Plibersek scales back environment reforms as coral bleaching goes global
By Mike Foley
Tanya Plibersek is set to release a truncated version of her overdue environmental reforms, moving to establish a new federal watchdog and deferring plans to beef up federal laws to deliver on her pledge to end native species extinctions.
The environment minister promised to bring her “nature positive plan” to parliament by the end of 2023. However, after opposition from the resources sector Plibersek is now set to pursue the reforms in tranches, beginning with a bill to create an Environment Protection Agency to handle development decisions and enforce regulations.
Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Debate over the government’s promise to reform the Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act is heating up alongside the world’s oceans, as a global coral bleaching event is declared on Tuesday by the International Coral Reef Initiative, following widespread damage to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
Crossbench senators and environment groups criticised Plibersek’s move, arguing urgent change is needed to stop the continued downward trajectory of Australia’s environment, setting up a political brawl when the government attempts to pass its environment laws in the Senate.
Independent senator David Pocock, who could be crucial to passing the legislation, said Plibersek must present the laws as a package and not put them to parliament as discrete bills.
“Australians should be able to consider different reforms on their merits and as a whole,” Pocock said. “Bundling unrelated measures and taking a piecemeal approach to fundamental reform is poor parliamentary process and needs to be called out.”
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who will also be crucial to the fate of Plibersek’s draft laws, said her party would not support “any moves to water down already weak environment laws”.
“Reports that the government is preparing to dump their election promise to deliver full and comprehensive nature laws are concerning and will leave our environment vulnerable to further destruction and pollution,” Hanson-Young said.
Plibersek announced the reforms in Sydney on Tuesday, promising further changes – including national standards and rewriting the EPBC Act – to complete her nature positive plan. She did not commit to bringing the laws to parliament during this term of government, with an election expected by May next year. She also committed an additional $100 million in funding to speed up development.
However, former competition watchdog Graeme Samuel, who released a once-in-a-decade review of the EPBC Act in October 2020, backed Plibersek’s agenda and said he had recommended a similar approach.
The Samuel review called for comprehensive reform, including national standards and greater protections for threatened species, saying current federal laws failed to prevent the “continued decline of our iconic places and the extinction of our most threatened plants, animals and ecosystems”.
“The government and the minister are doing everything exactly as they should be doing. I don’t underestimate the complexity of what has to be done in particular, the national environmental standards,” Samuel told this masthead.
Plibersek said in late 2022 that the government would release a comprehensive suite of draft nature repair laws for public comment by the end of 2023, including national environmental protection standards.
Her pledge built on an earlier promise to end the steady stream of native wildlife losses. Australia’s extinction rate is one of the worst in the world, with about 100 unique flora and fauna species wiped out since colonisation, and 1900 threatened species now at a heightened risk of extinction.
However, Plibersek is widely expected to release bills in the coming days to establish the Environment Protection Agency and an office of Environment Information Australia, which will provide data to the EPA.
Plibersek’s spokesperson said the government wanted environmental assessments to work “better for both business and nature”.
“We’re working methodically on sensible updates to national environment law, consistent with what we’ve already announced under the nature positive plan,” the spokesperson said.
Biodiversity Council director James Trezise said pursuing national environment reform in tranches was too slow given the extinction crisis.
“New institutions such as an EPA are unlikely to materially shift the dial on nature protection in Australia without strong national standards, clearer protections under law and reformed recovery and threat abatement plans,” Trezise said.
“The government made clear commitments to fix Australia’s broken environmental laws within this term to tackle Australia’s world-leading extinction record. The failure to follow through on this would be exceptionally disappointing.”
Global warming is increasing the prevalence of marine heatwaves and driving more frequent and severe coral bleaching. The global bleaching event is the fourth on record and the second in the last 10 years.
Coral bleaching has hit reefs in 53 jurisdictions since the start of last year, including in Florida in the US, the Caribbean, the Eastern Tropical Pacific including Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, large areas of the South Pacific including Fiji, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Samoas, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of Aden.
WWF Australia head of oceans Richard Leck said the global bleaching event showed “no reef anywhere is safe from the impacts of climate change”.
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