Budget Review 2022–23 Index
Dr Emily Gibson
The Treasurer stated in his Budget Speech
that the ‘Government was safeguarding Australia’s unique environment for future
generations’. As outlined below, the budget includes
measures relating to biodiversity and threatened species, tree planting, and advancing
reform of Australia’s environmental law (Budget measures:
budget paper no. 2: 2022–23, pp. 53–55). Further measures relating to
Antarctica, the Great Barrier Reef, and waste and recycling are discussed in
separate Budget review briefs.
Environment and threatened species
Budget paper no.
2 contains 3 measures to support community-driven action to protect and
restore the environment. This includes $100.0 million over 3 years to continue
the Environment
Restoration Fund (Budget paper no.
2, p. 53). The Environment Restoration Fund was established with an
initial investment of $100 million over 4 years in the 2019–20 Budget (Budget
measures: budget paper no. 2: 2019–20, p. 76). The Fund operates
via grants, through Regional Land Partnership service providers, and
Commonwealth to state funding arrangements in 3 priority areas: protecting
threatened and migratory species and their habitats; protecting Australia’s
coasts and waterways; and the clean-up, recovery and recycling of waste.
Funding for the following two measures has already been
provided for by the Government.
On 29 January 2022, the Government announced
$50 million of funding over 4 years to ‘boost the long-term protection and
recovery efforts for Australia’s koalas’ (a figure repeated in the Regional
ministerial budget statement 2022–23, pp. 21–22). Budget paper no.
2 (p. 53) states that the funding is provided as $53.0 million over 5
years; there is a funding allocation of $43.0 million, with a departmental
payment of $7.5 million (Portfolio
additional estimates statements 2021–22: Agriculture, Water and the Environment
Portfolio (PAES AWEP); p. 24). The
funding is allocated to four activities:
- extending the National Koala Monitoring Program
- support for koala care training
- funding research and implementation activities relating to koala
health challenges
- on-ground actions relating to koala habitat, mitigating threats,
and improving koala health and care facilities.
To implement the latter activity, the Minister for the
Environment Sussan
Ley announced the Koala
Conservation and Protection Community Grants program on 4 April 2022. These
grants will be provided through two $5 million grant rounds, with individual
grants of between $50,000 and $200,000 available to improve koala habitat,
health and knowledge of populations. Applications will open on 4 May 2022. While
welcoming the measure, the Australian
Conservation Foundation observes that ‘more needs to be done to protect
koala habitat’.
On 6 March 2022, the Minister for the Environment announced
the Planting
Trees for The Queen’s Jubilee program. Budget paper no.
2 (p. 54) states that $20.3 million will be provided over three years; there
is a funding allocation of $15.1 million for grants and $5.2 million
in departmental funding (PAES AWEP, p. 25). A maximum of $100,000 is
available in each federal electorate for up to 10 projects ranging from $2,500
to $20,000; however, applications can only be made by eligible entities on the
invitation of the local Member of Parliament. Applications will close on 2 May
2022.
Advancing environmental law reform
The 2022-23 Budget provides $139.6 million ‘to progress
reforms and maintain timely assessments and approvals under the Environment
Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) and
modernise Indigenous cultural heritage protections under the Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 (ATSIHP Act)’ (Budget paper no.
2, pp. 54–55). This section considers the measures relating to reform
of the EPBC Act.
The measures are part of and progress the first 2 stages of
the Government’s proposed 4-stage
timeline for reforms to the EPBC Act in response to the second independent statutory
review of the EPBC Act (the ‘Samuel Review’). The reforms are outlined
in the Government’s A pathway to
reforming national environment law. The Final Report
of the Samuel Review made 38 recommendations—centred on legally-enforceable
National Environmental Standards—which it described as ‘substantial and
necessary reforms to reverse the current state of environmental decline’ (p. ix).
Regional plans
The Budget measure provides $62.3 million over 4 years to
deliver up to 10 regional plans in priority development regions (Budget paper no.
