Have your say on Australia’s new environment laws!
Feb 2024
It’s your turn to have your say on the future of our amazing wildlife and landscapes - every voice counts, and we encourage you to add yours today! Right now, you have an incredible opportunity to reshape Australia’s nature laws, making them stronger and more robust than ever.
The Australian Government is currently re-drafting our national nature laws, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.
The EPBC Act is the national law that provides a framework for protecting our environment, and is designed to preserve our incredible species, landscapes and biodiversity from damage. However, this law has failed to protect our environment - with Australia holding some bleak titles globally.
Australia is a leader in species extinction, with more than 1,800 species at risk of disappearing forever. This includes iconic and much-loved species like the koala, the greater glider, and the swift parrot. The decline of these species is entirely preventable and comes down to bad management of critical habitat, like the recent logging of greater glider habitat in Tallaganda State Forest.
This is why it’s critical that you join the thousands of Australians calling for stronger nature laws to replace the EPBC Act that prioritises protecting habitat, restoring degraded landscapes, and investing in species recovery.
This reform has been three years in the making since Professor Graeme Samuels handed down his review of the EPBC Act in 2021. In the report, he found that the natural environment is in an overall decline, and the current environmental trajectory is unsustainable. The report found that the EPBC Act is ineffective and failed to protect matters of national environmental significance. You can read more about the Samuels Review and what we learned here.
To date, the government has shared its progress with constituents and stakeholders through public webinars and closed-door consultations with groups like WWF.
Now, the Australian Government is asking you what you think - they want to know what matters most to you regarding the environment. As well as, which parts of their proposed reform do you like or dislike?
You can access the survey here - as well as watch the webinars that the government has provided.
This is an incredible opportunity for us all to engage with the reform process, ensuring that our new nature laws are robust, outcomes focused and put nature restoration and habitat and species protection as the core objective of all legislation.
Below, we’ve put together some guidance for what we’ll be asking the government for regarding a brand new EPBC Act. Feel free to take some of our points below and use them to inform your submission. We haven’t addressed all the points - just those we think are the most urgent.
Remember - you don’t need to be an expert, but showing the government you care about our environment is the most important thing.
Topic Guide
Suggested text:
New environmental standards are essential and will form the foundation of any new legislation. These standards must be robust, evidence-based, and indisputable in their definition. These standards must point to nature-based outcomes rather than procedures or checklists to follow.
Unacceptable impacts on species, ecosystems, ecological communities or any other protected matters must be starkly and clearly defined so that there can be no confusion over whether or not something constitutes a ‘significant impact’.
These impacts must be enforceable and robust from appeal, and they must apply to all industries, proponents and proposals in Australia, with no exemptions for any industries.
This includes native forests and the logging industry and must involve removing Regional Forest Agreements.
Suggested text:
Climate change is an increasingly urgent and critical concern for our environment and ecosystems, with the decline of many species exacerbated by climate impacts.
In any new environmental legislation, climate change must be a key consideration that is incorporated into all aspects of the reform. This includes implementing triggers to reject projects based on exacerbated emissions (like coal mines or gas projects), degradation or destruction of ecosystems that absorb carbon (like logging of valuable native forests or clearing of wetlands), and consideration for cumulative or future projected impacts from climate change - like considering the impacts of bushfire, flooding or drought on top of any direct impacts from a project.
It also must consider emissions accounted for overseas - including the export of fossil fuels across the globe.
Climate and the environment are interwoven and interconnected and should be treated as such.
Suggested text:
New legislation must enforce proper procedure around community engagement, including providing essential information and an overview of early impacts, ample opportunity for participation, and avenues for genuine appeal.
This means that any company proposing a new project needs to engage with impacted communities early on, with genuine consultation and consideration of their wishes. This means communities that are directly and indirectly impacted, both local communities and subject matter experts.
Suggested text:
Recovery strategies must be delivered promptly, with clear and transparent pathways and milestones for species recovery. This must include critical habitat identification that is federally applicable, with independent federal oversight over habitat management.
This means that when a recovery plan is put forward, communities can see and understand how the recovery process will happen, as well as benchmarks for success.
Suggested text:
A foundational element of the new nature laws must be an independent and robust national Environmental Protection Agency that will regulate and enforce.
It needs to be able to undertake assessments quickly, make genuinely independent decisions, and undertake enforcement measures when necessary. Critically, it must be genuinely independent with no avenues for political or corporate interference.
This means that the new environmental laws need to limit ministerial ‘call-in’ powers - meaning that the environment minister of the day cannot step in and overrule at any stage.
Consider it like an ‘environmental watchdog’ that can ensure all this new legislation is achieving what it needs to - the protection of species and habitat.
Right now, we are at a critical junction in shaping Australia’s environmental future. Together, we can ensure that we are protecting our remarkable and unique species, like the koala and the greater glider, as well as our forests, rivers and reefs.
Please take five minutes to contribute towards this process of reform, and we’ll keep you updated with how the process is going, as well as more ways to get involved and take action.
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