A package of environment reforms has passed the Senate, to Coalition disapproval. Rex Patrick reports on what’s changed, and what hasn’t.
The Bill has some clear wins for the environment.
There will be a National Environmental Protection Agency and National Environmental Standards – although those standards are yet to be defined by the Labor Government.
Native forest protection
The Bill, as a result of negotiations by the Greens, will also see native forest logging subject to national environment standards in 18 months’ time.
Supportive of this change, the Government will set up a $300m fund for the forestry industry to support jobs and to fund equipment to modernise the industry.
The Greens, in their contributions to the debate on the changes, suggested they were the beginning of the end of native forest logging.
In an answer to National’s Senator Bridget McKenzie in the committee stage of the Bill, he suggested the story might not have the ending the Greens were thinking it would.
Watch this space.
Coal and gas industry approvals unaffected
The laws will allow for the fast tracking of projects, including for renewable energy and housing projects.
That’s a good thing.
Both Greens leader, Senator Larissa Waters, and Greens environmental spokesperson, Senator Hanson-Young, claimed a win with the removal of coal and gas projects from the fast-track process, but together with their failure to have climate emissions included as part of any approval process, it’s business as usual for the Government.
There’s no win here.
Labor will continue to approve major coal and gas projects as they have been doing so.
More gas. Labor amps it up past twenty fossil fuel approvals
Big coal and the gas cartel have nothing to fear from this legislation.
Net gain
Net gain, with its problems (as reported by MWM), remains in the Bill, although Senator Waters announced in her second reading speech that the minister will no longer have the discretion to override projects, on national interest grounds, that don’t get approval because they have unacceptable environmental impacts.
From ‘net zero’ to ‘net gain’. The platypus-to-possum exchange rate
Unacceptable environmental impacts in the Bill are defined as effects that, for example, have significant impacts on world or national heritage properties, will seriously impair the ecological character of a Ramsar wetland or will cause serious damage to a listed threatened species critical habitat.
Land clearing
The Greens also managed to negotiate tougher approvals for land clearing.
Nationals Senator Susan McDonald, who characterised the legislation as “shameful” and a “dirty rushed deal” expressed a concern that these new high land clearing standards this will harm Australia’s food security.
Perhaps the good senator could, in light of the changes, propose that we stop growing cotton and almonds for export and return some of the Murray-Darling water to other food products.
I can’t see that happening though.
Finally, the Greens have stopped the “water trigger” being handed to the states.
A good deal?
The Greens admit they didn’t get everything they wanted.
The question is, have the Greens reaching a deal early to meet Environmental Minister Murray Watt’s self-imposed deadline for passing the reforms, robbed them of further improvements – such as climate inclusion on approvals and the ending of coal and gas approvals?
We will never know. My feeling is they could have held out for more.
The amended Bill could certainly have benefitted from further scrutiny. The Greens have often proclaimed themselves to be champions of transparency and scrutiny, and their record is good. But not today, having cut a deal they’ve joined the Government in ramming the legislation through with only token further debate.
There was indeed no compelling reason to finalise the legislation today – other than the Labor Government’s desire for a political win at the end of the year. Maybe the Greens, battered by the May election result, want to close out the year on a self-proclaimed win as well.
The big question now is what happens next.
As so often is the case in politics and government, the devil is in the detail – in this case what is and what’s not set out in the legislation.
Will the Greens get dudded when the Government settled the implementation policy and Minister Watt finally tables the National Environmental Standards? That we can almost be assured of.
Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and, earlier, a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is also known as the "Transparency Warrior."