- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2174
Beech Forest, Victoria. Photo: Robyn Mather – pexels.com (CC0)
The Greens have agreed to back the Labor government’s legislation rewriting the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and ending a five-year struggle to supposedly fix a broken system. The reforms will establish an independent National Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to strengthen compliance and enforcement, impose higher penalties for major breaches of the law, and remove exemptions from the legislation for “high-risk land clearing and regional forest agreements.” Under this agreement Labor’s plan to fast track approvals for coal and gas projects would be dropped.
The Coalition voted against what Sussan Ley called a “dirty deal” she claimed would drive up energy prices. One Liberal Senator crossed the floor to vote for it. Independent Senator, David Pocock, said that while the deal fell short in certain areas, he supported the bill. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the deal “a good day for business in this country by providing more certainty, reducing delays and making sure that we get better outcomes and improved productivity.”
So is the resulting law a good one?
Under the new law, the federal Environment Minister retains considerable power, including to allow projects to proceed if in the “national interest” despite threats of environmental harm. This allows environmental decisions to be subject to political or economic pressure. Greenpeace Australia Pacific argues the reforms “fall well short of what is needed,” calling for the bill to close major gaps around excessive ministerial discretion, deforestation, and climate impact. Legal advocates stress that without the community having the ability to challenge ministerial decisions, the reforms will leave important decisions to regulators and ministers with limited public oversight.
Many scientists and environmental groups argue that the new EPA laws fall short of what is needed to meaningfully protect biodiversity and address climate change risk. The new ‘national environmental standards’ have not been finalised, meaning that the regulatory framework remains uncertain, thereby undermining safeguards until the standards are enforced.
The reform retains a role for “offsets” to allow environmental damage to be compensated by restoring or protecting habitat elsewhere, rather than requiring genuine avoidance of damage. These ‘restoration contributions’ allow default paths, rather than damage avoidance or minimisation. Offsets may not restore the original biome’s complexity or biodiversity, and this is problematic for species or ecosystems that are irreplaceable.
There’s a fundamental problem with offsets – they allow corporations to just price in the cost of damage. We wouldn’t allow someone to burgle a house if they stopped a burglary somewhere else. Offsets seem to allow something like this with environmental harm.
The reform explicitly omits a ‘climate trigger,’ even though climate change is a major driver of biodiversity loss. The new law does not require decision-makers to assess how projects’ greenhouse-gas emissions, or climate impacts, affect species, ecosystems or long-term environmental risk. Only limited and optional disclosure of direct emissions is required. Downstream emissions from burning exported fossil fuels are not addressed. For many environmentalists, this is a major oversight, considering the threats from climate change, such as bushfires, drought, habitat shifts, and extreme weather, have on Australia’s unique ecosystems.
Critics argue that the EPA’s new powers are mostly limited to compliance and enforcement, and that the agency lacks the independent authority to approve or refuse projects. The law does not guarantee that communities or independent environmental groups can challenge EPA or ministerial decisions. The ‘restoration contributions fund,’ which is meant to allow offset payments, is potentially ineffective if suitable replacement habitat does not exist. This raises fears that environmental damage could be ‘paid off’ rather than undone.
The result is that the law is more symbolic than practical, being unable to safeguard species, habitats and ecological integrity. Irreplaceable habitats may be lost, and climate-dangerous projects can proceed even if they pose risks to biodiversity and ecosystem resilience. This new law fails to ensure Australia’s long term environmental security.
