Govt to pass last-minute environment deal with Greens support
Australia’s peak farming advocacy group does not support the deal made by Labor and the Greens to pass revamped nature laws.
Farmers are “bitterly disappointed” over Labor’s deal with the Greens to pass its revamped nature laws, National Farmers’ Federation president Hamish McIntyre says.
Ahead of the final parliamentary sitting day of the year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, alongside Environment Minister Murray Watt, announced under the new deal, the bill would pass the Senate on Thursday.
The key measures in the government’s amended bill include:
– An Australian-first national environment protection agency
– Stronger independent regulation with a clear focus on ensuring better compliance with and stronger enforcement of environmental laws
– National environmental standards to ensure clear, strong guidelines
– Higher penalties for breaches of environmental law
– Removing the exemption for high risk land clearing and regional forestry agreements
Mr McIntyre said the NFF did not support the deal.
“Our key concern is the announcement of ‘closer controls’ of ‘high risk land clearing’,” Mr McIntyre said.
“The specifics of this remain unclear, and we are urgently calling for clarity.
“The introduction of reduced regrowth thresholds to the long-established ‘continuing use’ provision will promote poor environmental outcomes and increase bushfire risk.
“It will interfere with routine vegetation management of regrowth to prevent bushfires, keep land productive, and manage weeds.”
Other measures include the government establishing a $300m forestry growth fund to deliver a bigger forestry industry, while the government will maintain federal approval of water triggers on coal and gas projects.
“This is actually a massive vote of confidence in the forestry sector moving forward,” Mr Watt said.
“The reality is that we are increasingly moving towards plantation timber as the source of most of our timber needs nationally, and we want to make sure that workers in those industries seize those new opportunities of the future.”
Greens leader Larissa Waters said its pressure had “made this bill better than the weak laws we have now”, but that “Labor has again refused to take meaningful climate action”.
“The Greens stopped Labor’s fast-tracking of coal and gas, but their straight up refusal to add climate to these laws shows Labor puts coal and gas corporate profits ahead of the millions of people who want to protect the climate,” she said.
Australian Conservation Foundation chief executive Kelly O’Shannassy said “the wider protection for forests, the introduction of a national EPA and the removal of the possibility that coal and gas projects will be fast tracked”.
“Exemptions and loopholes that have facilitated the destruction of forests have been a shameful feature of this law for quarter of a century. Today, those loopholes will be closed,” Ms O’Shannassy said.
Mr Albanese said the Coalition had put forward a range of amendments, but the final letters for the Coalition had “and there are other things to come”.
“Parliament stops today. I hope the Coalition supports this today, because it’s something everyone should support,” he said.
For business, the reforms include a new streamlined assessment pathways to significantly reduce the timeframe for approvals and to remove duplications for assessment and approval of projects.
More to come
