Scott Morrison said he had ‘been taking action’ on UN report about extinction of a million different species

Scott Morrison’s office has declined to say what legislation he was referring to when he said he had “been taking action” on a landmark UN report about the extinction of a million different species.

On Monday, the UN released a comprehensive, multi-year report that revealed human society was under threat from the unprecedented extinction of the Earth’s animals and plants. The agriculture minister, David Littleproud, said the report “scared him”, during a debate on Wednesday.

On Tuesday Morrison responded to the report saying: “We already introduced and passed legislation through the Senate actually dealing with that very issue in the last week of the parliament. We’ve been taking action on that.”

But no legislation regarding animal conservation or the environment passed in the final week of parliament.

When asked what the legislation was, the prime minister’s office did not reply. The office of the environment minister, Melissa Price, also did not respond when asked what legislation Morrison was referring to.

The only legislation regarding animals that passed within the last few months is the industrial chemicals bill 2017, which set new regulations on testing cosmetics on animals. It was passed by both houses on 18 February – not in the last week of parliament, which was in April.

Neither the prime minister nor the environment minister responded to clarify if this was the bill Morrison was referring to or whether he made an error.

Tim Beshara, the federal policy director of the Wilderness Society, said Morrison appeared to have “alluded to a bill that doesn’t exist”.

“The last bill to pass the Senate from the environment portfolio was about changing the board structure of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in 2018,” he said.

“It looks like the prime minister of Australia is so desperate to move the debate off the environment as an issue that he has alluded to a bill that doesn’t exist so that journalists would stop asking questions about it.”

Beshara said the cosmetics testing bill was “not about species extinction or the environment” and only helped “the rabbits in laboratories run by the cosmetics industry”.

On Wednesday Morrison also railed against the expansion of environmental regulations, calling them “green tape”.

He told the Sydney Morning Herald the expansion of “green tape” – including native vegetation laws – was delaying projects like mining and “costs jobs”.

“[Labor] want to hypercharge an environment protection authority which will basically interfere and seek to slow down and prevent projects all around the country,” he said.

Beshara said the timing of this with the mass extinction report showed “excellent comedic timing”.

“What he is calling ‘green tape’, most Australians would call basic environmental protections,” he said. “I don’t expect the prime minister to know their numbats from their bandicoots, but I do expect them to know what bills their government has passed, and to respond to a globally significant UN report like this with the seriousness it deserves.”

Also on Wednesday, Littleproud said the report showed Australia needed to invest in science and technology to give farmers the tools to adapt. He also highlighted the government’s commitment to spend $30m on an agricultural stewardship fund to help deal with biodiversity.

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Labor’s agriculture spokesman, Joel Fitzgibbon, said Littleproud deserved an award “as the first Morrison government minister flushed out and forced to respond to the UN report”.

“Everyone else is in witness protection,” he said.

He affirmed that Labor would deliver on its promise to introduce a federal environment protection agency.

Earlier in January, Morrison’s media office also erroneously identified a different bill as helping the environment. The prime minister had told ABC News Breakfast in January that “environmental legislation … [that] is important for native species” was a priority for his government.

When asked, Morrison’s staff said he was referring to “the agricultural and veterinary chemicals legislation amendment”. The prime minister’s office later said it had made an error, and Morrison was in fact referring to the industrial chemicals bill and its ban on animal testing.