Frustration grows over delayed release of review into Australia's environmental laws.

Extract from The Guardian

Endangered species

‘Questions naturally arise’ about review’s independence, environmental group says

Lisa Cox

Fri 17 Jul 2020 03.30 AEST

Interim report on Australia’s environmental laws was handed to minister Sussan Ley three weeks ago. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Environment groups are increasingly anxious and frustrated as they wait for the release of an interim report from a review of Australia’s national environmental laws.
The review’s chair, the former competition watchdog head Graeme Samuel, handed his report to the environment minister, Sussan Ley, almost three weeks ago.
It had been due for release shortly after that but the government pushed back its publication, which is now expected sometime next week.
“When the review was announced, Minister Ley was very clear that this was meant to be an independent report. But when the report is delayed by government, questions naturally arise about how independent that process is,” said Suzanne Milthorpe, the national environmental law campaign manager at the Wilderness Society.
“If they are serious about this, they should release it so that all Australians can see and engage with the findings of this report.”

The review of Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is a once-in-a-decade statutory requirement. It has the potential to shape policy for the next 10 years in an area that is highly politicised.
The interim report and its recommendations will inform the next period of public consultation before Samuel delivers a final report in October.
In submissions to the review, environmental and industry groups have put forward proposals that involve the development of national environmental standards.
They agree Australia’s environment is in decline, but they hold different views on what a set of national standards might look like.
Industry continues to advocate for reductions in environmental regulation, while conservationists have called for stronger protection and an independent national environmental authority.
Just this week, Australia’s oil and gas lobby, APPEA, called for regulatory reform, and in particular the cutting of so-called environmental “green tape”, to support economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Its chief executive, Andrew McConville, told Guardian Australia the organisation “broadly supports a focus on setting clear expectations for protection, rather than focusing on prescription, and this should be supported by all parties”.
“Setting clear expectations improves certainty for business, environmental groups and the community,” he said.
James Trezise of the Australian Conservation Foundation said a recent national audit office report that examined the assessment and approval of projects under the act had identified serious failures in governance.
That included findings that the government had been ineffective in managing risks to the environment and had failed to ensure developers were meeting the environmental conditions of their project approvals.
Trezise said reforms were needed to ensure Australia’s laws were better focused on delivering outcomes for the environment and that one way of achieving that was “through setting clear national standards” for environmental protection.

“The government has flagged an intention to rush through deregulation reform, but hasn’t outlined how it will actually address the significant environmental challenges Australia faces,” he said.
“Australians across the political spectrum care about our incredible wildlife. We need to have a national discussion across sectors about how to protect our environment and we can’t have that while the government sits on the interim report.”
A spokesman for Ley said it was appropriate the government had taken time to assess the contents of the report.
“The minister has consistently highlighted the need to ensure strong environmental protection and to ensure our environmental laws are delivering that outcome,” he said.
Reporting by Guardian Australia has examined systemic failings under the act. It has uncovered widespread problems, including major delays in the listing of threatened species and ecosystems; failure to develop, update and implement recovery plans for species and habitats threatened with extinction; failure to list key threats to species; and failure to protect important habitat.
Australia has the highest rate of mammalian extinction in the world and the government’s own State of the Environment report says threats are increasing and Australia’s environment has continued to decline.

“The State of the Environment evaluation stands and, obviously, the bushfires have made things worse,” said Helene Marsh, the chair of the threatened species scientific committee which advises the government on the listing of species under the act.
“I think we need more resources and we need to fund recovery in a much better way: more completely and more systematically.”
The committee has put forward several recommendations to the review, including that governments take a regional approach to the recovery of endangered species to improve coordination.
Last week, Ley made four additions to Australia’s list of threatened species and habitats. That included two first-time listings: the grey falcon, which was listed as vulnerable; and the Elderslie banksia scrub forest in Sydney, which was listed as critically endangered after a lengthy assessment process that began in 2011.
Two other species, the shy albatross and the wet tropics subspecies of the yellow-bellied glider, had their protection status upgraded from vulnerable to endangered.
Samantha Vine, the head of conservation at BirdLife Australia, said the list had become “a waiting room for extinction”.
“The fact we keep adding to the list and that very few species, once they are on the list, come off or move to a less threatened category shows we’re not doing enough,” she said.
But she said it was possible to change that.

“Strong laws can and do recover threatened species, sometimes with quite spectacular results.”