Environment Groups National Summit on the threats to environmental laws

Environment Groups National Summit on the threats to environmental laws
Canberra 17th May 2012
Communique

Environment groups from across Australia met today in Canberra to challenge recent attacks
on Federal and State environmental protection measures.

We are alarmed at this attack on our environment protection laws. These laws protect our
way of life, they protect the environment which gives us clean air, clean water, protect
threatened species and the environmental values that are important to all Australians.
None of us are untouched by these threats to our land water communities and wild places
and none of us is willing to allow to be taken from us that which makes our lives meaningful,
beautiful and important. We represent a substantial cross-section of Australian society and
will inform and mobilise our communities.

We support measures that can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of environmental
regulation, and reject the concept of “green tape” as an industry-based construct, a Trojan
horse that is designed to achieve the winding back of almost 40 years of hard fought
environmental protection measures for short–term economic gain. It is a matter of grave
disappointment that our political leaders, sitting in COAG, have blindly accepted this rhetoric
and acceded meekly to the demands of business and industry.
Environmental policies and laws must protect our special places and should result in their
protection, not loss. This protection must be underpinned by science and evidence based
measures. Decisions around the protection of these species should not be fast-tracked or
streamlined but given adequate time and funding to allow full consideration of all available
evidence and scientific data.

Reject the attack on environmental laws
Our organisations specifically urge the strengthening of our national environmental law, the
Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (the EPBC Act). The Hawke
Review of the Act proposed a reform package to streamline development balanced by better
environmental provisions and increased transparency, oversight and public participation. The
Government has rejected most of these “balancing” reforms, thereby ignoring the relevant
checks involved and placing the environment at greater risk than it is under the present Act.

Abandonment of the Commonwealth’s environmental approval powers
We express our steadfast opposition to the proposal by COAG to fast-track arrangements for
the accreditation by the Commonwealth of State approval processes by March 2013, which
would result in the “turning off” of our most important Federal environmental law, the EPBC
Act. We reject the underlying assumption on the part of COAG that the exercise by the
Commonwealth of its approval powers in relation to projects that involve matters of national
environmental significance constitutes “duplicative and cumbersome environmental
regulation”.

We urge the Commonwealth to retain this most important approval role as a means of
checking the unbridled pursuit of development at the State and Territory level, whilst also
maintaining its extensive international treaty obligations with respect to the Australian
environment. Our national environment values must be held in trust at a national level, and
not devolved to State and Territory Governments to make decisions on matters for which
they cannot have a national view. The Federal Government must not walk away from its
crucial role in protecting our environment.

We also hold deep reservations about proposals recently advanced by the Commonwealth
government outside COAG, in its response to the Hawke Review of the EPBC Act, to shift
the focus of its efforts under this Act to strategic assessment and regional plans, insofar as
this is intended to result in a substantial withdrawal by the Commonwealth from project-level
assessment and approval. Whilst we support robust strategic and regional planning to
address cumulative impacts, these processes cannot substitute for project-level assessment
and approval and believe the Commonwealth should reconsider its proposed approach.
“Streamlining” of State assessment and approval processes/ environmental standards
We have deep concerns about COAG’s proposals for States and Territories to propose
reform of their State assessment and approval processes for major projects for consideration
at the next COAG Business Advisory Forum later in 2012. In particular, we fear that the socalled
“streamlining” of such processes will amount in practice to a further weakening of
already inadequate assessment and approval processes within most States and Territories.
Similarly, we are sceptical of proposals advanced by COAG under its “deregulation” initiative
for the “improvement” of assessment processes for “low risk, low impact developments”,
which we believe is essentially code for the further dismantling of State and Territory
planning laws in order to meet the incessant demands of the property industry.
We also question the motives for, and the means by which, State and Territory governments
will pursue the COAG agreement for them to develop “environmental risk and outcomebased
standards” by 2012. Insofar as this might involve the substantial reform of existing
environmental standards of a different nature developed over many years, we believe that
any such process should be undertaken in an open and fully consultative manner. A 6-month
time-frame is not feasible for a proper process of review and reform of existing environmental
standards.

