Coalition Senators' Dissenting Report

Opening remarks

1.1On behalf of the Coalition, we wish to make a series of comments in relation to this inquiry.

1.2Firstly, we would like to sincerely thank each of the individuals and organisations who spoke to us directly, who lodged written submissions, and/or who attended the public hearing in Canberra on 26 July. The time, effort and expertise that they provided to assist us privately, and/or the Committee publicly, has been genuinely appreciated by the Liberal Party and the National Party.

1.3However, we should add that we have been disappointed to learn that a number of organisations that made submissions were, for reasons that still remain unclear to us, not invited to appear at that 26 July hearing. This has been made all the more confusing by the notion that various individuals who had not even made submissions (and had no particular or pressing desire to attend) were, by contrast, proactively contacted and encouraged to appear.

1.4In short, it is perplexing to us that a series of highly-engaged and highly-informed organisations were prevented from providing in-person evidence at all to the Committee. It is almost as vexing that other such organisations were invited to appear only as part of relatively short, multiple-witness sessions. Worse still, more time and opportunities to provide evidence were made available to people and organisations with far less skin in the game—or even immediate interest—in respect of the matters encompassed in the three Bills covered by this inquiry.

1.5We are also very disappointed and very discomfited that no hearing was held in Western Australia at any time over the course of the more than three months spanned by this inquiry. Clearly, that State stands to be uniquely, profoundly and gravely affected by many of the proposed elements of Labor’s ‘nature positive’ agenda. It is the State that most punches above its weight in its economic contribution to the nation, and that has the most to lose from the introduction of new laws that fail to sensibly and practically balance environmental, economic and social concerns.

1.6The Coalition specifically requested that at least one such hearing be organised in the West, in fundamental recognition of the critical importance of the State (and especially its mining and resources sectors) to the creation of extraordinary numbers of jobs, taxation revenues and royalties for our nation.

1.7 We very strongly believed that the Committee would have materially benefited in a number of forms from the additional, practical on-the-ground insights and expertise that would have emerged at a hearing in Perth and/or in regional Western Australia.

1.8In turn, the scheduling of such a hearing(s) would also have spared multiple Western Australian witnesses from having to fly to and from Canberra (as ultimately happened, in a number of cases at short notice, instead).

1.9Yet the call from our side of politics, and from multiple Western Australian organisations, that at least one hearing should occur there went unheeded.

The multiple problems with the three Bills and with Labor’s approach to environment lawmaking and policy-making

1.10On a more positive note, we are actually gratified to some degree that, through the Committee’s Report, the Labor Party has now finally conceded that there are a number of shortcomings in the three Bills.

1.11However, these concessions still go nowhere near far enough. There are myriad problems with the Bills, and any attempt to satisfactorily rectify them will need to entail significantly more detailed and wide-ranging amendments than the Committee’s Report proposes.

1.12We also do not accept the implication in Recommendation 2 of 5 of the Committee’s Report that it is one of the five highest-order priorities, in relation to this legislation, that there be “incorporation of First Nations traditional environmental knowledge into Environment Information Australia”.

1.13It also strikes us as highly ironic that this recommendation in the Committee’s Report speaks to an apparent need for the Minister for the Environment and Water, the Hon Tanya Plibersek MP (the Environment Minister) to elevate Aboriginal considerations in respect of this legislation—yet neglects to make any reference to the fact that it is this very same Minister who has failed to deliver any clarity or consistency (let alone achievements) in relation to Indigenous issues in this portfolio.

1.14Chiefly, this has been reflected in her manifest failure to date to honour Labor’s clear commitment to introduce standalone Federal Indigenous cultural heritage laws during this term of Parliament. Similarly, there is still no sign of the National Environmental Standard on First Nations Engagement and Participation in Decision-Making that—two years ago—was cited in Labor’s ‘Nature Positive Plan’ as a “priority”.

1.15Indeed, it is apposite that we should be writing these Dissenting Comments at the very same time as Ms Plibersek is engulfed in another major error in relation to Indigenous issues following her extraordinary unilateral decision to block the construction of the tailings dam at the proposed McPhillamys gold mine.

