The dire state of the environment report is a major challenge for Labor – and an opportunity

A true picture of how bad things have become emerges from the report, but with 2,000 pages of convincing evidence, change is possible

The state of the environment report paints a detailed and brutal picture of destruction and loss, and almost none of it is new.

Virtually everything in this five-yearly government report card - that another 202 animal and plant species have been identified as threatened with extinction or worse, that at least 19 ecosystems show signs of collapse, that hundreds of thousands of hectares of native forest have been bulldozed, that vast southern kelp forests have disappeared - was already known and publicly documented.