Murray river wetlands, floodplains and groundwater systems will be removed from a list of threatened ecological communities, amid government claims the protections posed a “bureaucratic nightmare”.

Australia’s lower house has passed two motions to strike down pre-election listings of threatened ecological communities under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. One relates to the Murray and associated wetlands, floodplains and groundwater systems, from the junction with the Darling river to the sea. The other concerns the wetlands and inner floodplains of the Macquarie marshes in New South Wales.

The listings would have required the federal environment minister to assess any proposed activities that were likely to have a significant ecological impact, such as large new developments, works or infrastructure. Coalition MPs argued the listings, made on 5 August just before the election, added an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.

But the Greens’ deputy leader, Adam Bandt, described the removal of the listings as “a sneak attack on the environment and the health of our most important river at the behest of the big irrigators”. Conservationists denounced it as a “poor decision driven by politics, not science”.

Tony Pasin, the Liberal member for Barker in South Australia, moved the Murray river disallowance motion. He said the Rudd government imposed the protections “with its final breath” and the then environment minister, Mark Butler, “blindly signed off on the listings the day before the caretaker period began”.

Pasin said Labor ignored the environmental protections already in place and failed to consider the negative impacts on river communities and “the absolutely unnecessary increase in red and green tape”.

“I take comfort in the knowledge that the Coalition stands shoulder to shoulder with the National Irrigators Council in opposing these listings. When Labor’s rather underhanded ploy was revealed, the council called on federal members representing the Murray-Darling basin to disallow this ‘sneaky’ listing of the Murray river and Macquarie marshes as critically endangered. Today I am very happy to oblige their request,” Pasin said.

The act allows the environment minister to add to the list of threatened ecological communities, but such listings can be struck down through a disallowance motion passed by either house of federal parliament. This means the removal of the two listings does not need approval from the Senate where Labor and the Greens maintain a majority until mid next year.

The Macquarie marshes listing, within the Macquarie-Castlereagh region in central-west NSW, was designed to protect “one of the largest freshwater systems in the Murray-Darling basin and one of the most important wetlands in Australia”, according to an Environment Department information sheet.

The Nationals MP for Parkes, Mark Coulton, said the former government had added another layer of bureaucracy on a significant area of western NSW for no real environmental benefit.

The Australian Conservation Foundation characterised the listing for the Murray river as “like an insurance policy” safeguarding a vital piece of infrastructure that supported millions of Australians and hundreds of thousands of businesses.

The foundation’s healthy ecosystems program manager, Jonathan La Nauze, said a few wet seasons had helped avert an ecological disaster but the Murray river was still far from healthy and needed legal protection.

“To say the listing is an impost on the economy is misleading. The listing applies only to activities that would have a significant impact on the whole ecosystem – big constructions, new water diversions, mines and similar projects. It does not affect the way most farmers run their farms,” La Nauze said.

“In fact the listing is an important safeguard for farming businesses against the potential impacts of mining and other big resource extraction projects. The assessment by the independent threatened species scientific committee that underpins the ‘critically endangered’ listing is a solid piece of work that was produced over four-and-a-half years. The committee scoured more than 400 scientific papers and reports, and concluded there was ‘overwhelming evidence’ to support the listing.”