1.16In totality, the five recommendations in the Committee’s Report on this inquiry neither fully address nor fully reflect a considerable portion of the key evidence that was presented.

1.17Unmistakably, that evidence laid bare a deep-seated and near-universal level of frustration and dissatisfaction with the three Albanese Government Bills that were the focus of the Committee’s deliberations.

1.18Even if the recommendations of the Committee’s Report were to be implemented in full, the approach of the Government and of Ms Plibersek would still remain fundamentally out of step with the interests and concerns of key stakeholder groups in relation to most of this legislation. Overwhelmingly, and for many good reasons, those stakeholders want the Bills to either be completely scrapped or comprehensively (rather than just discretely) amended.

1.19During the inquiry, some of these stakeholder groups naturally articulated and expressed alternative ideas, views and philosophies about the need for, and/or the desired role of, the new Environment Protection Australia (EPA) and Environment Information Australia (EIA). This included divergent opinions about the potential role, independence and powers of the EPA’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO)—and how these should best be moderated in the existing legislation.

1.20Highly unusually, however, there was strong unanimity among them that the three Bills are plagued by a multitude of flaws and cannot possibly be supported in their present form.

1.21Perversely, Ms Plibersek has therefore managed to unite individuals and groups who would normally hold very different views on this type of legislation. However, this has not been the result of any skilful policy making, or proactivity and national leadership, or even of well-organised and productive consultation. Instead, the very opposite has been true. Wholesale, widespread disappointment has emerged about the (mis)management of the drafting of this legislation, and this has been the consequence, largely, of a lack of meaningful engagement and direction from the Government as well as an absence of due process.

1.22Amid a highly telling and instructive set of comments during the business panel component of the public hearing on 26 July, Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA (CCIWA) Chief Economist and Director of Policy, Influence and Strategy, Mr Aaron Morey, encapsulated the views of many of the inquiry’s participants from Australian industry when he said that:

To say our members are concerned with the direction of this agenda would be an understatement. Mining companies have said a new federal EPA risks making it difficult to start new projects, compromising the ability for those companies to continue to generate jobs for future Western Australians; utility companies are concerned that it would be more difficult to develop new electricity transmission infrastructure, making it harder to connect new sources of renewable energy to the grid; tourism businesses are concerned it will be difficult to get new projects up; exploration companies are concerned about their ability to get new critical minerals mines up in areas like cobalt, copper and lithium; and housing and construction companies are concerned these changes could limit future housing developments, pushing up rents and housing prices and, in so doing, exacerbating a cost-of-living crisis.[1]

1.23Similarly, the CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Ms Kelly O’Shanassy, undoubtedly spoke for many environmentalists when she said at the hearing that:

We've gone through our vast disappointment that we've had two reviews of the national nature laws done, and we're in 2024 and we still don't have a clear pathway for the reforms; we've been incredibly disappointed about that.[2]

and

There need to be very clear objectives and responsibilities of the EPA in the Act of the EPA. That is very important, and we are saying that is missing in this Bill at this point in time.[3]

and

What we talked to the Minister about is bringing forward some nature protections so that the EPA can put those into its decision-making. The national environmental standards are a cornerstone of that because they define what nature needs. We've said a lot. We've talked a lot. We've gone around in circles. It's time for getting on with action.[4]

1.24Variously, throughout the course of even just the one-day hearing, witnesses described the legislation and/or the Government’s approach to developing and trying to progress it, as having “real weaknesses”, “not (being) satisfactory”, featuring a chronic lack of accountability and transparency, being “flawed”, “alarming” and “deeply concerning”, and having so many holes that it is even not out of the realms of possibility that they are deliberately “being set up to fail”.

1.25Moreover, these types of sentiments were not only frequently echoed at the hearing but were also regularly conveyed in the written submissions and in various media interviews and reports throughout recent weeks and months.

1.26Across the country, there is ever-mounting exasperation with the Albanese Government’s incapacity to adequately understand and address the basic concerns, interests and needs of Australians. This most certainly applies to its misguided and poorly-conceived ‘nature positive’ agenda. It has displayed a deep unwillingness and/or inability to engage meaningfully with, and to listen to, individuals and organisations that stand to be directly affected by any overhaul of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) and by the kinds of changes encompassed in the three Bills that have been the subject of this inquiry.

