Keith Pitt says review of environmental laws must look at how to ‘streamline’ assessment processes for major projects

This article is more than 4 months old

This article is more than 4 months old

The federal minister for resources, water and northern Australia, Keith Pitt, says “cashed-up activists” should not be able to hold up developments that have been approved by a government agency “simply because they can afford to”.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Pitt said Australia had “some of the strongest environmental protections in the world” and the government had “no intention to change how strongly we protect the environment”. But he said a review of Australia’s environmental laws needed to consider how assessment processes could be “streamlined” for companies developing major projects.

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“For individual companies who are making investment decisions there needs to be consistency, particularly around the timeframes and how long particular approvals might take, regardless of whether that is local, state or federal government levels,” he said.

“It shouldn’t be up to cashed-up activists to be able to hold up particular projects for a decade, simply because they can afford to.”

Pitt’s comments follow the environment minister, Sussan Ley, saying last week the government was prepared to make changes to national environment laws before former consumer watchdog head Graeme Samuel completes an independent review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

The statutory review of the act occurs every 10 years. A draft report is due in June and the final report in October.

Ley has not indicated what, if any, changes to laws are under consideration, but the government has emphasised a desire to reduce the amount of bureaucracy for companies applying for environmental approval for large projects.

Australia has the highest rate of mammalian extinction in the world and a poor track record in taking steps such as registering critical habitat and recovery planning to protect threatened species.

Pitt did not specify which sections of the EPBC Act he believed needed reform. “I’ll leave those comments to Sussan,” he said. “In general terms we have some of the highest environmental standards in the world and they’ll be maintained.”

But he said businesses had consistently raised concerns about multiple layers of bureaucracy at state and federal levels and duplication of laws related to environmental assessments.

Pitt said Ben Morton, the assistant minister to the prime minister and cabinet, was examining “red and green tape” and “having discussions around the potential for bilateral agreements between the commonwealth and states”.

“I’m a practical, commonsense sort of guy,” Pitt said. “If you have an approval for a specific element which is exactly the same between the two levels of government, one would assume that you should be able to get that approval from both levels with the one application.”

At present, there are bilateral assessment agreements that allow proponents to prepare a single set of documentation for decision-makers at a state and federal level for some parts of the environmental assessment process.

But a recent draft productivity commission report on regulation of the resources sector states that developers continue to call for bilateral approval agreements, which would see state and territory decision-makers responsible for decisions under the EPBC Act, rather than the federal environment minister.

Pitt did not identify specific reforms he thought were necessary in this area and said he was “waiting for the outcomes of the review”.

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Cameron Holley, a professor of law at the University of New South Wales, said Australia’s environmental laws were quite strong on paper when it came to protecting matters of national environmental significance. But he added: “It comes down to implementation. The state-of-the-environment report is a good place to start and the trends are not good. It speaks to their effectiveness.”



The most recent state-of-the-environment report showed a downward trajectory for many species.

Peter Burnett, an honorary professor of law at the Australian National University, said it was difficult to compare the effectiveness of different systems of environmental law around the world. He said Australia’s laws were “strong on paper but they’re under-resourced and under-implemented so the outcome is they are not as strong on the ground”.

Burnett also said there was not enough detailed data and information collected on Australia’s environment.

“When you look at the general reports [such as the state-of-the-environment report], looking at the big picture, you can see we’re not heading in the right direction,” he said. “But often we don’t have the detailed information to say that a particular decision contributed to a certain loss.”

James Trezise, of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said Australia led the world on mammal extinctions and “all our environmental indicators are heading downwards”.

“Our environment laws have fundamentally failed and Australia needs much stronger environmental protections if we are going to avert the worst of a growing climate and extinction crisis.”