmera Heritage River and create Wangong Regional Park.
Importantly, it will modernise public land legislation and support the granting of Aboriginal title pathways – recognising the close connection with Traditional Owners.
Together, the new central west parks will permanently protect habitats, animals, plants and fungi. They will protect the headwaters of where six major rivers begin their journey – and let forests and wildlife heal after years of damage.
Speaker, there will be safe opportunities of respite and recreation for both locals and visitors. People will enjoy bushwalking, picnicking, camping, birding, fishing, mountain biking, four-wheel driving, trail bike riding and so much more in the new parks.
This is a lasting legacy for future generations.
Local communities and nature conservationists have spent decades advocating for better protection of these landscapes. And rightly so –
These landscapes are habitat to more than 380 rare and threatened species – from the Powerful Own and the Southern Greater Glider to the Mount Cole Grevellea and the Pyrenees Gum.
They are the kind of places that also restore people – close enough for inner-city families like those in Northcote to reach on a weekend, rich enough for a lifetime of visits.
Speaker our parks welcome around 90 million visitors each year, contributing significantly to local and regional economies – and showing that protection and public enjoyment belong together, not at odds.
With this bill we add ecosystems that have been missing, making the network of parks more representative, more connected and more resilient in a warming climate.
We are plain about our purpose: protect what is irreplaceable, invite people in, and care for these precious landscapes ongoingly.
That ongoing care is important – it means we will keep investing in things like track fixing, signage, weed control, revegetation and improving the ecological condition of the parks.
Speaker, my community is one of the most environmentally conscious in the state. We may be a fair way from the Wombat Forest, but on any given weekend you’ll find Northcote people there – walking, camping, birding, teaching their kids what an old tree looks like and how a creek sounds after rain. They expect their Government to protect these places and to keep them welcoming for walkers, families, schools and citizen scientists.
And at home, we practise what we preach. Last Thursday I joined the Merri Creek Management Committee and the Friends of Bracken Creek for one of their regular community clean-ups: 14 volunteers, 40 kilograms of litter, 1,874 pieces of trash removed from a single stretch of urban waterway in a couple of hours.
Stewardship is not a slogan; it’s work done with gloves on and results measured.
And we’ve been listening, too.
Recently I had the opportunity - along with the Member for Preston and the Member for Pascoe Vale - to sit down with Jo Hopkins from the Wilderness Society and Matt Ruchel from the Victorian National Parks Association. Earlier in the year I met with uke Chamberlain from Environmental Justice Australia and touched in again with Ann Sanson at DCAN.
These organisations have been in the conservation space for decades and bring a wealth of experience and expertise to conversations about how we can further embed our commitments to protecting Victoria’s environmental assets.
It’s been incredibly valuable to be able to soundboard with them and elevate their voices within government. And to see VNPA call this legislation “a historic win for nature, climate, and community” after years of advocacy is really moving.
Our conversations have been wide-ranging, but I wanted to put on record some of the issues VNPA and indeed DCAN, EJA and DCAN have raised with us. They include a desire to see:
· Stronger controls around private land logging.
· More independent oversight and regulation of fire management operations in forests.
· More explicit emphasis in legislation about the intended uses of public land.
· And movement towards more forest protection in parts of the east.
I hope to have more conversations with the Minister for Environment on those matters into the future.
So Speaker, fundamentally what we are doing here today is acting decisively to leave a healthy, thriving natural world as a gift to our children, grandchildren and the planet.
It’s something I’m immensely proud to champion.
Now I know that there will be those opposite who resist this kind of reform, standing up that false dichotomy between conservation and recreation.
It’s a weak and lazy argument. National parks create custodians: because when you let people love a place, they look after the place they love.
And please, Speaker, please do what you can to save us today from hearing the latest sermon from the Greens Political Party. You know, the one where they deride Labor for not going far enough.
It’s a tired trope from a decaying Party that has never had to do the hard, incremental work that real progress demands.
A cynical campaign tool with a set formula: grandstand your aspiration, then oppose each practical step that enables the next to get there.
But progress is not a posture, Speaker. It’s a sequence – navigated at every point through listening, learning, and making choices that bring more people with us along the way.
Only Labor does that real reform work – embedding lasting energy and environment policy in a way that doesn’t leave people behind or alienate communities.
And the benefits are endless.
Healthier forests. Cleaner air and water. Stronger local economies. More opportunity to wind down from our busy lives.
Speaker, let me end where I began – with care.
Care for Country. Because we protect what is irreplaceable – headwaters, old forests, habitat and culture – so the Powerful Owl can still call at dusk, the Greater Glider can still skim the treeline, and our children can still see what we were lucky enough to have on our doorstep.
Care for Climate. Because we connect and restore landscapes that store carbon, cool our environment and make communities more resilient to fire, flood and heat.
Care for community. Because we keep nature welcoming for families, schools and citizen scientists – and we sustain regional towns whose livelihoods are tied to places people want to visit.
This is Labor at its best: we listen, we legislate, we deliver.
From Northcote’s creeks to the central-west forests.
I commend the Bill to the House.
