Victoria’s Healesville Sanctuary is helping to protect and restore the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot which is predicted to be extinct within five years.
With only 50 known to be left in the wild, a major breeding program aims to release up to 20 pairs of the migratory birds annually.
It’s just one of several threatened species programs supported by the sanctuary near Melbourne, which attracts about 400,000 people every year – many of them schoolchildren – who visit to learn about and experience nature.
It’s a case study that the author of the 2021 review into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, Graeme Samuel, keeps front of mind.
Because the “pure politics” of the debate, he says, obscures what the conversation is about – nature – and its intrinsic value to our communities.
And it’s not about environment or economy. It’s both.
The EPBC Act, the latest iteration of which has just hit the federal parliament, touches on everything from “productivity to renewable energy, mining, nature and climate goals, the housing crisis, cultural heritage, and resources and energy security”.
It’s a big moment, or it could be.
As former Treasury secretary Ken Henry has said, with “glistening ambition” Australia can “build an efficient, jobs-rich, globally competitive, high-productivity, low-emissions nature-rich economy”.
But if you want to see a case study of politics in action, look no further than nature law reform, or the lack of it.
The last significant federal reform in this space happened under the Howard government a full quarter of a century ago.
That version of the act is undeniably no longer fit for purpose in the face of massive loss of plants and animals and historically significant technological and industrial change.
Successive reports have detailed catastrophic loss of species that is “ongoing and accelerating”. Meanwhile, business describes cumbersome environmental regulation as “the new enemy of progress”.
“Without faster project approvals we will never meet our net zero ambitions, for instance,” says Bran Black, the CEO of the Business Council of Australia.
It’s threading those two needles simultaneously that has been the problem.
And inevitably, that has led to a long-running game of political point-scoring.
It’s a fine playing field but there are no winners.
It will be five years in January since Samuel delivered his review of the act, commissioned by then environment minister Sussan Ley under the Morrison government.
At the time, she indicated qualified acceptance of the review recommendations, and released a pathway for reform which didn’t progress due to the 2022 change of government.
Coming in with high expectations from those who care about the natural environment, the Albanese government subsequently released its ill-fated “nature positive plan”, also based on Samuel’s report. That legislative package was shelved before the 2025 election, in a definitive broken promise by Labor following pressure from business interests in Western Australia.
Now it’s a question of whether Labor, the Coalition and the Greens can come up with a compromise to deliver what Samuel describes as a “massive leap forward for nature”, and for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Instead of outright rejecting the legislation or seeking to delay progress by breaking it into separate bills which she opposed during the last parliament, Ley could take the package as a win.
She started it, after all.
And the Greens, always looking for the moral high ground, will need to apply some cost-benefit analysis to opposing a bill that’s undoubtedly a vast improvement on what currently exists after a five-year process.
I hate to say it, but 80% is probably about as good as it’s going to get.
The absence of an explicit climate trigger is problematic, however new national environmental standards would require development proposals to explicitly consider climate impact.
Provisions around offsets have been tightened so they can’t be used unless every attempt has been made to mitigate or avoid damage to nature. Meanwhile, the bill enables more certainty for business for more efficient and effective decision-making.
All of these things warrant careful analysis to make sure they’re as watertight as they can be. Crossbenchers are rightly critical of being landed with a 1,500-page bill this week for a likely House vote next week.
It has been five years; the government should at least allow time and scope for constructive amendments that make the law better.
And the minister should have to convince the Australian people – not just other parliamentarians – that the “national interest” provision not only won’t but can’t be misused to give the green light to nature-wrecking projects, or indeed, the other way around.
Former industry minister Ed Husic is right to flag that ministerial discretion to override decisions could be a back door to open-slather development in the hands of a future government.
Another Juukan Gorge, anyone?
“We’ll do the right thing,” won’t wash in the Trump era.
There’s no such thing as a perfect legislative solution. It’s about finding one that’s workable – for the community, for the economy and for nature.
And, as Samuel rightly says, for our kids.
