Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly said the Senate Standing Committee on Economics published the Nature Positive report. It was the Standing Committee on Environment and Communications.

An Australian Senate committee has recommended the Nature Positive Bill 2024 be passed by the Senate, the nation’s upper house of parliament, subject to several recommendations it has made.

The Nature Positive Bill establishes Environment Protection Australia (EPA) as a statutory Commonwealth entity to undertake regulatory and implementation functions under a range of environmental Commonwealth laws, the government said.

It was introduced and read to the House of Representatives, or lower house, at the end of May.

The other reforms will establish a statutory Senior Executive Service (SES) position of Head of Environment Information Australia (HEIA) within the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), and will amend nine environmental laws to provide the new CEO of the EPA with a “range of powers and functions under those laws”.

The bill would amend the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC) and would increase both penalties and powers across the board.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has argued this will ultimately speed environmental approvals, although business groups have expressed scepticism.

RECOMMENDATIONS AND DISSENTING STATEMENTS

The Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications, however, recommended the government undertake more consultation in regards to the definition of ‘nature positive’ to make sure it is consistent with the Global Biodiversity Framework.

First Nations traditional knowledge should be incorporated, “in particular, in determining the baseline for nature positive, and in the register of national environmental information assets, with appropriate protections for Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property and the confidentiality of culturally sensitive information,” it said.

The committee recommended that amendments be made to the Nature Positive package of bills to introduce new national environmental standards, and that the minister’s ability to make, review, and amend such standards be legislated.

Dissenting statements from the opposition, the Greens, and two independent senators including Victoria’s first Indigenous senator, Lidia Thorpe, were included.

The Coalition said “major and far-reaching amendments” need to be made to the three bills before they are passed, and passage should be deferred until a wider overhaul of the EPBC Act of 1999, which has been flagged since last year and created quiet but pervasive consternation across Australia’s energy and resources industry.

The conservative Coalition is made up of the Liberal party and the rural National party. It has been in opposition since losing the 2022 election to Labor, which came to power in large part on a climate change platform.

The Greens believe that rather than going too far, the bill is “insufficient” and will not protect the environment.

“The Senate should amend this legislation to implement stronger protections for forests, critical habitat, and the climate,” the party said. There are 11 Greens in the Senate.

A letter signed by Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young on Monday separate to the bill said the country is in a “biodiversity crisis” and is a world leader in mammal extinction as environmental laws are not working to protect nature. She reiterated the need to integrate climate considerations into environmental assessments and greater reliance on First Nations’ knowledge. With these, she supports the bill and will vote yes on its passage.

Independent Senator David Pocock, who also made recommendations around strengthening supply chains as part of the FMIA bill last week, made nine recommendations.

These included bringing forward an amendment that would close a loophole exempting native forests logging from the EPBC Act and adding “new provisions to compel referral and assessment of planned deforestation greater than 20 hectares in threatened or migratory species habitat, a threatened ecological community, or in Great Barrier Reef catchments, and require the assessment and approval decisions to consider the cumulative impacts of a native vegetation clearing on each threatened species or listed MNES (Matters of National Environmental Significance) impacted”.

He is in favour of an independent EPA, and a board and CEO model of governance.

Pocock also recommended that all direct and indirect emissions caused by a project be fully disclosed, with the approving minister required “to consider the climate impacts of these projects”. Court cases brought by activists calling for the environment minister to consider climate change when approving new energy and resources projects have failed in court in recent years.

Senator Thorpe made 23 recommendations.

“The Stage 2 Nature Positive bills should not pass in their current form, and should only be passed once they are amended in a way that will genuinely improve the health of Country,” she said.

She backed far better consultations with First Nations people and “other strategically under-represented populations”.

She also agreed with Pocock that the EPA needs a ‘board with a CEO’ model to promote its independence.

Hers was the only set of recommendations that named specific projects and companies, such as calling for an assessment under the EPBC’s water trigger of appraisal stage shale gas projects in the centre of Australia that ultimately plan to send large amounts of gas to a new LNG export terminal more than 500 kilometres north, in Darwin.

FURTHER VIEWS

A submission made by the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) that was recently published on the Freedom of Information request log of the DCCEEW website said the feedback it had received from industry was around the lack of consultation than the content of the reform itself.

“The patchwork of consultations has made a complex reform, even more opaque and hard to understand. We consider that the appropriate solution is to provide a 12-week consultation where all of the proposed reform to legislation is supplied for comment prior to their introduction to parliament,” it said.

AMEC continued that while it “appreciated the opportunity to be in the room to read the available information, the draconian restrictions on electronic devices have resulted in hand transcription of policy being relied to members.”

It suggested the actual concept of ‘nature positive’ remained undefined.

“To achieve Nature Positive it must be accompanied by a genuine change in the scalability and outcomes sought. It will demand new concepts, a move away from offsets, and a step change in the data and knowledge of ecosystems nationally.”

There were, in total, submissions from 209 parties, including from renewable energy companies, government bodies, private citizens, activist groups, the powerful Minerals Council of Australia, and the Sydney Knitting Nannas & Friends.

By Helen Clark – helen@carbon-pulse.com

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