The failure of tree clearing reforms in Queensland is the only significant delay in Australia’s conservation plan for the Great Barrier Reef, says a progress report by the state and federal governments.

But the Queensland environment minister, Steven Miles, has declared the roadblock on a “huge” reform for the reef – coupled with a historic bleaching event that killed nearly a quarter of its coral – may lead Unesco to reconsider an “in danger” listing.

The report, released on Wednesday ahead of Australia’s formal update to Unesco in December, originally listed legislative changes to “protect remnant and high value regrowth native vegetation” as “on track/under way”.

It has been revised to include a note that “amendments to the Vegetation Management Act 1999 failed to pass in the Queensland parliament” and that “the status of this action will be reflected in future status reports as significantly delayed”.

The Labor government is lobbying Unesco for more time to pass laws to stop broadscale clearing – a source of both carbon emissions and runoff pollution to the reef – vowing to campaign for re-election on the issue.

Miles said the main game for state Labor was winning the next election and getting the clearing laws past the Liberal National party and crossbenchers who voted them down.

“At the end of the day the failure of Queensland and Australia to implement this component of the plan rests with the Queensland LNP,” Miles said.



That failure, “combined with the bleaching event, I think gives justification for the NGOs to be out there campaigning, and for countries to start expressing concern”.

“This is the start of the ramifications that we said would come and we’ll do our best to try and keep a lid on it and that’s why Jackie [Trad, the deputy premier] was there in Paris [meeting Unesco officials] this week,” Miles said.

“But we said this would happen. [The LNP] said it wouldn’t. Now it’s happening.”

In a joint foreword to the progress report which contained no mention of the clearing issue, the federal environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, and Miles flagged “some major achievements” in the year since Unesco spared Australia an embarrassing “in danger” listing for the reef.

These included legislation to ban dumping capital dredge spoil in the reef’s world heritage waters, limit port developments and major capital dredging outside “four priority ports”.

But conservation groups criticised the report for failing to address either the reef’s key threat in climate change, or an estimated $6bn shortfall in funding to cut water pollution, as well as glossing over the clearing issue.

Penelope Wensley, the former Queensland governor and chairman of the Reef 2050 advisory committee, called for urgency in establishing a program to measure how effective interventions on reef health were, as well as “clearer communication” to industry about cutting water pollution.

Miles and Frydenberg said in the report: “We recognise that this is the first 18 months of a 35-year plan and that it will take time to see results from our current actions.

“There is no single tool that will deliver the necessary outcomes for the reef and we will need to utilise everything at our disposal and do it in a more coordinated and targeted way.”

In an interview with the ABCc Frydenberg stopped short of calling for the passage of state tree clearing laws, saying it had been a “vexed” matter of debate.

Miles said clearing was of “huge” significance for reef conservation “both on credibility on climate change but also the direct impacts; it straddles both the immediate threat and the longer term climate change threat”.



It was also cost effective because it was a prohibition, not something requiring active investment.

“In fact, it’s crazy you have both governments spending money to revegetate riverbanks, while on the other hand you have laws that allow people to be clearing trees in some cases on the same riverbanks,” Miles said.

“It effectively has you running against your investment and your strategy.”

A WWF spokesman, Sean Hoobin, said the report ignored “the $8.2bn elephant in the room”: the cost of cutting water pollution as estimated in a state government-commissioned expert report in August.

State and federal commitments to reef conservation over the next decade total $2bn.

Hoobin said the $6bn-plus funding shortfall and the defeat of clearing reforms meant “Australia’s failures on the reef are now hanging over the world heritage process like a sword of Damocles”.

The world heritage committee had effectively put Australia “on probation” over the reef and “made it clear Australia must implement all its commitments and the reef plan must be backed by ‘adequate and sustained, financing’ ”, Hoobin said.

“Australia now risks being hauled back before the world heritage committee meeting in 2017 for a ‘please explain’ unless there is a significant turnaround in the next few months.”

An Australian marine conservation society spokeswoman, Cherry Muddle, said Frydenberg’s failure to publicly state support for clearing reforms came despite the world heritage committee being “especially concerned about the clearing of native vegetation in Queensland” leading to increased pollution of reef waters.

Shani Tager, the Australia Pacific reef campaigner for Greenpeace, said it was “bizarre” for the report to claim “Australia has made good progress on protecting the reef during a period in which more than 20% of the Great Barrier Reef’s coral was killed”.

“We need to see more progress in preventing land clearing in Queensland, but ultimately we have to stop approving new coalmines because the mining and burning of coal is one the main drivers of the bleaching events that damaged the reef earlier this year,” she said.

Of 151 actions laid out in the Reef 2050 plan which averted an “in danger” listing for the reef last year by the UN’s world heritage committee, only three others have been delayed, the report says.

These included moves to force state and local planning schemes to consider inter-generational community benefits from the reef, and a plan to vet every cargo ship passing through reef waters to a tougher safety standard.

The deadline for a new web-based register of reef management plans from all government agencies was also pushed back to December “due to competing priorities”.

In the report Wensley said the bleaching event this year had “reinforced the committee’s advice that urgency is required to build resilience and promote recovery”.

“While we recognise there have been some significant achievements over the first 12 months of the plan, committee members are agreed that we need to accelerate action in a number of key areas to realise more gains,” she said.

There was a “particular emphasis” on pushing forward an integrated monitoring and reporting program to measure how effective interventions were.

The committee also agreed “clearer communication about how all industries and sectors can contribute to improved water quality is needed”.