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
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.
