New National Environmental Standards: Protesters targeted in major green law shake-up
Green activists face being prevented from holding up major projects through repeated challenges over minor procedural and red tape management, under a major shake-up proposed from environmental laws.
QLD News
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GREEN activists would be prevented from holding up major projects by repeated challenges over minor procedural and red tape management, under a major shake-up proposed from environmental laws.
The changes would have been able to prevent 13 years of delays to the New Acland mine stage 3, but still allow challenges over dangerous environmental outcomes.
New National Environmental Standards would also be set up, with the state government’s responsible for administering them, in a drastic bid to reduce duplication and speed up decisions on project applications.
Under a scathing review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, Graeme Samuel found the laws were “slow, complex to navigate and costly to business”.
“Slow and cumbersome regulation results in significant additional costs for business, with little appreciable benefit for the environment,” he said.
It also found there were problems with legal challenges being used to delay projects through the courts and drive up costs to businesses.
“Industry is very concerned about the delay to projects that can arise from politically-motivated legal challenges,” he said.
Mr Samuel said just who could challenge a project should not be limited, as courts could already vet vexatious litigants.
Instead he said applicants should have to prove they had an arguable case “or that the case raises matters of exceptional public importance” before the matter can proceed to the courts.
“Legal challenges should be limited to matters of outcome, not process,” he said.
Environment Minister Sussan Ley said the New Acland mine was a key example of where the current system was holding up major projects.
She said issues there had been “hugely problematic” and “procedural challenges have had an enormous impact”.
Under the new National Environmental Standards (NES), to be developed in coming months, state’s would have to seek accreditation to meet the standards and take care of the majority of approvals.
The Federal Government would then be able to step in if there was a “systematic failure” of a State Government to adhere to the standards, if there was a project of particular significance or if it was on Commonwealth land.
A bilateral agreement would have to be set up with each state for the streamlining and NES to be adopted.
The changes would have been able to prevent 13 years of delays to the New Acland mine stage 3, but still allow challenges over dangerous environmental outcomes.
New National Environmental Standards would also be set up, with the state government’s responsible for administering them, in a drastic bid to reduce duplication and speed up decisions on project applications.
Under a scathing review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, Graeme Samuel found the laws were “slow, complex to navigate and costly to business”.