Broadcaster says Coalition’s moves to stop ‘vigilantists’ from challenging federal environmental approvals ‘means we are not allowed to care’

The radio broadcaster Alan Jones is fronting a new advertising campaign against the Abbott government’s changes to environmental laws to stop “environmental saboteurs”, saying the laws “put at risk not just our environment but our very democracy”.



Jones urges people to contact their local member to protest against the changes to the Environmental Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act in ads that began running on Sky TV on Monday and were authorised by a spokeswoman for the Lock the Gate alliance.

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“I may live nowhere near the Liverpool plains or the Great Barrier Reef, but I sure as hell am concerned that they are protected,” Jones says. “The latest move by the Abbott government puts at risk not just our environment but our very democracy. It is quite simply unbelievable.

“This legislative restriction is divisive, it isolates us. It means we are not allowed to care.”

The government announced in August that it would try to repeal all of section 487 of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The move came in response to the federal court decision to overturn the approval for Adani’s proposed $16bn Carmichael coalmine in Queensland because the federal government had not considered all the relevant information.

The Abbott government insisted the changes to the law would stop only what it calls environmental “vigilantists” and “vandals” – the groups that brought the federal court challenge – and not farm groups.

But farming organisations believe they will also be denied standing to challenge federal environmental approvals in the court and this could stymie several planned challenges to federal approval of the controversial $1.2bn Shenhua Watermark coalmine on the fertile Liverpool plains of New South Wales, a mine also vehemently opposed by Jones.

Any person wanting to mount a challenge would have to prove they had been directly and personally adversely affected.

The changes are opposed by Labor and the Greens and appear unlikely to pass the Senate. A Senate committee is looking into the changes and will report in October.

The former federal court judge Murray Wilcox has told the inquiry that the changes would increase the time and cost of legal challenges but fail to achieve the government’s aim of stopping them.

Wilcox, who has 50 years of experience in environmental law, said the act was “working well” and the government’s case to change it was “gung ho and full of bluster” but ignored crucial facts.



“I suggest the committee recommend the bill not be adopted,” he said. “It will serve no useful purpose; on the contrary, it will complicate and prolong those few legal actions that are brought.”



Brandis said the government was repealing section 487 of the federal environmental legislation because it “provides a red carpet for radical activists who have a political, but not a legal, interest in a development to use aggressive litigation tactics to disrupt and sabotage important projects”.



The federal environment department said it would take six to eight weeks to reassess the Carmichael project after it emerged the environment minister, Greg Hunt, had not properly considered the mine’s impact on two vulnerable species, the yakka skink and the ornamental snake.

The Minerals Council of Australia has criticised the Adani decision in similar terms to the government. “The gaming of the environmental approvals processes by a handful of protest groups now borders on the farcical,” said its chief executive, Brendan Pearson. “The inevitable dividend from continuing green sabotage is fewer jobs, lower real wages and lower living standards.”

Before the Howard government changed the EPBC Act to insert the clarification about which groups had legal standing to bring challenges – the section the Abbott government now wants to remove – Wilcox said judges had already “recognised that people sometimes felt deeply about an administrative decision, including a decision regarding land use or development, even though it did not adversely affect their pockets; but the person thought the decision contrary to the public interest”.



The Howard government’s changes recognised this and “worked well”, according to Wilcox.

“As anticipated, the section has eliminated arguments about standing, with consequential savings in cost and time. As others have pointed out, section 487 has not opened any floodgates; only about one-half of one per cent of decisions under the EPBC Act have been subjected to an application for judicial review.

“After 15 years of successful operation, why now the fuss? Apparently because a respected north Queensland conservation organisation had the temerity to point out to the federal court (correctly) that the minister had made a decision approving Galilee basin coalmining without taking into account information (that his department held) about the possible effect of mining on two endangered reptile species.

“When this was pointed out, the minister very properly conceded that the omission rendered his decision legally invalid and, supported by the proposed miner (Adani), asked the court to make a consent order setting aside his decision, so that he could look at it again. What was so terrible about that? Is species extinction unimportant? If so, the biodiversity provisions should be removed from the EPBC Act.”

He said environmental groups only proceeded with challenges when advised they had a strong chance of success because of the danger that the could be ordered to pay costs.

“That is why environmental NGOs have such a high success rate in litigation. If there is a strong legal case, where is the public interest in preventing it being put before the court? Surely we all favour a system that encourages adherence to the law.”

“The bill is futile … It is a safe bet, if this bill is passed … the only change from the present situation will be that the parties, and so the courts, will spend time examining the details of the applicant’s association with the relevant issue or place. And people wonder why litigation is so expensive.”

A spokesman for Lock the Gate said the group had run a social media campaign to raise funding to put the ads to air, and had a series of advertisements planned to try to stop the legal changes.



Lock the Gate set up this page to crowdsource funding, specifically targeting federal politicians through Sky.

“With your help we can make sure each and every federal politician hears the powerful voice of Alan Jones blaring through their parliamentary offices this coming week, as they return for the first time after the parliamentary break,” the page said.



“By chipping in now, you will be asking them directly to stand up for communities and defend Australia from reckless coal and gas mining giants who are putting our nation at risk.

“All we’re asking for is a fair go, and the basic right to be heard in a court of law.”