Green groups have accused the Albanese government of taking a perfectly decent proposal to protect threatened species and ecosystems and, well, watering it down until it’s basically just a sad puddle of good intentions.
National environmental standards were supposed to be the main selling point of reforms to Australia’s nature laws, passed by parliament in November. The government has been consulting on a draft standard for projects of national environmental significance - think endangered wildlife, world heritage areas, and the Great Barrier Reef - but environmentalists say the latest version has removed the pesky requirement for developments to actually meet specific environmental objectives.
According to changes to the draft standard released Thursday, developers will now be considered to have met the objectives if they simply follow certain processes or “principles” in their environmental assessments, rather than directly demonstrating that the required environmental outcomes can be achieved. The Wilderness Society called this a step backwards, with biodiversity policy and campaign manager Melanie Audrey noting the draft is “riddled with weak language, loopholes and fails to set clear red lines to protect nature.”
WWF-Australia pointed out that the latest version is weaker than the first draft released last year and further removed from the clear, measurable standards proposed by Graeme Samuel. The former competition watchdog chair’s 2020 review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act found Australia’s laws had failed nature partly because they were too process-focused, recommending national standards that mandated measurable outcomes. So naturally, the government decided to double down on process.
This all comes in the same week that Anthony Albanese used a mining conference in Western Australia to announce $45m for state and territory governments to advance plans allowing them to make decisions on federal environmental assessments. In theory, this streamlines approvals by letting states decide if projects meet national nature law requirements, using the new national standards - though what those standards actually require remains a mystery.
Federal environment minister Murray Watt said Thursday the government would release more proposed standards in coming weeks and hoped to have the first set finalised by mid-year, claiming the draft “set clear and enforceable expectations around impacts to our most precious species, habitats and heritage places.” But the Australian Conservation Foundation’s national biodiversity policy officer Brendan Sydes said the standard doesn’t “raise the bar for nature,” noting that “there’s no requirement for these processes to actually deliver the outcomes and objectives expressed in the standard.”
Lis Ashby, policy and innovation lead at the Biodiversity Council, pointed out that Australia’s threatened species populations have declined by an average of 50% over the past two decades, and this standard “isn’t going to address that at all.” She added, “It’s giving people a gold star for effort even if the outcomes are terrible.”
Watt told Sky News on Friday the standards would provide “more clarity about what kind of requirements there will be in order to get an environmental approval, rather than sort of choose-your-own-adventure approach that we have at the moment.” Because nothing says clarity like removing measurable goals and replacing them with “just try your best.”