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By Keira Wright and Paul-Alain Hunt
Australia plans to overhaul national environmental laws to better protect nature, while speeding up approvals for major projects in sectors including natural gas, renewable energy and mining.
On Thursday, the center-left Labor government will introduce long-awaited legislation to Parliament to amend the widely criticized Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1991. A previous effort saw proposed “Nature Positive” laws shelved in February, prior to the nation’s May election.
Opposition parties, whose support will be needed to pass the bill through the Senate, or upper house, where Labor doesn’t have a majority, have sought changes to the plans and negotiations are likely in the period ahead.
If passed, the new bill would establish a country-wide Environmental Protection Authority, with the ability to fine lawbreakers as much as A$825 million ($544 million). The agency would operate concurrently with separate bodies by the same name in Australia’s eight states and territories.
The laws would also create national standards to guide departmental decision-making and overhaul the way carbon offsets are implemented and used.
“We want to be able to reduce the time it takes to get approvals from decades to years, and years to months, all at the same time as making sure that we meet very strong national environmental standards,” Environment Minister Murray Watt said this week, according to a transcript.
Policymakers, environmentalists and industry have all said the existing EPBC Act is flawed and badly outdated. An independent study of the EPBC Act, known as the Samuel Review, found that without a major overhaul industry would suffer significant delays, while doing little to stem environmental decline.
The slow processing of applications has also hampered efforts to generate more renewable energy, as the nation seeks to replace aging and unreliable coal-fired power generation.
Read More: Renewables Investors Say Australia’s Grid Delays Hamper Outlays
Watt hopes to pass the legislation before the end of the year. While Labor holds a huge majority in the lower house of Parliament after its landslide election victory, it will need support from the center-right Liberal-National coalition or the left-wing Greens to clear the Senate.
Extracts of the legislation revealed a provision that would allow the government to approve projects at odds with environment protection laws if deemed in the “national interest,” The Australian Financial Review reported Monday.
That triggered a backlash from climate groups and the Greens, which has lobbied for stronger environmental protections in the legislation. The coalition, meanwhile, has argued the laws go too far favoring the environment and are not in the interests of the economy.
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