Environmentalists worry as Labor seeks consensus on new federal nature laws | Australian politics

A select group of environment and industry leaders will be brought together in a fresh attempt to build consensus on a long-awaited rewrite of federal nature laws, Guardian Australia can reveal.

The environment minister, Murray Watt, will soon detail the next phase of consultation as he presses ahead with an ambition to enact sweeping changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) in the next 18 months.

After the first-term Albanese government shelved proposed reforms amid lobbying from miners and the Western Australian government, Watt has restarted the process.

The past failures, combined with the approval of major fossil fuel projects and the rushed passage of laws to protect Tasmania’s salmon industry, have environmentalists worried about Labor’s second term.

But they also believe Labor’s resounding election victory gives it scope to act “quickly and boldly” to deliver serious reform.

“Australians are tired of the bush being bulldozed and burnt and elected a government that will act on nature and on climate,” the Wilderness Society’s national campaigns director, Amelia Young, said.

A new standard

Almost five years have passed since Graeme Samuel handed his review of the EPBC Act to the then environment minister Sussan Ley, exposing how the systemic failures of successive governments had left Australia’s unique species in unsustainable decline.

The centrepiece of Samuel’s 38 recommendations was a set of national environmental standards turning Australia’s laws from a process-focused system to one focused on outcomes.

Standards that deliver outcomes for the environment and reverse wildlife decline are one of the big demands of the environment movement in this term.

“You’d want to see national environmental standards stipulating places that development should be off limits, such as critical habitat or essential breeding populations,” said James Trezise, the director of the scientist-led Biodiversity Council.

Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter

A suite of national environmental standards was supposed to form the third stage of Labor’s Nature Positive Plan, which never saw the light of day as the government prioritised its ultimately doomed environment protection agency (EPA).

The decision of Watt’s predecessor, Tanya Plibersek, to split the reform into stages – starting with the federal EPA – was widely criticised as delaying the urgent task of fixing the EPBC Act.

Senior Labor sources confirmed Watt was leaning toward a different route, pursuing an EPA and amendments to the EPBC Act in one package to avoid dragging out the process.

Environmental organisations also want an end to the “climate blindness” of Australia’s environmental laws, an end to loopholes such as the effective exemption granted to logging under regional forest agreements, and a clearer focus on what’s needed for the recovery of threatened species.

Brendan Sydes, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s national biodiversity policy adviser, said any reform package needed to address the “highly discretionary” nature of the existing laws.

“Because otherwise we just continue to have a situation where people can continue to bring forward proposals that destroy threatened species habitat,” he said.

A watchdog with teeth

The biggest point of tension between industry and environmental groups might be something the Samuel review never even recommended.

Whereas Samuel advocated for a commissioner to monitor and audit the processes governments used to make environmental decisions, Labor proposed an entirely new agency that would both enforce nature laws and assess projects.

Anthony Albanese offered to strip the agency of decision-making powers in a failed attempt to win the Coalition’s support in the previous term.

The design of the EPA 2.0 is up in the air – and will be fiercely contested.

Environment groups including the Australian Conservation Foundation maintain the watchdog must have compliance and decision-making powers and be governed by an independent board.

“We need an independent regulator with responsibility for decision-making on assessments and approvals, rather than just a compliance and enforcement EPA,” Sydes said.

Industry groups that represent major mining companies are staunchly opposed to such a model, instead favouring Samuel’s approach.

The Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia – whose members include BHP and Rio Tinto – argues a new federal decision-maker would add another layer of “bureaucratic duplication” to an already lengthy and complex environmental approval process.

Bran Black, the chief executive of the Business Council of Australia, said the existing laws were not working for the environment or industry.

“Australia urgently needs faster approvals for projects, so we can deliver more renewable energy projects, build more homes and access more critical minerals,” Black said.

A balancing act

Even if he can broker agreement between environment and industry, Watt would still need to negotiate the laws through federal parliament.

Labor will have two clear, distinct pathways to get legislation passed in the new Senate: deal with the Coalition or deal with the Greens.

Both sides are under new leadership, with the ascension of Ley – who commissioned the Samuel review – offering Labor hope that the Coalition will adopt a more conciliatory approach.

The opposition will face pressure to work with Labor from industry groups including the Minerals Council of Australia, which is desperate to sideline the Greens.

The new shadow environment minister, Angie Bell, said the Coalition would “carefully consider” any proposed reforms.

“We all want to see our outdated environmental laws fixed, but the approach of the Labor government in the previous parliament didn’t get the balance right, and did not have industry or environmental groups on board,” Bell said.

“Our environmental laws must find a balance that protects the environment while not wrapping industries in unnecessary green tape.”

The Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, said the overhaul would only be “credible” if it included an end to native logging and a “climate trigger” – the term used to describe a mechanism to account for a project’s greenhouse gas emissions in environmental assessments.

The Greens dropped the climate tigger as a demand during negotiations with Plibersek, which almost ended in a deal before an intervention from Albanese killed it off.

Watt’s provisional approval of a 40-year extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas plant has renewed the case for some form of trigger mechanism.

Watt is also facing internal pressure to include climate “considerations” in the nature laws after the Labor MP Jerome Laxale publicly backed the principle.

Then there are grassroots Labor members, who have picked themselves up after the devastation of the collapse of the EPA proposal.

Felicity Wade, the national co-convener of the Labor Environment Action Network, was confident Watt could “walk the line”, listening to business without losing sight of why the legislation existed.

Wade said corporate Australia needed to “leave its bludgeons at the door” as the process started afresh.

Ending habitat loss was the “bottom line outcome”, she said, meaning that native forest logging and agricultural land clearing must be addressed in some form.