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AUSPOLLIEWATCH EVERY CLAIM LINKS TO ITS SOURCE · NOT A SCORECARD

Where Australian parties stand on environment & water

16 parties on record · party platforms in their own words

Each position below is sourced exclusively from the party's own published materials — never from media coverage. Click a party for its full platform, donors and members. Individual members' own stated positions are on their record pages.

Australian Labor Party party platform

Labor's Restoring our Rivers Bill commits to delivering the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full, including delivery of the 450 gigalitres of environmental water, and strengthens the powers of the Inspector-General of Water Compliance to hold states to account for over-extraction.

Liberal Party party platform

The party's plan calls for an immediate halt to Commonwealth water buybacks in the Murray-Darling Basin and reform of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder to return surplus water to the market, stating this would ease water prices and protect jobs in regional and farming communities.

Australian Greens party platform

The platform proposes a national Environmental Protection Agency and $1.5 billion to strengthen federal environment laws, alongside a $5 billion Protected Areas Fund and $20 billion for biodiversity and habitat restoration. On water, it calls for managing the Murray-Darling Basin within environmentally sustainable extraction limits, restoring environmental flows through water buybacks, and improving irrigation efficiency.

Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party party platform

The party's water policy opposes further water recovery through buybacks in the Murray-Darling Basin, which it states have been devastating for river and irrigation communities, while supporting water trading between Australian irrigators. It commits to building new water infrastructure including dams, establishing a federal authority to assess a "hybrid Bradfield Scheme" to drought-proof inland Australia, legislating full disclosure of water ownership and banning the sale of water to foreign investors.

Victorian Socialists party platform

The platform calls for a ban on logging of old-growth forests and an urgent program of reforestation, sustainable farming and biodiversity protection; it also criticises profit-driven industrial farming for water pollution, river depletion, land clearing and biodiversity loss, proposing a transition to regenerative farming practices.

The Nationals party platform

The party's plan demands a stop to Commonwealth water buybacks in the Murray-Darling Basin, commits to investing in practical water infrastructure projects to support agriculture and regional economies, and proposes a National Water Grid statutory authority responsible for national strategic planning and management of water policy and infrastructure.

Animal Justice Party party platform

The party's Climate & Ecological Rescue policy proposes a National Biodiversity Fund to restore ecosystems and end deforestation and habitat destruction over 30 years, a "Rights of Nature" legal framework, and a rapid transition to a 100% clean energy economy; it also supports removing subsidies from fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries and redirecting funding to clean energy and sustainable plant-based agriculture.

Family First Party party platform

Family First's core values state that government must play a constructive role in releasing and stewarding the nation's natural resources for the common good in a manner that is environmentally sustainable.

Libertarian Party party platform

The party frames environmental protection as a matter of clearly defining and enforcing individual property rights over resources such as land, water, air and wildlife, arguing governments have a poor track record and are unaccountable for environmental damage; it also favours market-based incentives, such as in mining, that hold companies accountable for environmental impact while cutting red tape.

Legalise Cannabis Party party platform

The party promotes industrial hemp for its environmental credentials, describing it as fast-growing, pest-resistant and requiring no herbicides, effective for carbon sequestration and soil restoration, and promotes hempcrete building material and hemp-based biodegradable bioplastics as alternatives to fossil-fuel plastics that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party party platform

The platform states that facts and science should guide environmental policy, not emotion and politics, and commits to training government agency staff on biodiversity and environment management. It states environmental water flows must be designed and managed with consideration of impacts on regional communities, fish stocks, and riverine and riparian biodiversity, and calls for a national water security policy including increased water storage, distribution infrastructure and on-farm water conservation infrastructure.

Katter's Australian Party party platform

The platform's Environmental Policies address enforcing the ethanol mandate, reversing regulations on agricultural water runoff affecting the Great Barrier Reef (which it describes as "farm-killing reef regulations"), crocodile management, wastewater treatment, and management of flying-fox colonies. Its Water Policies page lists major dam and irrigation projects, including Hells Gate Dam and Coalstoun Lakes Dam, intended to support irrigated agriculture and secure long-term water supply in North Queensland.

Centre Alliance party platform

Supports federal legislation to protect key environmental assets, an emissions trading scheme based on the Frontier Economics model, protection of groundwater including the Great Artesian Basin from mining and coal seam gas impacts, and review of Californian vehicle emissions standards for Australia.

Australian Christians party platform

The party's environment policy states it will wisely steward the environment, ensure both economic viability and natural sustainability in resource development, and establish an independent, non-governmental scientific body to balance scientific, economic and community impacts when developing environmental policy.

Democratic Labour Party party platform

The party advocates building new dams for flood mitigation and to redistribute saved water to drought-prone areas, with greater water allocations to farmers to strengthen the agricultural industry and make Australia the food bowl of the Asia-Pacific.

United Australia Party party platform

The party commits to abolishing the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, stating this would return the river system to a healthy, sustainable and functional condition and protect it from corporate misuse, and would take steps to stop farmers paying for their water usage.

Recorded divisions on environment & water · 42

Every recorded vote on a bill filed under this issue, in each parliament the site holds a division record for — second and third readings, plus any amendment listed with a reason. How each member voted is on their record.

Votes are shown as the official record lists them — Hansard federally and in New South Wales; Votes and Proceedings, Minutes of the Proceedings and Hansard in Victoria; the Record of Proceedings in Queensland; the Votes and Proceedings and Minutes of Proceedings in Western Australia; the Votes and Proceedings (House of Assembly) and Hansard (Legislative Council) in South Australia; the Votes and Proceedings of both chambers in Tasmania. "Did not vote" means the member held the seat that day and is on neither list — the record says who was in the chamber, not why, so it is never an abstention. Western Australia’s record prints no pairs, so a member paired there shows as did not vote. Nothing is shown for a presiding officer who by law gives only a casting vote (the Speaker and the President in South Australia, the President in Tasmania), nor for the member presiding at a Tasmanian division, which Tasmania’s journals record. Which bills sit under which issue is an editorial choice, made bill by bill with a reason read from the second-reading speech. A bill decided by an earlier parliament (Queensland’s 2018 abortion law reform, for one) is shown with that parliament named, read from the official record of the day. For Queensland and the federal parliament “did not vote” there means the member held a seat that day, as their service is recorded; for the other earlier parliaments the record of who held a seat could not be read, so only the printed Aye, No and paired votes are shown.