The Australian Government is proposing changes that will set weak standards for the country’s key environmental laws.
This is in stark contrast to the independent review by Professor Graeme Samuel that recommended that environmental decisions should not have unacceptable or unsustainable impacts upon environmental issues of national importance.
If a development is likely to impact threatened species, an ecologically significant site, or World Heritage area, it triggers the Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES), which falls within the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.
The MNES Standard outlines what actions developers need to take to assess, avoid, and mitigate a project’s impact on a species or site.
Proposed changes to the MNES Standard significantly water down the responsibility of developers to avoid damage in the first place, making it easier for them to ‘consider’ their impacts, but not address them.
Australian Land Conservation Alliance's Policy Lead, Michael Cornish, said that under the proposed Standard, even highly damaging projects will be able to proceed as long as they tick off on general principles, rather than being required to achieve firm environmental outcomes.
"This is like the Government asking drivers to ‘consider’ wearing a seatbelt rather than making it mandatory. Relying on principles is like relying on good intentions – they don’t reliably produce good outcomes," said Michael.
The MNES Standard is the most critical element of the EBBC reform because it determines how impacts to Australia’s most significant environmental assets are assessed and how developments that will damage nature are approved.
The Government released a draft of the MNES Standard in January that included an outcomes based approach to managing impacts on Australia’s nature. A revised draft has now replaced this with a principle based approach, which would reduce protections.
"The proposed Standard sets a very low bar for how the Australian Government intends to protect our most important environmental assets for future generations of Australians. We need to ensure developments are in the right places, and that they truly minimise the impacts on Australia’s most irreplaceable and special nature. The Standard is not fit for this purpose in its current form,” said Michael.
The proposed Standard comes on the heels of funding cuts to nature in the recent Federal Budget.