2, p. 54). According to a
joint ministerial media release on 15 March announcing the funding,
the plans will ‘protect areas of environmental significance, streamline
assessments and manage cumulative impacts’. This follows on from the $2.7
million (over 3 years) provided in the 2021–22 Budget to pilot one regional
plan in a priority development region (Budget measures:
budget paper no. 2: 2021–22, p. 57). Preparatory documents released
through a freedom of information disclosure (no. 25561,
p. 28 of the package, labelled as p. 59) indicate that as of 30 November 2021, the
Commonwealth needed to partner with a willing state due to jurisdictional
issues and because the allocated funding was insufficient to compile the
required data and develop the plan.
At Senate
Estimates on 31 March 2022, the Department of Agriculture, Water and the
Environment (DAWE) indicated that initial work had been undertaken to determine
criteria for regional plans and that the proposed initial pilot would be rolled
into this announcement, such that there would now be 2 to 3 ‘pilot plans’. The
Department indicated that it had been exploring a range of potential locations,
‘including areas such as South-East Queensland, Cape York, the Beetaloo basin,
the Pilbara and ... a range of areas in Tasmania’ (p. 65).
In the funding
announcement, Minister for Resources and Water Keith Pitt said:
The 10 new regional plans will streamline development
approvals, including those for crucial resources projects, by removing the need
for a project-by-project approval under national environment law.
Stakeholders have raised concerns that a move to regional
plans—independent of the comprehensive reforms recommended by the Samuel
Review—will weaken environmental protections. For example, the Australian
Conservation Foundation said:
While regional planning has merits, we are concerned the
government’s approach appears to focus on making things easier for resource
extraction industries, rather than protecting nature.
Streamlining assessment processes
The budget measure provides $37.9 million in the 2022–23
fiscal year to support the streamlining of assessment processes, including:
The Coalition
Government has been pursuing ‘single touch’ approvals under its
‘one-stop-shop’ policy since 2013 and this measure follows on from $17.1
million provided in the 2021–22 Budget to ‘maintain timely Commonwealth
environmental assessments and approvals during the transition to single touch
approvals’ (Budget
measures: budget paper no. 2: 2021–22, p. 57). While industry groups
are supportive of this policy, environment and science stakeholders have argued
that a move to single touch approvals should only occur in concert with the
full suite of reforms recommended by the Samuel Review (see the Parliamentary
Library’s Bills
Digest for the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation
Amendment (Standards and Assurance) Bill 2021 for more information).
The Government has provided additional funding to address
the backlog of environmental approval decisions, beginning with the December
2019 Mid-year
economic and fiscal outlook 2019–20 (p. 216). The timeliness of
key decisions has improved from 19%
in the December 2019 quarter to 96% in the December 2021 quarter. As noted
in previous Budget
reviews, some commentators have suggested that the additional funding
is ‘merely a reversal of previous funding cuts’ which had reduced staffing and
resources.
Informed decision-making
The budget measure provides $28.4 million to support ‘informed
decision-making’ processes (Budget paper no.
2, pp. 54-55; with additional details provided in the Ministerial
announcement), including:
- $12 million over 3 years to modernise the environmental offsets
policy
- $9.5 million over 4 years to improve compliance
- $4.9 million in the 2022–23 fiscal year to strengthen our
knowledge base of protected plants and animals
-
$2 million in the 2022–23 fiscal year to scope a new advisory
committee to provide expert industry and technology advice to the government.
These measures appear to partially respond to several of the
recommendations of the Samuel Review. The Review’s Final Report
recommended immediate changes to the Department of Agriculture, Water and the
Environment’s Environmental
Offsets Policy (recommendation 27) and, together with a recent Australian
National Audit Office Performance
Audit, identified significant deficiencies with current compliance and
enforcement efforts (p. 147). The Samuel Review also identified deficiencies in
the management of environmental data (recommendations 31 and 32) and
recommended an immediate reform of statutory committees under the EPBC Act
(recommendations 12 and 33). The Review recommended the formation of 4 specialist
committees (Indigenous Engagement and Participation, Biodiversity and
Conservation Science, Australian Heritage Council, and Water Resources) to be
overseen by an overarching Ecologically Sustainable Development Committee
(ESDC). The ESDC would be responsible for oversight and management of monitoring,
evaluating and reporting on the outcomes of the EPBC Act.
However, some commentators
have observed that the Budget does not provide anything on the scale needed to
arrest the ‘trajectory of environmental decline’ documented in the Samuel
Review.
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