Dismantling of carbon reduction and energy efficiency schemes
We have grave concerns about proposals by COAG to “fast-track and rationalise policies and
programs that are not complementary to a carbon price”, particularly if such rationalisation is
based on a set of so called principles that were developed without public consultation, and
tenuous assumptions about the capacity of the carbon price mechanism to deliver adequate
carbon emissions reductions by itself by 2020. We call on the Taskforce established by
COAG to consult publicly on its proposals before any revised principles are submitted to
COAG.
A carbon pricing mechanism with weak targets should not be used to stifle or diminish other
efficient policies and programs that reduce emissions and which would make it easier for
Australia’s National target and scheme caps to be tightened faster than the carbon price
acting alone. The carbon price should be used to enhance climate action, rather than
constrain and crowd out these efforts.

A voice for the environment and the community

COAG has provided an exclusive avenue for consultation by governments on high level
policy agendas with one, privileged sector of the community, to the exclusion of the rest of
Australia’s civil society, through the establishment of the COAG Business Advisory Forum.
Given the secretive nature of COAG processes, this is an unprecedented and inappropriate
form of privileged access for the business sector. It can only result in the type of distorted
and inappropriate policy initiatives that are manifestly evident in the COAG response to the
first meeting of its Business Advisory Forum.
We call on the Prime Minister, as the Chair of COAG, to rectify this inequity immediately by
establishing a parallel COAG forum for key representatives of civil society.
We note that business leaders have not approached us to discuss their concerns and we
would welcome an opportunity to do so.

We give notice that we will not stand by as vested interests seek to do secret deals with the
Federal and State Governments to gut environmental protection measures at a time when
our environment needs more protection. If, as a consequence of the reforms proposed by
COAG, there is a dismantling of these measures, and we return to the situation that existed
in Australia several decades ago, we believe there will be an inevitable return to the trench
warfare style of environmental activism that was also widely practiced at that time. When
governments move to abandon the ”rule of law” with respect to environmental protection,
such responses from within the community are inevitable.
 
About us
This communique is supported by the following organisations:
• ACT Conservation Council
• Australian Conservation Foundation
• Australian Marine Conservation Society
• BirdLife Australia
• Cairns and Far North Environment Centre
• Conservation Council of SA
• EDO Victoria
• Environment Tasmania
• Environment Victoria
• Greenpeace Australia
• Humane Society International
• International Fund for Animal Welfare
• Invasive Species Council
• National Parks Association of NSW
• National Parks Australia Council
• Nature Conservation Council of NSW
• Queensland Conservation Council
• Total Environment Centre
• Tasmanian National Parks Association
• Victorian National Parks Association

APPENDIX: The losing battle for Australia’s environment
Every year we see further decline in the quality of Australia’s environment. We see forests
cleared and swathes of bush destroyed. We have seen vast grasslands and bush sacrificed
to urban expansion, mines and coal seam gas wells that poison our water and air. Water is
treated as though it wasn’t a precious and life giving resource. We are witnessing the
greatest extinction rate of mammals of any country in the world. We are losing species that
exist nowhere else on earth.
Every 5 years the Federal Government produces a national State of the Environment Report.
Every report says we are going backwards. Information, evidence and data are all regularly
ignored. The few successes and few changes we see are overwhelmed by our failures and
our indifference. Just this week, a report by WWF ranked Australia as the 7th worst polluter
on Earth (behind Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Denmark, the United States and Belgium - one spot
worse than in the last report in 2010).
We reject the notion that the problem we face is duplication and red/green tape. The problem
we face is the highest mammal extinction rate in the world, the worst per capita rate of
carbon emissions in the world, contaminated rivers and water, clearing of forests and bush,
declining soils, overfishing and a host of bad decisions made every day all over Australia that
benefit the few. Our environmental laws need strengthening and increased funding to combat
these threats, not gutting.