The latest attempt to rewrite federal environmental protection laws won’t be “credible” unless it forces decision-makers to consider climate change when assessing projects, advocates have warned, as consultation on the changes begins.
Select environment groups, miners, business and farming chiefs joined the new environment minister, Murray Watt, for a roundtable in Canberra on Thursday.
The Climate Council chief executive, Amanda McKenzie, said the laws would remain “broken” without some mechanism to account for climate impacts, which she described as the “biggest concern for Australia’s environment”.
“It is not good enough for the Australian government to push climate change out of the frame,” McKenzie said.
“This is the biggest impact on the Australian environment, and the law simply won’t be credible if it does not consider the biggest impact on the Australian environment.”
While not ruling it out, Watt again played down the idea, as he insisted emissions from heavy polluting projects were already managed in other ways.
“My argument is that there are a range of mechanisms already in place, both domestically and internationally, to manage the climate impacts of developments,” he said.
“I recognise there are groups who still want us to go further, there are groups who don’t want us to go further, and we’ll be listening to that feedback on the way through.”
The issue of inserting climate into federal nature laws shapes as a major challenge for Watt as attempts to win broad support for a long-awaited overhaul of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.
Five years after Graeme Samuel’s review of the EPBC Act, stakeholders from across the board are generally optimistic that changes to the John Howard-era laws can finally be enacted.
Labor’s proposal to create a federal environment protection agency collapsed in the final months of the last parliament after Anthony Albanese pushed it off the agenda amid concerns about a pre-election backlash in Western Australia.
Speaking after Thursday’s roundtable meeting, Watt said Labor’s thumping federal election win created a “very clear mandate” to establish the EPA 2.0 and fix the nature laws.
The new minister wants to push changes through federal parliament within 18 months, likely as one package of laws rather than in multiple stages as his predecessor Tanya Plibersek attempted to do.
Watt said there was support among the invited stakeholders on five broad principles: national environmental standards, streamlined approvals, regional planning, a more “robust” offsets regime and better data on environmental impacts.
However, Watt acknowledged disagreements between industry and environmentalist in other areas, including the powers of the EPA and the issue of adding climate to nature laws.
The Greens and climate activists have long advocated for a “climate trigger” – a mechanism to account for a project’s pollution in environmental assessments – as a vehicle to stop new fossil fuel projects.
In 2005, Albanese himself – then a shadow minister fighting the Howard government – said “the glaring gap in matters of national environmental significance is climate change”.
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The now prime minister has long since changed his tune, firmly rejecting the idea after the Greens pushed it during negotiations with Plibersek in the previous term.
The provisional approval of a 40-year extension to Woodside’s North West Shelf gas plant has ignited fresh calls for “climate considerations” to be added to the laws, including from the Labor MP, Jerome Laxale.
Watt didn’t shut the door on the idea after Wednesday’s meeting, saying it was “too early to be committing to particular things in the legislation”.
However, he reiterated the government’s view that emissions from major projects were already regulated under the safeguard mechanism.
Watt also argued that an export project’s scope three emissions – pollution from Australian fossil fuels after they are sold overseas – was managed through other countries’ commitments under the Paris climate agreement.
Speaking after the roundtable, McKenzie and the Australian Conservation Foundation chief executive, Kelly O’Shannessy, stressed they were not wedded to a specific “climate trigger” model – just the firm view that climate impact must be considered in the environmental assessment process.
The Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, called for a moratorium on the clearing of critical habitat and approval of fossil fuel projects until the new nature laws were in place.
Miners staunchly oppose the introduction of a “climate trigger”, fearing such a provision could torpedo the approval of projects.
Peak mining groups the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA (CME) and Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) were among the invitees to Wednesday’s roundtable in Canberra.
The chief executive of AMEC, Warren Pearce, said a “pretty frank” Watt was clearly intent on legislating changes in the first half of the new parliamentary term.
“There are still differing views, but there is a clear desire to get this done from all stakeholders,” he said.
“AMEC will continue to advocate for greater efficiency, a removal of duplication between State and Federal processes, and a workable process that can be implemented to provide improved environmental protections.”
