Scott Morrison claims to have passed laws ‘dealing with that very issue’ raised by the UN environment report

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Scott Morrison has identified a bill that restricts testing makeup on animals as an example of his government “taking action” on the extinction of a million plant and animal species raised by a landmark UN report.

On Tuesday, the prime minister told reporters he had “been taking action” on matters raised by 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.”

However, no environmental or animal conservation legislation was passed in the last week of parliament. Asked on Wednesday, Morrison’s staff were unable to say what legislation he was talking about.

On Thursday, at a press conference in Port Macquarie, Morrison said he was referring to “the animal protection legislation”.

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Morrison also said his budget measures, which passed in the second-last week of parliament, contained a “$100m environment restoration fund” which “actually deals with that issue [of extinction]”.

“I was referring [on Tuesday] to a different piece of legislation,” he said. “But in that same week there was the budget measure.”

When pressed, he did not provide the name of the legislation, and his staff did not respond to further questions.

The only legislation related to animals passed recently was the industrial chemicals bill 2017 – which contains a small section about testing cosmetics on animals.

James Trezise from the Australian Conservation Foundation said this was “wholly inadequate”.

“There was no legislation introduced to parliament to address Australia’s extinction crisis. If Mr Morrison was referring to the industrial chemicals bill, that legislation is wholly inadequate in addressing the issues raised by the UN report on threats to biodiversity and endangered species.”

On Wednesday, Tim Beshara from the Wilderness Society also said the chemicals bill was not relevant to mass extinction.

“It was predominately a deregulation bill with a small nod to animal welfare concerns for the rabbits in laboratories run by the cosmetics industry,” he said.

The UN’s report, compiled over three years by more than 450 researchers, found that the biomass of wild mammals had fallen by 82% and 40% of amphibian species were at risk of extinction due to human action.

It said the collapse of nature posed a threat to human society, with agriculture and the economy set to be devastated by the loss of pollinating animals.

The 157-page industrial chemicals bill contains two new regulations on the testing of cosmetics on animals. It did not pass in the last week of parliament, which was in April, but on 18 February.

There was one significant reference to threatened species in the final sitting week of parliament, but it was neither a budget item, nor a piece of legislation.

A Greens-led inquiry, launched following Guardian Australia’s Wide Brown Land investigation series, published its interim recommendations that week.

On Thursday, Trezise also criticised the size of the environmental restoration fund referred to by Morrison.

“The ACF believes annual investment of $1bn a year is needed to restore our landscapes and stop extinction. Since 2013 there has been a 38% cut to the environment budget.

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“ACF welcomes the money in the federal budget to help farmers and other landholders protect and restore biodiversity on private property, but not nearly enough is being invested in protecting Australia’s unique wildlife and special places.”

Section 168 of the industrial chemicals bill says that “if an industrial chemical is to be introduced for an end use solely in cosmetics … the application must not include animal test data obtained from tests conducted on or after 1 July 2020”.

Section 103 applies the same ban for the categorisation of the makeup chemicals.

On Thursday the Greens environment spokeswoman, Sarah Hanson-Young, said Morrison had been “caught out trying to mask the government’s inaction”.

“The legislation he claims addressed the serious warnings outlined in the UN’s biodiversity report this week does not exist,” she said.

Labor’s shadow environment minister, Tony Burke, said Morrison was “a prime minister who doesn’t care … referring to legislation that doesn’t exist”.