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Speaker 1: Good morning, and welcome to the Daily ODS. It is Wednesday,

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Speaker 1: the twentieth of July, and on today's episode, I'm joined

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Speaker 1: by Tom Crowley, who will be taking us through the

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Speaker 1: state of the environment report was handed down yesterday by

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Speaker 1: Environment Minister Tanya Plebersek. It doesn't contain a whole lot

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Speaker 1: of good news. We'll get to that a bit later though,

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Speaker 1: and he'll tell us everything that we need to know. Sam,

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Speaker 1: what's happening in Victoria before we head to the FEDS.

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Speaker 2: I guess it would only be the top story this

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Speaker 2: week if it involved COVID, and that's because the Victorian

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Speaker 2: government has updated its guidelines to ask its school staff

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Speaker 2: and students aged eight and over to wear masks in

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Speaker 2: indoor settings. This all came in a letter from the

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Speaker 2: Victorian government's Department of Education and its Independent and Catholic

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Speaker 2: School Commissions and the last parents and cares to help

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Speaker 2: explain to your child or children the importance of this

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Speaker 2: simple step.

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Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin will travel to Iran this week to meet

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Speaker 1: with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts in what will be

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Speaker 1: the Russian president's first visit outside the area of the

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Speaker 1: former Soviet Union since the invasion of Ukraine began in February.

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Speaker 1: It comes after Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski announced major shakeups

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Speaker 1: to his administration after findings of treason in his offices.

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Speaker 2: We'll go to the UN now, where Prince Harry delivered

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Speaker 2: a powerful speech to the General Assembly yesterday, where he

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Speaker 2: warned of a global assault on democracy and freedom. He

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Speaker 2: also spoke out against what he described as the rolling

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Speaker 2: back of constitutional rights in the US, seemingly in reference

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Speaker 2: to the decision of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade,

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Speaker 2: which repealed the right to an abortion in the country.

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Speaker 1: Finally, some good news, and you'll need this one today

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Speaker 1: because what's coming up isn't the greatest news. But Australian

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Speaker 1: football star Sam Kerr has made history as the first

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Speaker 1: female player to grace the global cover of EA Sports's

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Speaker 1: FIFA twenty three video game. Kerr, who plays for English

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Speaker 1: club Chelsea FC, will share the cover with fellow striker

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Speaker 1: and Frenchman Kaylin Umbappe, who played for Paris and Jermaine. Previously,

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Speaker 1: female players had only been on the front of regional covers.

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Speaker 3: If we continue on the trajectory that we are on

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Speaker 3: the precious places, landscapes, animals and plans that we think

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Speaker 3: of when we think of home may not be here

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Speaker 3: for our kids and grandkids.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so Tom, you're joining me today to talk about

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Speaker 1: what we just heard. That was Federal Environment Minister Tanya

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Speaker 1: Plibersek releasing the State of the Environment Report yesterday. Now

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Speaker 1: it was a biggie but a lot of people might

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Speaker 1: not know what it is or why it exists. So

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Speaker 1: do you want to take us back to the start

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Speaker 1: of what this report actually is and what we learned

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Speaker 1: from it?

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Speaker 4: Hellos are a pleasure to be here and I sure can.

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Speaker 3: So.

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Speaker 4: The State of the Environment Report is something that's required

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Speaker 4: to be prepared and presented to the Parliament every five years.

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Speaker 4: There's kind of not too much specification law exactly what

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Speaker 4: form that's got to take, but some form of kind

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Speaker 4: of report on how Australia is going on a number

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Speaker 4: of environmental fronts. This particular report was prepared by thirty

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Speaker 4: seven different authors experts in a range of different environmental

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Speaker 4: fields and it was presented to the government at the

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Speaker 4: end of last year, so the previous government. But this

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Speaker 4: is the first time that it's been released. So there's

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Speaker 4: been some controversy over the delay of that release. The

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Speaker 4: new federal Environment Minister, Tanny Plibasek, who you just heard

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Speaker 4: a moment ago, has released it. It's fair to say

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Speaker 4: it's full of a fair bit of bad news, which

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Speaker 4: I think we're going to step through now.

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Speaker 1: There was definitely a lot of bad news in this report,

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Speaker 1: and it covered a lot of different issues that pertains

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Speaker 1: to our environment. Take us through them, Tom, Yeah, So

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Speaker 1: I guess the first thing to say, I mean this report.