1.27For the Coalition’s part, we distilled many of our most immediate misgivings with these Bills into the Second Reading Amendment that we moved in the House of Representatives on 4 June 2024.

1.28This amendment read as follows:

Whilst not declining to give the Bills a second reading, the House:

(1) expresses its commitment to making changes to national environmental laws that are genuinely beneficial for both the environment and business;

(2) notes that these Bills do not meaningfully improve Australia's environmental laws, and that they have particular shortcomings in each of the following forms:

(a) the expansion of the EPA's proposed remit well beyond the compliance and data functions promised by the ALP during the 2022 Federal election campaign;

(b) the excessive size, and lack of proportionality, of the new penalties;

(c) the requirement for more regular, earlier reviews of the operation of the EPA than is mandated in these Bills;

(d) the need for clearer limits on the range of circumstances in which environment protection orders can be applied;

(e) the lack of accompanying information about the full regulatory and financial impacts of the Bills, including on cost recovery; and

(3) calls on the Government to finally honour their long-flagged promise to introduce a full package of new National Environmental Standards and an overhauled EPBC Act.[5]

1.29In relation to the latter point, in particular, it is very important to stress that the Government should have proceeded in the first instance with its long-promised, full overhaul of the EPBC Act before it tried to make changes to other more discrete elements of Australia’s Federal environmental laws.

1.30This is a view that we have expressed repeatedly throughout this term of Parliament—especially from the time that it first became apparent that the Government would break its fundamental promise to introduce legislation into the Parliament by the end of 2023 to comprehensively alter the content of the EPBC Act.

1.31Even if Labor’s EPA model had possessed genuine merit, there is no convincing or logical explanation as to why it should be established, at this point in time, simply to oversee and administer what are widely acknowledged to be outdated laws. In short, those new laws should be in place before the EPA commences operation.

1.32In reality, the one and only reason that this approach is being pursued is that the Labor Party is clearly desperate to try to salvage at least something from the wreckage of two-and-a-half completely underwhelming years in its administration of the Environment portfolio.

1.33Although this matter was not extensively canvassed in the inquiry itself, there also remain many unanswered questions about how the work of the EPA and EIA would specifically be funded.

1.34In the Explanatory Memoranda for the Bills, it is outlined that a total of $121.5million is being provided to establish the EPA and that the starting costs of EIA are $51.5 million (plus another $4.5 million annually, ongoing).[6]

1.35However, there is also an admission that “further costs of implementation would be subject to future decisions of Government”. Additionally, there is reference to “partial cost-recovery” in the case of the EPA but this is not supplemented with any additional information about what form(s) this cost recovery might take.

1.36There is also an absence of detail about how each of these figures has specifically been calculated. There are accordingly many grounds for scepticism about their accuracy, not least on the basis of the responses to a number of Coalition Questions on Notice and a Parliamentary Budget Office calculation in 2023 of the likely costs to operate an EPA.

1.37As the content of our Second Reading Amendment reflects, we also harbour a number of reservations about the Government’s proposed approach on matters such as the issuing of Environment Protection Orders; how often and extensively the work of the EPA and EIA would be formally reviewed; and the administration and operation of a penalty regime that proposes to supersize the current maximum penalty amounts for breaches of environmental law by more than 4,500 per cent.

1.38All of that said, our concerns with the three Bills are not confined purely to the issues canvassed in our House of Representatives amendment.

1.39Like many environmental and business groups, and even apparently many of Ms Plibersek’s own Labor party colleagues at the Federal level and across the States and Territories, we are confused as to how and why the Albanese Government left itself in the position of introducing three Bills that had no ostensible or serious support from any key stakeholder.

1.40From an environmental standpoint, it is difficult to determine how the existence of the EPA and EIA would deliver any serious gains or advantages in any part of the nation.

1.41More specifically, there is no indication that the creation of either body would reverse the dismal track record of Ms Plibersek as Environment Minister.

1.42To make matters even worse, she and her Department also regularly seek to evade scrutiny and dodge questions when challenged about her frequently misguided decisions. The serial unwillingness to provide direct answers to questions asked as part of Senate Estimates and inquiry processes, in particular, is astonishing.

