Labor accused of broken promise after delaying laws to address Australia's disappearance crisis | eNviroNmeNt

The Albanian government has further delayed a commitment to rewrite national environmental laws in Australia.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said the government would introduce legislation in the coming weeks to create two previously announced bodies, an environmental protection agency and a second organization called Environment Information Australia, which would provide public data on ecosystems, plants and animals.

But a commitment to introduce a raft of laws to tackle Australia's extinction crisis, including new national environmental standards against which development proposals would be assessed, has been pushed back to an unspecified date.

At a media briefing on Tuesday, Plibersek said the announcement of legislation for a national EPA to be known as Environment Protection Australia was a historic day for the environment.

But it did not guarantee that the broader package of environmental laws, including national standards, would be introduced before the next election. They will be introduced when they are ready, she said.

The delay in wider reforms sparked accusations that the government is failing to deliver on the comprehensive environmental reform it announced in 2022. Greens environment spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young accused Labor of breaking a promise.

James Trezise, ​​director of the non-profit Biodiversity Council, said the delay was a significant step back from what the Albanian government had committed to in its positive nature plan.

Nature in Australia is in crisis and cannot afford delays in the comprehensive reforms needed to fix our weak and broken environmental laws, he said.

Plibersek had initially promised to introduce new laws first in draft form for consultation and then to parliament by last year.

Speaking in 2022, she said multiple reviews had shown that the existing law, the Law on Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation, was broken. It promised changes in 2023 that would be better for business and the environment, including the introduction of national environmental standards, faster decision-making and improved trust and integrity in the system.

But the plans have faced a public backlash by Western Australian Labor Premier Roger Cookand states powerful mining and resource industries.

On Tuesday, Plibersek said splitting up the changes would allow more time for consultation and to make sure we get it right.

When I first announced the positive nature plan, I said it would take some cooperation, compromise and common sense to make it happen. That's exactly how she was approaching the presentation, she said.

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Plibersek said the EPA legislation would create an agency with strong new powers to better protect nature, including the ability to issue environmental protection orders effectively stop-work orders. She said the laws would allow the EPA to act as a delegate for the minister and make decisions on whether development proposals have gone ahead.

The agency would initially focus on cracking down on illegal land clearing and enforcing environmental compensation conditions. A government audit found that around one in seven developments approved under existing laws may be in breach of compensation conditions that required some form of compensation in exchange for being allowed to damage nature.

Plibersek said the EPA chief would be an independent statutory appointment similar to the Australian federal police commissioner to ensure no government could interfere with the new agencies' important enforcement work. The agency would initially be under the environment department before becoming an independent statutory authority in July 2025.

Plibersek said the second new body, Environment Information Australia, would publish a national state of the environment report every two years. Its main role would be to provide up-to-date information on Australia's environment to assist the public and business.

The Coalition's environment spokesman, Jonathon Duniam, said the announcement showed Plibersek had failed as environment minister, describing it as creating a new bureaucracy with no new laws to administer.

Hanson-Young said the changes did not go far enough to protect nature and accused the government of surrendering to a two-year campaign by the mining industry and big developers. She said the government was engaged in piecemeal fighting when it had promised a full package of environmental law reform.

Labor promised to fix Australia's broken environmental laws, but without stopping native deforestation and fossil fuel expansion, the government will fail to protect our planet and fail to keep its promise to the Australian people, she said.

Conservation groups called on the government to deliver the full reform package promised before the election and expressed frustration at the delays.

Australian Conservation Foundation chief executive Kelly OShanassy said the promised measures to tackle illegal land clearing and the establishment of an EPA were welcome and necessary, but without comprehensive reform, the agency would be implementing a flawed law and ineffective that still needs serious surgery.

Environmental groups are expected to voice their concerns about the changes at a Senate inquiry into the extinction crisis on Wednesday.