Way back when it was elected in 2022, Australia's Labor Government promised much needed reforms to Australia's environment laws. These laws were delayed time and again, with the Nature Positive Bills only introduced into Parliament in late 2024. If reports are correct, the Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek reached a deal with the Greens to pass them with some amendments, only for the Prime Minister to pull the plug after some strategic lobbying from the WA Premier. Perhaps he felt it was too close to the election and he didn't want to give the Opposition a stick to beat him with.
Anyway, finally we have a new bit of legislation in late 2025 and the new Minister, Senator Murray Watt, is suddenly in an awful hurry to have it pass. Unfortunately it's not very good, but fortunately the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee is holding an inquiry into it and taking submissions. Here is mine. If you want to, you can make one of your own here by 5 December. The legislation is complex and voluminous (way above my pay-grade) and I made heavy use of the scorecard put together by Environmental Justice Australia.
Introduction
Thankyou for the opportunity to make a submission on the Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025 and its related legislation. I am an ordinary Australian citizen, lifelong Queensland resident and have been active on climate and environmental issues over the past decade. My passion about this issue is driven more than anything else by my love for my two grandchildren, and my concern at the type of world we are leaving for them as a result of our poor environmental decision-making.
The law reforms currently before the Parliament represent a significant opportunity to respond to the Samuel Review’s findings that the EPBC Act is not fit for purpose. The Act as currently presented represents a good starting point for discussion, but it would be a huge disappointment if it was passed in its current form. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make bold, significant improvements in the way we respond to environmental questions, but the current package seems to me to be timid and incremental. This submission outlines some key ways I think we can make it better. This is not an exhaustive list, merely the changes I see as of the highest priority.
Environment as foundational
In Australian political debate, environmental protection is often presented as a trade-off – we are asked to accept that environmental protection needs to be ‘balanced’ with other objectives such as employment, economic development, food security or housing affordability. I believe this framing of the issue is fundamentally flawed. The natural environment is the foundation of all these things. If we do irreparable damage to the planetary ecosystem, or to local environmental systems, we will be unable to achieve any of these other goals.
There is now abundant scientific evidence that we have crossed or are now crossing a number of critical environmental thresholds – including climate change, biodiversity, pollution and depletion of key resources such as fresh water, fertile soils and some minerals. Continuing this damage will harm us in multiple ways – making it harder to produce food with less reliable weather and depleted soils and water resources, damaging our economic prosperity through the impact of worse climate disasters and reduced food production, and harms to human health from more intense heatwaves and other severe weather events.
In this context, the only wise course is to implement strong laws which prioritise environmental protection as foundational to all our other goals. To do otherwise would be to sacrifice the wellbeing of our children and grandchildren in pursuit of illusory short-term profits.
Climate trigger
If you propose a set of environmental laws which do not address climate change, the world’s most pressing environmental issue, then you’re not really serious. Of course these laws are not the only tool in the kitbag for our climate change response, but they are crucial nonetheless – done right, they can ensure we will not be undermining our efforts to reduce emissions throughout our economy by permitting new projects and activities which increase them.
The proposed legislation falls short in this regard. It is a small improvement on the existing law in that proponents will be required to disclose their Scope 1 and 2 emissions, but these are not matters the Minister is required to consider in making a decision. The Act does not consider Scope 3 emissions, even though these are actually Australia’s largest contribution to global emissions. Nor is mitigating climate change a purpose of the law as currently drafted. In order to strengthen this aspect of the law, it should be amended to:
- Include the mitigation of climate change as an objective of the Act.
- Require project proponents to disclose their projected Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.
- Require the decision-maker (Minister or otherwise) to have regard to these emissions when making decisions, taking account of their ‘real world’ climate impacts and their impacts on Australia’s commitments under the Paris Agreement.
Habitat protection
Australia continues to clear forests, including virgin native forests, at an alarming rate. This results in climate emissions and in destruction of wildlife habitat, increasing the risk of extinctions and reducing biodiversity. An effective environmental law needs to be able to rein in this destruction.
In theory, the proposed Act gives government the power to do this. However, it retains two massive exemptions – the exemption of any forest land covered under a Regional Forest Agreement, and an exemption for ‘continuation of use’ which predates the year 2000. These allow large parts of the nation’s forests to be essentially exempt from the standards and would pave the way for ongoing deforestation.