1.43Within the Coalition, we are also aware of rapidly-growing frustration and dissent in political and business circles with Ms Plibersek’s approach.

1.44To us, and to many other people who have followed this inquiry, it was particularly instructive that the Western Australian Government felt sufficiently moved as to make its own formal submission to this inquiry.

1.45Moreover, the views that were communicated in much of that submission were telling. Among its content was each of the following reflections:

To succeed, Western Australia needs efficient and sensible reforms that reduce approval timelines, cut Commonwealth-State duplication and deliver world-class protection for our unique environment.[7]

and

As proposed, the stage three reforms could cause significant delays to environmental approvals in the crucial years between now and 2030.[8]

and

The Western Australian Government is urging the Australian Government to introduce reforms that are fit for purpose and pragmatic; are accompanied by appropriate resources to assist with transition; seek to decrease approval timeframes and complexity.[9]

1.46We understand that very similar sentiments are increasingly being communicated privately, and regularly, by other State and Territory governments as well—and this should hardly come as a surprise given the many threats to economic growth and development that are at the core of the ‘nature positive’ agenda.

1.47The New South Wales Minerals Council highlighted, in its submission, the penchant of Ms Plibersek for reviewing, thwarting and blocking a host of critically-important projects in that State[10]—and the same has been true in the other States and Territories as well.

1.48Amid a litany of other decisions that have significantly damaged the best interests of the nation as a whole, the Minister has also shamefully provided millions of dollars of taxpayer funding to the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO).

History of the Bills’ development

1.49To set some important context for why all of these problems are so evident and so pronounced, it is worth recalling that the origins of these three Bills lie in an announcement made by Labor Party on the final day of the 2022 election campaign that it would create a Federal EPA.

1.50They said at that time that their EPA would complement a wider, comprehensive overhaul of national environmental laws that they would implement in response to the Samuel Review. They also indicated that it would be a body focused purely on data collection and compliance enforcement functions.

1.51Since becoming the Environment Minister, Ms Plibersek has subsequently presided over a series of long and shambolic delays to that process, and has proved wholly unable to deliver this full overhaul of the EPBC Act. The architecture and powers of the EPA have also changed substantially from those of the model that was promised.

1.52As part of that aforementioned review, Professor Samuel recommended that the work on this legislative overhaul should actually be completed by the end of 2022. The Albanese Government then added an extra year to this deadline for themselves, committing instead that they would introduce the new laws into Parliament by no later than the end of 2023.

1.53Multiple statements and commitments were made in relation to this second deadline, including at Senate Estimates hearings by Ms Plibersek’s officials from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

1.54More than four months after she had failed to meet even the second deadline, the Environment Minister then announced on 16 April 2024 that she would introduce standalone legislation for the establishment of the EPA and EIA. As part of this announcement, she confessed that she had now indefinitely deferred the full EPBC Act overhaul.[11]

1.55On that day, she also claimed that this was now the second of three phases of environmental ‘reform’ that she was delivering. Remarkably, she cited the passage of legislation in December 2023 to establish a Nature Repair Market and to make changes to the water trigger (that were legislated only because they were trade-offs forced on the Government as part of a very-hastily-concocted deal with the Greens) as the supposed first, deliberative, phase of her work.

1.56She also said that, by staggering her changes, she was following Professor Samuel’s recommended staged approach to environmental law reform. However, among the many things that she neglected to mention was that her approach was now completely different in form and substance to the one outlined by Professor Samuel. He said that the elements of the first tranche of changes should be the immediate creation of legally enforceable National Environmental Standards; the start of work on complex enabling reform; and the delivery of Indigenous-specific reforms—still none of which has materialised even a further five months into the future from April 2024.

1.57It is also worth noting that Professor Samuel did not propose that an EPA be established at all. In turn, the EPA that Ms Plibersek is seeking to create (through these Bills) is now a very different type of body from the one originally promised by Labor—as it is replete with a vast new range of functions, responsibilities and powers, as well as a far greater level of authority, when compared to the model they had outlined during the 2022 election campaign.

