The Albanese Labor Government is doing more than ever to protect the environment. 

The 2024-25 Budget will help us to better protect more of our natural world, fix more of what has been damaged, and care for the places we love. 

We’re working hard to undo the damage done by the Liberals and Nationals. We’re investing $307 million to protect nature, including: 

• $121 million for Australia’s first national independent Environment Protection Agency. 
• $51.5 million for a new body called Environment Information Australia, which will give the public and businesses easier access to the latest environmental data, release State of the Environment reports every two years, and report on progress of national environmental goals. 

As part of this, we’re also investing close to $134.2 million to speed up environmental approval decisions on projects, including: 

• $19.9 million to process assessments for priority renewable energy related projects. 
• $65.1 million for extra research into threatened species so sensitive areas can be more easily avoided, and suitable projects can be more quickly approved based on robust, existing publicly available data. 
• $24.5 million for better planning – working with state and territory governments – to make it clearer to business where complying development can more easily occur and where the ‘no go’ areas are. 

We’ve also secured Australia’s position as a global scientific leader, investing $371.1 million to rebuild and upgrade our research station on World Heritage listed Macquarie Island. Last year we tripled the size of Macquarie Island Marine Park, placing an extra 385,000 square kilometres of Australia’s oceans under high protection. 

We’re also expanding our Antarctic science program, investing an additional $17.6 million to enable the Nuyina, Australia’s ice breaking research vessel, to undertake more expeditions for scientific research, including its first dedicated marine science voyage to the Denman Glacier. If this glacier melts, sea levels could rise by 1.5 metres – making this research trip more important than ever. 

We’re also working hard to fix what’s broken. Last year, our Government passed critical legislation to set up the world’s first nature repair market – driving business and philanthropic investment in nature repair and threatened species protection. This budget locks in $35.6 million to continue developing the processes and systems needed to administer the scheme. 

This builds on our more than $500 million investment to better protect our threatened species, as well as cracking down on feral animals and weeds. 

We’re also driving Australia’s transition to a circular economy – cutting down on plastics, reducing waste, and supporting households and industry to recycle or repurpose more materials. In this Budget, we’re investing $23 million to develop a new national circular economy framework, continue tackling problematic waste streams, such as packaging, and get on with the development of a much-needed new recycling scheme for solar panels. 

This comes on top of the $1 billion state, federal and industry investment to increase Australia’s recycling capacity by over one million tonnes.