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Speaker 1: I think it's more than two thousand pages long, so

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of detail in it. It covers off

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Speaker 1: kind of a range of different topics, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of it was covering stuff that we've already kind of

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Speaker 1: known about or heard about in different contexts. I think

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Speaker 1: the main purpose of this report was to put it

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Speaker 1: all together, and I emphasized that because there's a long

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Speaker 1: list of really terrible and terrifying sounding statistics, and I'm

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Speaker 1: conscious of not wanting to kind of just rattle off

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Speaker 1: too many in quick succession because they can all start

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Speaker 1: to lose their meaning. But maybe I'll kind of split

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Speaker 1: it up firstly into kind of I'll start with the

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Speaker 1: natural disasters, because I think that that's one of the

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Speaker 1: big things over the last few years that we've all

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Speaker 1: seen the effects of, and particularly bushfires, So there was

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Speaker 1: a lot of detail in there about the effect of

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Speaker 1: the twenty nineteen twenty bush fires. The first kind of

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Speaker 1: key stat was that those bushfires burnt eight million hectares

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Speaker 1: of native vegetation, which is an area that's larger than

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Speaker 1: the whole of Tasmania. Also killed or displaced between one

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Speaker 1: and three billion animals, which I mean, these numbers are

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Speaker 1: kind of quite hard to wrap your head around, but

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Speaker 1: it damaged about nine percent of known Koala habitat area,

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Speaker 1: more than ninety five percent of dun Art habitat. That's

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Speaker 1: sort of a little marsupial on Kangaroo Island. There were

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Speaker 1: fish deaths because of kind of ash and sediment entering waterways.

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Speaker 1: So the environmental effects of those fires, not only the

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Speaker 1: land burnt, but some broader environmental effects were really significant,

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Speaker 1: I guess, kind of contrasting fire with water. We've not

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Speaker 1: only seen severe floods in the last few years, but

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Speaker 1: there have been a number of issues in both kind

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Speaker 1: of inland water areas and also on coasts. So one

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Speaker 1: of the findings was that beaches are generally in poor

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Speaker 1: condition around urban areas. There were also a lot of

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Speaker 1: details something that we've spoken about before coral bleaching in

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Speaker 1: the Great Barrier Reef and the effects of that due

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Speaker 1: to marine heat waves. And then the Murray Daling Basin

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Speaker 1: was the other one that was kind of highlighted.

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Speaker 4: That's kind of between South Australia and New South Wales

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Speaker 4: and Victoria reached record low levels in twenty nineteen thanks

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Speaker 4: in part to drought but also to extractive use to irrigation,

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Speaker 4: and that led to the depth of more than one

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Speaker 4: million fish across the basin in twenty eighteen nineteen. So both,

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Speaker 4: you know, kind of in those features of our natural environment.

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Speaker 4: These are things that have been in the news over

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Speaker 4: the last few years, but this was kind of pulling

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Speaker 4: that all together and putting some stats behind the effects

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Speaker 4: of them.

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Speaker 1: While it was bad news for water, it wasn't much

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Speaker 1: better news on land either. What did the report tell

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Speaker 1: us about forest clearing for example.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so there were some really significant facts about I

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Speaker 4: guess kind of our activity clearing land and also kind

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Speaker 4: of affecting biodiversity. So one of the stats was that

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Speaker 4: over six million hectares of primary forest has been cleared

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Speaker 4: since nineteen ninety. Again, that's sort of almost the size

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Speaker 4: of Tasmania is how much has been cleared. There's also,

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Speaker 4: more broadly, nearly eight million hectares of the habitsat of

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Speaker 4: threatened species and most of that this was a really

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Speaker 4: interesting thing. I thought most of that was not referred

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Speaker 4: to the government for any sort of environmental assessment, even

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Speaker 4: though that's destroying area where threatened species live. And then

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Speaker 4: when it comes to biodiversity, there was more troubling statistics.

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Speaker 4: Australia has lost more mammal species than any other continent

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Speaker 4: in the last decade. Nearly four hundred plant and animal

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Speaker 4: species and nearly fifty ecological communities areas have been added

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Speaker 4: to the threatened list, and the rate at which new

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Speaker 4: species are being added to the threatened list is one

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Speaker 4: of the fastest among developed countries. And the final stat

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Speaker 4: on that is that Australia now has more foreign plant

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Speaker 4: species than native as a result of our management of vegetation.

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Speaker 1: Tom whenever we have a conversation about the state of

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Speaker 1: the environment, I feel like climate change comes into it.

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Speaker 1: Does this report talk about how much environmental degradation is

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Speaker 1: due to climate change.