The draft law should be improved in the following way:
- The exemptions should be removed, so that all forest destruction is required to be assessed under the Act.
- Ensure that the parts of the National Standards relating to forestry and habitat protection clearly outline expected outcomes, including an emphasis on preservation as opposed to offsetting.
Independence
The proposed legislation improves on the current Act in setting up the National Environmental Protection Agency as well as Environmental Information Australia. The NEPA will have significant powers to assess projects as well as to issue compliance orders and penalties for breaches of the Act. The creation of the EIA is also a significant step towards ensuring the administration of environmental laws and regulations is informed by rigorous, publicly available scientific information, although this will depend on how well it does its work.
The key weakness of the current proposals is that these bodies are overseen by the Minister rather than being independent bodies. The Minister retains final decision-making power under the proposed legislation. It is my view that this is a dangerous practice as it leaves environmental decisions open to political influence and lobbying, which can easily override an independent scientific assessment of the proposal.
Here in South-East Queensland, we saw a very stark example of this in the proposed residential development at Toondah Harbour in Moreton Bay. Toondah Harbour is a listed RAMSAR wetland and nesting site for several species of endangered migratory birds, and the project would have destroyed much of this wetland. The independent Departmental assessment recommended it be refused, but successive ministers ignored this and approved the project. It was only right near the end of the long series of legal appeals that Tanya Plibersek as new Environment Minister finally used her discretion to refuse the project. We should not have to rely on the outcome of an election to prevent such obviously harmful projects from going ahead.
In order to strengthen this aspect of the law, the NEPA’s independence should be greatly enhanced. The operation of this body should mirror that of the Reserve Bank of Australia which sets interest rates wholly independently of government. Environmental decisions are at least as significant for our nation as interest rate decisions. The results of environmental decisions are all too often irreversible, and our descendants have to live with the consequences for good or ill.
Like the RBA, the EPA should be governed by a Board whose members serve for a fixed term, and who then appoint the Director of the authority. This Board should act under a strict code regarding conflicts of interest, with appointees who are not aligned with major industries. Such a body will be able to act without fear or favour and be solely focused on making the best environmental decisions it can.
The other aspect of this independence is the capacity of the EPA to enforce the law. Under the EPBC Act, enforcement is weak and the penalties we have seen levied for serious breaches of approval conditions have been laughably small in the context of projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The proposed legislation improves this by giving the EPA enforcement powers and increasing penalties for non-compliance. This is a step in the right direction – it needs to be backed by significant resources for the EPA to investigate and prosecute breaches, by penalties which present a serious deterrent to multi-national corporations and by the ability to shut down non-compliant operations.
Environmental standards
The final thing I’d like to comment on is the development of National Environmental Standards. It is pleasing to see that the legislation refers to these standards, which can be made by regulation, and that the legislative package includes a draft of them.
In my view, the standards could be a lot stronger. Some key improvements that could be made.
- As they currently stand, there are a lot of ‘weasel words’ – the Minister must ‘have regard to’ the standards or be ‘satisfied’ their decisions are ‘not inconsistent with’ them. These standards need to be strengthened to ensure that they are mandatory, not optional or advisory, and that all decisions made under the Act must comply with them.
- Currently, the definition of ‘unacceptable impacts’ is set way too high – the priority needs to be on protecting the environment, not on allowing projects unless the impact is catastrophic.
- The ‘mitigation hierarchy’ by which proponents outline how they will address potential damage needs to be strengthened to ensure that they cannot simply pay their way out of the obligation or offset their impacts elsewhere – if the impacts are unacceptable, then the activity cannot be allowed to go ahead.
- The legislation needs to ensure that the standards, and any revisions to them, must be based on independent scientific advice about environmental matters.
These standards are a cornerstone of the protection regime – if the standards are poor, the rest of the legislation will perform poorly.
Conclusion
I congratulate the Minister on the work done so far on this legislation, and on bringing it before the Parliament. While the current draft is a good first step, I believe that further revision is required to ensure the legislation is fit for purpose. In summary, revisions need to include:
- A ‘climate trigger’ to ensure assessments under the Act take account of climate impacts.
- Closing the loopholes for deforestation and habitat destruction.
- Enhancing the independence of the EPA.
- Strengthening the proposed National Environmental Standards.
Thankyou for considering this submission.
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