Humane World for Animals Australia says the opportunity to deliver the legislative tools required to turn around Australia's nature crisis must not be squandered in reform of Australia's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.
Humane World for Animals Australia's Campaign Director, Nicola Beynon, was one of the negotiators of the original EPBC Act in June 1999 and has spent 26 years working with the legislation to protect species and their habitats from destruction and exploitation. Ms Beynon said emerging details of the planned reform indicate potential in the government's intent, but grave concerns arise in the detail.
"The strength of the EPBC Act is that it has vested power for Matters of National Environmental Significance with the federal environment minister," said Ms Beynon. "These reforms will start decentralising that power and that presents enormous risks for nationally threatened species and ecosystems, World Heritage and the Great Barrier Reef. We will be looking carefully at the bills for iron-clad guarantees that nature will not be worse off.
"A key objective in these reforms must be to remove the current wide discretion in the EPBC Act for poor decision making. Decision-makers must be bound by unambiguous standards with no ability to approve impacts on the environment that are considered 'unacceptable', such as the destruction of critical habitats for threatened species. These requirements must come without weasel words or get-out clauses. The community must be able to hold decision makers to account."
A statement by Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt's office made over the weekend confirmed the planned establishment of a National Environment Protection Agency (NEPA) but ruled out giving the NEPA full responsibility for approvals.
"A NEPA is needed to achieve a cultural reset on long-standing weak enforcement of the Act, particularly in the agricultural sector," continued Ms Beynon. "However, not giving the NEPA full responsibility for approvals is very disappointing. We've called for an independent arbiter over approvals to help take short term politics out of environmental decision making".
Humane World understands the reforms will legislate important rules for biodiversity offsets but is concerned there are plans for a new offsets fund for developers to pay into to, which the rules will not necessarily apply to.
"A new fund for developers to pay into must not be a 'pay to destroy' mechanism to undermine otherwise strict protections," says Ms Beynon. "And current exemptions that have enabled rampant deforestation and shark culling programs to devastate nationally threatened species must be curtailed. It should also be a no-brainer that climate considerations are central to avoiding extinctions.
Lastly, the reforms should not forget the Albanese Government's election commitment to ban the import of hunting trophies from twenty species that are protected under the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species."
Humane World for Animals encourages Parliament to work together to achieve a robust package of reforms that put nature first, remembering that it is nature on which we all depend.
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About Humane World for Animals
Together, we tackle the root causes of animal cruelty and suffering to create permanent change. With millions of supporters and work happening in over 50 countries, Humane World for Animals—formerly called Humane Society International—addresses the most deeply entrenched forms of animal cruelty and suffering. As the leading voice in the animal protection space, we work to end the cruelest practices, care for animals in crisis and build a stronger animal protection movement. Driving toward the greatest global impact, we aim to achieve the vision behind our name: a more humane world. humaneworld.org
