Green groups have accused the Albanese government of watering down a proposal to protect threatened species and ecosystems. National environmental standards were a key plank of reforms to Australia's nature laws, passed by parliament in November. The government has been consulting on a draft standard for matters of national environmental significance, including endangered wildlife, world heritage areas, and the Great Barrier Reef.
Criticism of the Draft Standard
Environmentalists have criticized the latest draft, which they say removes the requirement for developments to meet specific environmental objectives. Changes to the draft standard, released Thursday, would mean developers would be considered to have met the objectives if they follow certain processes or principles in their environmental assessments, rather than directly demonstrating the required environmental outcomes can be met.
The Wilderness Society said the changes undermined the intent of national standards, which was to reverse the decline of plants, animals, and ecosystems. “The draft standard is a step backwards and will not protect wildlife from extinction or stop the destruction of forests,” said biodiversity policy and campaign manager Melanie Audrey. She added that the draft standard was “riddled with weak language, loopholes and fails to set clear red lines to protect nature.”
WWF and Other Groups React
WWF-Australia said the latest version of the standard was 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 in part because they were too process-focused. The review recommended national standards that mandated measurable outcomes for the environment to turn the decline around.
Release of the draft standard comes in the same week that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used a mining conference in Western Australia to announce $45 million for state and territory governments to advance plans to allow them to make decisions on federal environmental assessments. That change would in theory streamline environmental approvals by allowing states to decide whether projects meet the requirements of national nature laws, and they would assess those projects against the new national standards.
Government Response
The federal environment minister, Murray Watt, said on Thursday the government would release more proposed standards in coming weeks and hoped to have the first set finalized by mid-year. He said the draft for matters of national environmental significance “set clear and enforceable expectations around impacts to our most precious species, habitats and heritage places.”
But the Australian Conservation Foundation said their early concerns that the standard did not “raise the bar for nature” were heightened with the latest iteration. “As now proposed, the legal test for consistency with the standard will be met if a developer merely confirms they complied with some principles and followed certain processes,” said national biodiversity policy officer Brendan Sydes. “There's no requirement for these processes to actually deliver the outcomes and objectives expressed in the standard.”
Impact on Threatened Species
Policy and innovation lead at the Biodiversity Council, Lis Ashby, said Australia's populations of threatened species had declined, on average, by 50% over the past two decades. “This isn't going to address that at all,” she said. “Watt said his government's commitment to addressing extinctions requires law reform that shifts the dial in favor of the environment – this is not doing that. It's giving people a gold star for effort even if the outcomes are terrible.”
Watt told Sky News on Friday the standards would lead to “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.”