1.58Alongside many other similar comments in the final report of his review, Professor Samuel said that ‘a key criticism of the EPBC Act is that it duplicates State and Territory regulatory processes for development assessment and approval…the Review has found this is largely true’.[12]

1.59One of the reasons for this was that there are already seven EPAs or equivalent bodies across the States and Territories, and that a Federal version would be likely to add significantly to the bureaucracy, duplication and complexity already associated with environmental assessment processes in Australia.

1.60In the Explanatory Memoranda for these Bills, the Government is also claiming that they are the end products of extensive consultation. The reality is that they have met only with a small circle of individuals and groups in relation to the legislation—and, even then, often only at closed-door ‘lock-up’ sessions to which the attendees have not even been allowed to bring phones or computers in case they might transcribe, or even record or photograph, the material shown to them.

1.61Disturbingly, the most intensive and detailed conversations about the three Bills appear to have occurred at some time in the first half of 2024 with Senator David Pocock and some or all of the Teal MPs.

1.62At an Estimates hearing on 29 May 2024, Senator Duniam was provided with answers that suggested that the Labor Party consulted with those other MPs on the content of the Bills, and potential changes to them, ahead of their introduction to the House of Representatives. The same courtesy was not extended to the Coalition. To the best of our knowledge, it was also not extended to other crossbench parliamentarians or even to a host of critically-affected stakeholders.

1.63Among many other problematic consequences, this appears to have ensured that the Environmental Defenders Office duly inserted itself prominently into the proceedings surrounding the development and/or potential amendment of this legislation.

1.64On 3 June 2024, journalists Greg Brown and Jess Malcolm revealed in The Australian that Wentworth MP Allegra Spender, North Sydney MP Kylea Tink, Mackellar MP Sophie Scamps, Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel and ACT Senator David Pocock had all consulted the EDO about “how they should push to reform Labor’s climate and environmental legislation”.[13] This was notwithstanding the fact that the EDO had only a few months earlier been completely excoriated in a Federal Court case, in which Justice Natalie Charlesworth found that they had serially confected and fabricated evidence.

1.65It also represented an extraordinary development in the sense that these consultations with the EDO appear to have occurred at around the very same time as the probity of the organisation’s conduct and practices was under formal investigation in a Fulbright Norton Rose review commissioned by Ms Plibersek’s Department.

1.66When questioned by Senator Duniam at the hearing of 26 July about their involvement in lobbying parliamentarians on this legislation, the EDO repeatedly and staunchly tried to resist providing direct answers. Ultimately, they relented to the point of conceding that they ’have engaged with a number of offices and we get a lot of inquiries about how to strengthen these laws. There are a lot of members who are concerned that these laws are inadequate, so we've had a lot of inquiries about how amendments could be drafted and how these bills could be strengthened’.[14]

1.67Given the answers to Senate Estimates questions from the Coalition during the course of this parliamentary term, it also seems that the Albanese Government—and likely the Teals and other crossbenchers—have still failed to undertake the due diligence needed to assure themselves that the EDO and its financial backers are not breaching any of Australia’s foreign interference laws in the course of their activities.

1.68By stark contrast to the opportunities for involvement in deliberations on the legislation that were afforded to the EDO, the Government has meanwhile consistently failed to satisfactorily respond to—or even engage with—almost all of the nation’s leading stakeholders in the Environment portfolio in relation to their various concerns about these three Bills. This was made clear on a repeated basis during the 26 July hearing.

1.69Fundamentally, this has meant that Ms Plibersek has not only failed to satisfy a multitude of key environmental and industry groups, but almost everyone else as well.

1.70Regrettably, and as is perhaps best articulated in the submission written by the Law Council of Australia, the Bills even encompass a number of basic drafting errors.[15] These are arguably at their most glaring and obvious in proposed sections 10 and 11 of the EPA Bill—which are aimed at defining the role and functions of Environment Protection Australia.

1.71Proposed section 10 stipulates that the EPA consists of the CEO, staff, and persons whose services are made available to the body. Yet, simultaneously, proposed section 11 specifies that the role of the EPA is to assist the CEO in the performance of their duties.

