Explainer: Labor concedes native forest protections, fossil fuel carveout on EPBC reforms
After the Albanese government sidelined the Coalition on its environmental bill negotiations, it made several key concessions to the Greens to ensure the legislation’s passage through the Senate.
The Albanese government has sealed a deal with the Greens to pass its long-awaited overhaul of the nation’s environment laws, which seek to strengthen environmental protections and speed up housing, renewable and critical mineral projects.
After months of negotiations with the Opposition and the crossbench on almost 1500 pages of legislation put before the parliament, Labor on Wednesday opted to offer key concessions on native forest protections and fossil fuel carveouts to the Greens in order to secure passage of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act reforms through the Senate.
Both sides of politics have acknowledged Australia’s current laws, which have remained largely unchanged since they were written more than two decades ago, required a major overhaul and were not fit for purpose.
The government’s once-in-a-generation reforms are set to deliver a new independent regulator – the National Environmental Protection Agency – to focus on enforcement and compliance with environmental laws, which will come into effect on July 1 next year.
The legislation also introduces new national environmental standards, set to carry higher penalties and protection orders for significant breaches of environmental laws.
However as part of concessions made to the Greens to get the laws passed through the Senate, where Labor does not hold a majority, an exemption for high-risk land clearing and regional forest agreements would be scrapped from the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act in 18 months time.
The move, which drew the ire of farmers and forestry groups operating under regional forest agreements in NSW, Queensland and Tasmania, had the deal sweetened somewhat with the provision of a $300m forestry fund.
On the other side of the ledger, the overhaul promises to speed up project approval processes by introducing a streamlined assessment pathway and a sweeping ministerial “national interest” power to sign off on projects that fail environmental checks.
However, under the deal signed with the minor party, coal and gas projects would be carved out from both the streamlined approval pathway and the national interest power, while the so-called “water trigger” would remain in the hands of the federal minister.
After the Albanese government sidelined the Coalition from negotiations – the preferred partner of industry and business in negotiations on the reforms – Labor confirmed it would look at several key concerns held by business groups.
Specifically, the government vowed to clarify the definition of “unacceptable impacts” which could be used by a minister to kill off projects before they are fully assessed, and a clause which requires projects to have a “net gain” for the environment.
It also promised restrictions on powers held by the NEPA to hand down environmental protection orders.
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