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Speaker 4: It does a little bit. So the first thing to

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Speaker 4: say is that some of those natural disasters that I've

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Speaker 4: talked about, in particular, I guess the marine heat wave

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Speaker 4: affecting the Great Barrier reef, the drought, the flood, the bushfires,

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Speaker 4: we've been hearing warnings that those sorts of events are

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Speaker 4: going to become more common from climate change. So I

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Speaker 4: suppose climate change has an indirect effect in causing those

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Speaker 4: things to happen and is partly responsible for the effects

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Speaker 4: of them. Not all of it's climate change. Some of

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Speaker 4: what you heard in those statistics that I listed there

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Speaker 4: were sort of decisions that we've made about how to

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Speaker 4: use land, and particularly that land clearing kind of area.

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Speaker 4: But there are sort of a number of climate effects,

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Speaker 4: and there was also something in this report kind of

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Speaker 4: measuring the extent of climate change in Australia. So average

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Speaker 4: land temperatures in Australia compared to kind of about a

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Speaker 4: century ago have increased by one point four degrees celsius.

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Speaker 4: Already pretty significant warming that we've seen here. We've also

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Speaker 4: seen the effect of rising sea levels affecting low lying areas,

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Speaker 4: in particular the Kakadu wetlands and we've seen kind of

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Speaker 4: There were some other mentions of other kind of natural disasters,

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Speaker 4: things like heat waves. For example, there was a heat

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Speaker 4: wave in twenty eighteen that killed thirty three thousand flying

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Speaker 4: foxes in two days, was basically single handedly responsible for

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Speaker 4: putting flying foxes on the endangered list. So there was

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Speaker 4: certainly a significant discussion of climate change. It's not the

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Speaker 4: whole picture or the whole purpose of this report, but

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Speaker 4: it is undeniably part of the story.

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Speaker 1: So it was Tanya Polibisek, the Environment Minister, who handed

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Speaker 1: down this report yesterday. What did she say about what

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Speaker 1: the Labor government plans to do about all the things

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Speaker 1: in this report?

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Speaker 4: So there was a new announcement yesterday, and that was

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Speaker 4: a commitment that by twenty thirty thirty percent of Australia's

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Speaker 4: land and Australia's water would be protected. So protected essentially

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Speaker 4: means kind of designating it as a national park or

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Speaker 4: a marine protected area and protecting it from development and

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Speaker 4: all those sorts of things. Commitment that's part of a

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Speaker 4: broader international push. That thirty percent number is an international number.

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Speaker 4: There are now more than one hundred countries that have

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Speaker 4: signed on to a commitment to do a similar thing

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Speaker 4: for their own land and water. So that's part of

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Speaker 4: our guess kind of a global push, and that was

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Speaker 4: you know, the big announcement that came out yesterday. More broadly, though,

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Speaker 4: of course, the government stance on climate change is an

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Speaker 4: important part of this, and there was no new announcement

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Speaker 4: to that effect yesterday. But we are seeing a debate

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Speaker 4: going on at the moment about legislating the government's climate target,

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Speaker 4: which is forty three percent emissions reduction by twenty thirty

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Speaker 4: that's what they took to the last election, but a

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Speaker 4: debate that'll be unfolding about whether the government should go further.

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Speaker 4: The government's described its own target as a flaw, not

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Speaker 4: a ceiling, suggesting that they're willing to take further action.

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Speaker 4: There are obviously a lot of independents and Greens who

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Speaker 4: were elected to the parliament at the last election, you know,

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Speaker 4: on the back of an appetite for stronger actions. So

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Speaker 4: that will continue to be a debate and Tannie Pluibisek

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Speaker 4: was asked about this yesterday at the National Press Club

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Speaker 4: whether this report made the Labor government think that they

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Speaker 4: should go even further on their climate policies. While she

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Speaker 4: said there was no change at this point, I think

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Speaker 4: that information like this and as the effects of climate

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Speaker 4: change start to become clearer, that's certainly an issue that

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Speaker 4: won't go away for the government. There will continue to

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Speaker 4: be pressure on them to find ways to do more.

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Speaker 1: Sure will be and it's something we'll be watching very

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Speaker 1: closely as Parliament resumes next week for the first time

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Speaker 1: since Anthony Albanezi became Prime Minister. Thanks Tom for jumping

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Speaker 1: on the pod today. If you liked what you heard

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Speaker 1: on today's episode, please give us at five stars on

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Speaker 1: appreciate your support.

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Speaker 4: Have a great day.