1.72Those two proposed sections are clearly incongruous, and the wording (not to mention the Government’s conception of the status within the EPA of the CEO, and the mechanics of how the agency would function on a day to day basis) therefore needs to be revisited.

1.73The Government has also confounded almost everyone with the attempted bolting-on to the legislation of their own idiosyncratic construction of the term ‘nature positive’. When first spruiking these Bills (including in her Second Reading Speech on the EIA Bill), Ms Plibersek spoke glowingly about the concept that she had devised a unique, world-first definition of the term. However, this has ultimately degenerated into a major mistake rather than any cause for gloating or celebration.

1.74As was eloquently outlined in the Places You Love Alliance’s written submission, the definition in its current form is, in essence, meaningless and unmeasurable.[16] These general points were also reinforced in many other submissions, and throughout the public hearing of 26 July.

1.75This problem has been exacerbated in the EIA Bill because of additional vagueness in respect of how baselines associated with this unique definition will be established. The relevant words in that Bill also fail to articulate and clarify whether it is the Government’s intent that assessments of the extent to which ‘nature positive’ progress has (or has not) occurred will be measured at a project-by-project level or on a wider, presumably national, scale.

1.76Other important definitions that are needed in the Bills are also missing altogether. These include meanings for terms such as ‘serious risk’, ‘serious damage’ and ‘urgent circumstances’.

1.77Similarly, there are a number of elements of the Bills (especially the EIA Bill) that, in our view, need to be drastically tightened. There is no clear explanation or justification, for instance, about how and why it has been decided that the Head of EIA would be allowed to selectively decide on which forms of data they should (and therefore also should not) report to the Minister and the general public. Likewise, in both the EPA and EIA Bills, there are insufficient guardrails around how commercial-in-confidence considerations for companies might be respected.

1.78Equally, it is hard to discern how any of the content of the Bills will necessarily deliver substantially improved protections for nature and biodiversity, including for threatened species—especially in the absence of wider changes to the EPBC Act.

1.79This is an all the more serious problem in view of the Albanese Government’s atrocious record on threatened species protection.

1.80Research undertaken by Conservation Volunteers Australia confirms that there have been more listings of threatened species within Australia in approximately the last two years than the previous ten years. Likewise, the Australian Conservation Foundation has calculated that not only were more species added to the national threatened species list in 2023 than in any other year since the list was established—but the number was five times more than the yearly average and twice as many as in the previous highest year on record.

1.81It has also been confirmed at various Senate committee hearings that Ms Plibersek did not even meet with the Government’s pre-eminent threatened species advisory body (the full Threatened Species Scientific Committee) in her entire first year as Environment Minister.

1.82It is disappointing that none of those various concerns has been addressed by the Labor Party in the course of this inquiry or in the Committee’s Report.

1.83We should also add that—by the end of this inquiry process—many questions still linger about Ms Plibersek’s potential willingness and readiness to establish a climate trigger in national environmental law and to terminate native forestry activity across Australia.

1.84Either of these decisions would represent yet another dagger to the heart of Australian industry under the Albanese Government.

1.85That point was strongly highlighted in the submission of the Institute of Public Affairs, in particular. Using modelling that it says likely significantly understates the full effects, it calculated that the introduction of a climate trigger would ’risk $227.1 billion of investment in critical nation building resource projects’. As part of this, Western Australia would be the most impacted State or Territory, suffering a loss of $111.7 billion and Queensland and the Northern Territory would also be significantly disproportionately affected.[17]

1.86Just as worryingly, the Prime Minister, the Hon Anthony Albanese MP and the Environment Minister, continue to remain conspicuously silent over recent months on their approach to the potential further termination of native forestry in Australia—notwithstanding the former’s clear pre-election commitment to Tasmanian forestry workers in 2022 that, as Prime Minister, he would not ban such activity.

1.87Disgracefully, their government has already totally abandoned forestry workers impacted by the native timber harvesting bans imposed by their State Labor colleagues in Victoria and Western Australia and left many others around the nation on tenterhooks.

Conclusion

1.88It is blatantly obvious to the Coalition that the three Bills cannot be supported in their present guise.

