Public should be given a greater say on development plans, experts say

Environmental lawyers and academics have called for a comprehensive rethink on how Australia’s natural landscapes are protected, warning that short-term politics is infecting decision-making and suggesting that the public be given a greater say on development plans.

The Australian Panel of Experts on Environmental Law has launched a blueprint for a new generation of environment laws and the creation of independent agencies with the power and authority to ensure they are enforced. The panel of 14 senior legal figures says this is motivated by the need to systematically address ecological challenges including falling biodiversity, the degradation of productive rural land, the intensification of coastal and city development and the threat of climate change.

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Murray Wilcox QC, a former federal court judge, said the blueprint was a serious attempt to improve a system that was shutting the public out of the decision-making process and failing to properly assess the impact of large-scale development proposals.

“We found the standard of management of the environment is poor because everything is made into a political issue,” Wilcox said. “Nothing happens until it becomes desperate.

“We need a non-political body of significant prestige to report on what is happening and have the discretion to act.”

The legal review, developed over several years and quietly released in 2017, resulted in 57 recommendations. It was suggested by the Places You Love alliance, a collection of about 40 environmental groups that was created to counter a failed bid to set up a “one-stop shop” for environmental approvals by leaving it to the states. The panel undertook the work on the understanding it would be independent and not a piece of activism.

Its work helped inform a motion passed by 250 Labor branches calling on the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, to put stronger national environmental laws and the introduction of an independent watchdog at the centre of his election pitch.

The Australian Panel of Experts on Environmental Law convener, Rob Fowler, an environmental lawyer for more than 40 years and adjunct professor at the University of South Australia, said a key finding was that cooperative federalism – different tiers of government working together to solve common problems – had not worked in protecting the environment.

“It’s slow-moving, unwieldy and leads to compromised outcomes,” he said.

Fowler said devolving responsibility for environmental protection to the states had been popular with politicians, having been proposed by both the Gillard Labor government and the Coalition under Tony Abbott, but not the public. The 2014 constitutional values survey conducted by Griffith University found nearly 45% of respondents believed Canberra should be solely responsible for protecting the environment. Just 16% said it should be left to the states.

He said the body of expert opinion was strongly in favour of the commonwealth taking responsibility. The panel believed a future government should introduce a mechanism that required states to act in line with plans and strategies developed by a commonwealth environment commission. If they failed to comply, they could be overridden.

Wilcox, who before becoming a judge was president of the Australian Conservation Foundation from 1979 to 1984, said creating an environment commission was the panel’s most important recommendation, likening it to the Reserve Bank. “It hopefully would involve people of considerable ability and achievement,” he said.

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It would develop both national strategies and regional plans to protect biodiversity, and oversee a system of environmental data monitoring, collection, auditing and reporting. Where it did not do the monitoring itself, it would be required to ensure the work was done to a higher standard than currently, backed by federal funding.

Wilcox said the national Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which was introduced by the Howard government in 1999, was an advance at the time but now “well and truly out of date”.

The environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, has said the existing act continues to be the best mechanism for the federal government to protect the most important and sensitive matters. The opposition environment spokesman, Tony Burke, said the push to introduce national laws would be considered at ALP conference this year, and he was consulting about updating the act.

Wilcox said the public should have a greater say in response to developments. He said state planning systems were good at handling small neighbourhood development problems but larger proposals tended to be “waved through by governments mesmerised by the corporate dollars”.

He cited the hotel and casino complex being developed at Barangaroo in Sydney. “Anything that did come out about that was released for political reasons. That story just applies again and again and again.

“If you believe in a democracy, then you believe ordinary people should be encouraged to get in and have a say, and that’s not the case at the moment. If anything the opposite is the case.”