Fixing Australia’s broken environment laws hold key to productivity, ex-treasury head says | Australian politics

The repair of laws against the protection of the country’s environment is the most important reform that the Albanian government can continue to stimulate productivity, and holds the key to achieving climatic and housing objectives, according to the former Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry.

Henry, now president of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation, will use a speech for the National Press Club as a rallying cry in the Federal Parliament to finally agree on a rewriting of the Environmental Protection Act and the Conservation of Biodiversity of the Quarter.

“We have had all the criticisms we need. We have all had our say. It is now in Parliament. Let’s do this,” Henry will say in Wednesday’s speech, according to extracts from Guardian Australia.

The Minister of the Environment, Murray Watt, designs a new package of federal laws on nature after Anthony Albanese set aside the previous version before the elections in the midst of the miners’ lobbying and the government of Western Australia.

In the speech, Henry will express the reform of the EPBC as essential to stimulate productivity – the economic priority of the second mandate of work.

“The reform of our victims environmental laws is an obvious lever to improve resilience and raise the growth of moribund productivity. And reforms make it possible to considerably reduce the cost of the government, ”he said.

“Of course, I can think of other reforms to stimulate productivity. Some even more difficult, although not more important. And if we cannot carry out the reform of environmental law, we should stop dreaming of more difficult options. ”

Henry is best known as the author of the 2010 tax magazine for the Rudd government, which has inspired the tax on short-term supervisors of mines.

He also recommended a carbon price as the least economically damaging method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The idea of a carbon price was again put on the agenda while the productivity committee examines the options to reduce the cost of hitting climatic targets.

In the submissions to the investigation, the Australian Union Syndicates Council said that the Commission should examine “carbon pricing policies” for various parties of the economy, and the Australian Energy Council requested the modeling of a carbon price to help clarify emissions reduction policies.

With most large -scale infrastructure developments requiring approval under the EPBC law, renewable energy projects to housing housing, Henry will argue that the government will not manage to achieve its zero net objectives by 2050 and build houses of 1.2 m by 2030 without national high quality national laws.

“These projects, whether heaps, solar farms, transmission lines, new housing developments, terrestrial carbon sequestration projects, new and improved transport corridors or critical minerals for extraction and processing of factories, must be delivered quickly and effectively,” said Henry.

“And they must be delivered in a way that not only protects, but restores nature.”

The prospects for the housing objective of work are already under renewed control after the Treasury officials conceded it “will not be met” in the advice to Jim Chalmers accidentally published at ABC and published this week.

The government has recommended to establish a federal environmental protection agency, but Watt has still decided to reach its powers.

The fate of the main recommendation of Graeme Samuel’s examination of the EPBC law – national environmental standards – is not clear because the Minister continues the consultation with industry and green groups.

However, Watt pointed out the desire to continue the reforms in a single package, rather than in several slices such as attempted by its predecessor, Tanya Plibersek.

In discourse, Henry will support a rationalized approach before describing what he considers the key elements of new laws on nature.

These include specific changes to preserve questions of national environmental importance, a series of national standards, an independent EPA and “authentic cooperation” between the Commonwealth, the State and the Territories.

Henry will also call to rethink the way in which the principle of ecologically sustainable development (ESD) is applied under federal laws on nature.

“It cannot be applied to the project project, in the manner provided by the law on the application of the project by the ESD project is simply crazy,” he said.

“It is time that we stop claiming that we have cognitive discipline to choose a lasting balance from the economic, social and environmental objectives, project project.”