The environment minister will still be responsible for approving projects under new federal nature laws, after Labor rebuffed calls for a completely independent watchdog with full decision-making powers.<\/p>\n
The retention of ministerial decision-making powers satisfies a key demand from the Coalition and industry and is not opposed by the Greens.<\/p>\n
But it has been criticised by environmentalists, who argue the model could allow developers to exert pressure on the minister.<\/p>\n
The environment minister, Murray Watt, set out on Sunday the powers of the environment protection agency, under a bill to rewrite the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act due in parliament this week.<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n Watt\u2019s hopes of passing the laws before Christmas were dealt a blow last week after the Coalition and Greens criticised separate aspects of the draft laws, denying Labor a clear path through the Senate and setting up a political fight in the final three sitting weeks of the year.<\/p>\n The Coalition argue the laws are anti-business, while the Greens claim the opposite, accusing Watt of drafting laws that have \u201cbig business and the mining companies\u2019 fingerprints all over it\u201d.<\/p>\n Speaking on Sky News on Sunday morning, Watt said the government was open to considering amendments but was adamant the revamp would not collapse for the second time in 12 months.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople should be under no illusions \u2026 we will be passing these laws through the parliament,\u201d Watt said. \u201cThe only question is how quickly we do it and who we do it with.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the most contentious parts of the reforms has been the scope of the promised federal environment watchdog, with industry and environmentalists at odds over whether an independent agency \u2013 rather than the minister \u2013 should be responsible for approving projects.<\/p>\n Previously, the environment minister has made decisions on projects either directly or via an official acting under delegated powers.<\/p>\n In practice, the minister personally considers only a small number of significant applications, such as Woodside\u2019s North-West shelf extension<\/a> and the Robbins Island windfarm<\/a>. Departmental officials sign off on more than 90% of decisions.<\/p>\n The new regime will be largely the same, except that rather than delegating decisions to a departmental bureaucrat, that responsibility will fall to officials in the new EPA.<\/p>\n The decisions that are taken by the minister will be based on advice from the EPA rather than department officials.<\/p>\n The new agency, to be officially known as the National Environment Protection Agency (NEPA), will have other functions that are independent of the minister, including policing nature laws and monitoring compliance with a project\u2019s conditions.<\/p>\n \u201cAn independent NEPA will have strong compliance and enforcement oversight to better protect our precious environment and ensure those who seek to illegally destroy it pay a high price,\u201d Watt said.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The Australian Conservation Foundation acting chief executive, Paul Sinclair, was disappointed the proposed EPA was not fully independent.<\/p>\n The peak green group favoured a model in which the minister set nature protection rules and then EPA assessed projects against them.<\/p>\n \u201cArm\u2019s length decision making is better for nature and better for business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, said the EPA would become \u201canother branch of government bureaucracy\u201d if it didn\u2019t have strong laws to enforce.<\/p>\n With a \u201cclimate trigger\u201d that could block or restrict fossil fuel projects officially off the table, Hanson-Young signalled the Greens were prepared to negotiate with Labor on other mechanisms to address climate impacts.<\/p>\n Under the new laws, proponents of heavy polluting projects would be required to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and how they intend to mitigate them as part of the application process.<\/p>\n But the laws would not force decision-makers to consider those potential climate impacts, meaning projects such as Woodside\u2019s North-West Shelf extension could still be approved under the new regime.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve taken the climate trigger off the table because they\u2019re doing the bidding of the fossil fuel companies,\u201d Hanson-Young said.<\/p>\n \u201cNow if we negotiate, the government\u2019s going to have to come up with what they are prepared to do to protect the climate and to protect our forests.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The environment minister will still be responsible for approving projects under new federal nature laws, after Labor rebuffed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-530125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115443231795110480","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}