Minister to retain final say on controversial projects under Labor’s long-awaited nature laws | Australian politics

The environment minister will still be responsible for approving projects under new federal nature laws, after Labor rejected calls for a fully independent oversight body with full decision-making powers.

Maintaining ministerial decision-making powers meets a key demand from the Coalition and industry and is unopposed by the Greens.

But environmentalists have criticized this model, who believe that this model could allow promoters to exert pressure on the minister.

Environment Minister Murray Watt set out the powers of the Environment Protection Agency on Sunday, as part of a bill to rewrite the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act which is due to go before Parliament this week.

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Watt’s hopes of passing the laws before Christmas were dealt a blow last week after the Coalition and Greens criticized different aspects of the bills, denying Labor a clear path through the Senate and setting up a political fight in the final three sitting weeks of the year.

The Coalition says the laws are anti-business, while the Greens claim the opposite, accusing Watt of writing laws that have “the fingerprints of big business and mining companies everywhere.”

Speaking on Sky News on Sunday morning, Watt said the Government was willing to consider amendments but was adamant the overhaul would not collapse for the second time in 12 months.

“People should be under no illusions…we will pass these laws through Parliament,” Watt said. “The only question is how quickly we will do it and who we will do it with.”

One of the most controversial aspects of the reforms has been the scope of the promised federal environmental watchdog, with industry and environmentalists at odds over whether an independent agency – rather than the minister – should be responsible for approving projects.

Previously, the Minister of the Environment made decisions on projects either directly or through an official acting under delegated powers.

In practice, the minister personally studies only a small number of major applications, such as the extension of the northwest Woodside shelf and the Robbins Island wind farm. Ministry officials approve more than 90% of decisions.

The new regime will be largely the same, except that instead of delegating decisions to a ministerial bureaucrat, that responsibility will fall to civil servants in the new EPA.

Decisions made by the Minister will be based on advice from the EPA rather than that of departmental officials.

The new agency, which will be officially known as the National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA), will have other functions independent of the minister, including monitoring nature laws and monitoring compliance with project conditions.

“An independent NEPA will benefit from rigorous compliance and enforcement oversight to better protect our precious environment and ensure that those who seek to illegally destroy it pay a high price,” Watt said.

Australian Conservation Foundation acting chief executive Paul Sinclair was disappointed the proposed EPA was not fully independent.

The Peak Green group favored a model in which the minister established nature protection rules and then the EPA assessed projects against them.

“Independent decision-making is better for nature and better for business,” he said.

Greens environment spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said the EPA would become “another branch of government bureaucracy” if it did not have tough laws to enforce.

While a “climate trigger” that could block or restrict fossil fuel projects is officially no longer on the table, Hanson-Young signaled that the Greens were prepared to negotiate with Labor on other mechanisms to deal with climate impacts.

Under the new laws, developers of highly polluting projects would be required to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and how they plan to mitigate them as part of the application process.

But the laws would not require decision-makers to consider these potential climate impacts, meaning projects such as Woodside’s northwest shelf extension could still be approved under the new regime.

“They took the climate trigger off the table because they are doing orders from fossil fuel companies,” Hanson-Young said.

“Now, if we negotiate, the government will have to propose what it is prepared to do to protect the climate and protect our forests.”