Is there any surer way to irritate an aggrieved group than propose they take a “chill pill”?
No, not really. Especially when the group in question is Australia’s conservation movement, which has just had to swallow a very bitter pill: Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek announcing she will delay her promise to rewrite the country’s failing environment laws.
So when Professor Graeme Samuel, who led the damning review of these environmental laws in 2020, told conservation groups to be patient last week, his comments were not well received.
“Just sit and wait, take a chill pill,” Professor Samuel told a parliamentary inquiry into the extinction crisis. “I think you will find that what we’re going to get will satisfy all their aspirations as set out in the Nature Positive Plan that the minister announced some time ago.”
The response was not, in fact, chill.
Biodiversity Council director James Trezise described Samuel’s comments as “dismissive and political”, saying it was unlikely the government would be able to deliver on the significant environmental reforms it had committed to before an election.
“That kind of narrative is unhelpful in the sense there is a real crisis playing out in Australia,” said Trezise. “We have species hanging on by a thread.” So why has it taken so long to address our crap environment laws, what was originally promised, and why do the government seem to be dragging their feet? Crikey clarifies…
Why change the laws?
When Professor Samuel reviewed Australia’s environment laws, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC), three years ago he found that unless the act was fundamentally rewritten and modernised, the health of Australia’s iconic places and threatened species would continue to decline. The laws worked for no-one — least of all the environment — and needed a complete overhaul, he said.
Among so-called developed nations, Australia is always towards the bottom of the league table when it comes to protecting biodiversity. Since colonisation, 104 species have been officially acknowledged as becoming extinct. Today, more than 1,900 animals, plants and ecological communities are at risk of extinction.
What was promised?
About five months after Labor won the federal election, Plibersek made a “zero new extinctions” pledge that may yet come to haunt her, saying Australia would adopt a target of preventing any new extinctions of plants and animals.
Later, she pledged Labor would make comprehensive changes to the EPBC Act, create an Environment Protection Agency, and draw up a set of national environment standards that could guide decision-making and prevent damage to critical habitats. These law reforms were supposed to be finished by the end of 2023, but that deadline has long since passed.
Kicked down the road
Much to the disappointment of conservationists, Plibersek announced earlier this month the changes will now happen in three stages, with the laws to establish an EPA being introduced to Parliament in the coming weeks. Another body, Environment Information Australia, will also be established, to provide public data on ecosystems, plants and animals.
But the most substantial changes — the law reforms to address Australia’s extinction crisis and the new national standards — have been pushed back to an unknown date. The likelihood of these new laws being finalised and tabled before a future election is slim (the election is expected to be held by May next year).
“The mood is one of disappointment because what we’ve got is not what the government originally committed to in terms of time frames, and the most substantive elements of these law reforms have been kicked down the road,” says Trezise. “The new EPA is going to administer a broken set of laws.”
Why drag it out like this?
Some believe the delay could be a deliberate tactic to help the government’s chances in the next election, particularly in more conservative states. In West Australia, for example, Premier Roger Cook had said new protections for nature could disproportionately impact the resources-rich state. In response to news that Plibersek would delay the law reforms The West Australian newspaper ran a front page declaring “Tan Yeah Nah.”
But Plibersek rejects the suggestion the Labor government is scared of a conservative backlash, pointing out the task is a complex one — the existing legislation alone is more than 1,000 pages long.
She says the government has consulted with more than 100 organisations, including in business and environment, showing them draft policy and legislation. “The whole purpose of doing it so methodically and carefully is to get it right,” she told 6PR in Perth.
So is that a fair call?
It’s true that legislative reform is time-consuming, complex, and shouldn’t be rushed. But it has been more than three years since Professor Samuel found the act was in urgent need of change and since then yet more land has been cleared and precious habitat lost. Time has almost run out for species such as the orange-bellied parrot and the regent honeyeater.
Perhaps federal Labor is overthinking it. Environment Justice Australia lawyer Danya Jacobs told the parliamentary inquiry into extinction that creating good laws for nature is actually pretty simple. It’s about doing three things, she said: protecting habitat for threatened species on the ground, protecting populations of species that are recognised as being on the path to extinction, and making sure sectors having the biggest impact are brought into the system.
“It’s acknowledged that our environment laws are broken,” she said. “They’re not working to hold and reverse trajectories as species decline in Australia.”