1.89Accordingly, there are really only three feasible choices available to non‑Government Senators if, and when, the three Bills are debated in the Senate. One is to simply oppose the Bills altogether. Another is to move and/or support a series of detailed amendments. The third is to halt the debate from progressing to a Third Reading, especially until at least some time after the Government’s long-promised replacement legislation for the EPBC Act has been formally considered in the Senate.

1.90In short, the content (and therefore the passage) of these three Bills is ill-advised, and it should come as little surprise that they have been almost universally repudiated by the individuals and organisations who have publicly commented on them. There is certainly a near-uniform view among the individuals, organisations and businesses most directly affected by the three Bills that—even in the best case scenario and the path of least resistance from the Senate—they still require major and far-reaching changes.

1.91The Coalition wholeheartedly agrees with this view, and it is our clear recommendation that the Bills should not be supported in their original form. These Bills should have come to the Parliament after the broader EPBC Act changes, and they should have been drafted on the basis of serious, meaningful, open and expert dialogue. However, neither of those avenues has been pursued by the Government.

1.92Instead, the basic reality is that Ms Plibersek and her colleagues in the Labor Party have completely dropped the ball on Federal environmental law and policy reform—and they have accordingly now left in their wake a multitude of new problems in this portfolio.

1.93Immediately prior to Labor’s election to government in May 2022, considerable goodwill and a genuine sense of optimism had prevailed around the prospective implementation of the key findings of the Samuel Review. Yet the time, effort, passion and hard work that so many people dedicated to that review have been fundamentally betrayed and squandered by the Albanese Government.

1.94On 29 May 2024—the day on which this so-called ‘Stage 2 nature positive’ legislation was introduced to the House of Representatives—journalist Tom McIlroy reported for the Australian Financial Review that the Bills were ostensibly “friendless”. His article made for sobering reading, and it very accurately reflected the fact that the proposed new laws had “fallen flat with business (and) conservationists”.[18] More than three months later, at the end of this inquiry process, it is abundantly clear that this all still remains the case.

1.95The Coalition recommends that major and far-reaching amendments would need to be made to these three Bills before they should be passed.

1.96The Coalition also recommends that the passage of these three Bills be deferred until after the finalisation of Labor’s promised wider overhaul of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

Footnotes

[1]Mr Aaron Morey, Chief Economist and Director of Policy, Influence and Strategy, Chamber of Commerce and Industry Western Australia, Proof Committee Hansard, 26 July 2024, p. 42.

[2]Ms Kelly O’Shanassy, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Conservation Foundation, Proof Committee Hansard, 26 July 2024, p. 25.

[3]Ms Kelly O’Shanassy, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Conservation Foundation, Proof Committee Hansard, 26 July 2024, p. 26.

[4]Ms Kelly O’Shanassy, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Conservation Foundation, Proof Committee Hansard, 26 July 2024, pp. 28‒29.

[5]House of Representatives, Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill 2024, Amendment to motion for second reading to be moved by Mr Ted O’Brien MP, Member for Fairfax.

[6]See Explanatory Memorandum to the Nature Positive (Environment Information Australia) Bill 2024, p. 5.

[7]West Australian Government, Submission 28, p. 1.

[8]West Australian Government, Submission 28, p. 2.

[9]West Australian Government, Submission 28, p. 2.

[10]NSW Minerals Council, Submission 20.

[11]The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP, Minister for the Environment and Water, ‘Environment and business to benefit from Nature Positive Plan’, Media Release, 16 April 2024 (accessed 9 September 2024).

[12]Professor Graeme Samuel AC, Independent Review of the EPBC Act – Final Report, October 2020, p.101.

[13]Greg Brown and Jess Malcolm, ‘Teal MPs taking environmental advice from activist green group’, The Australian, 4 June 2024, p. 7.

[14]Ms Rachel Walmsley, Head, Policy and Law Reform, Environmental Defenders Office, Proof Committee Hansard, 26 July 2024, p. 38.

[15]Law Council of Australia, Submission 105, pp. 17−18.

[16]Places You Love Alliance, Submission 11.

[17]Institute of Public Affairs, Submission 4, p. 5.

[18]Tom McIlroy, ‘Plibersek’s new environment laws friendless’, Australian Financial Review, 29 May 2024.