The passage of new laws to protect and repair nature demonstrates the Australian parliament is up to the task of serious economic reform that promotes prosperity, the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation said today.
The reformed Act will deliver national environmental standards, establish an independent national EPA and provide much needed protection of carbon rich and biodiverse native forests by ending the exemption from federal environment laws for native forest logging and land clearing. The reforms also lay foundations for regional planning with local communities and First Nations custodians.
Dr Ken Henry AC, former Treasury Secretary and Chair of the Foundation, said the reforms to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act were a profound achievement that would benefit future generations.
"The Australian Parliament has done its job and restored national leadership to environmental protection and repair. These critically important reforms will support a modern economy and enable the creation of new and sustainable jobs, while improving the health of the natural world," Dr Henry said.
"This is no small thing. At a challenging moment for democracies around the world, the Australian Parliament has demonstrated, emphatically, that ambitious economic reform remains possible."
Dr Henry said the reforms fixed an ugly policy mess that had undermined productivity for years.
"We simply cannot afford slow, opaque, duplicative and contested environmental planning decisions based on poor information, mired in administrative complexity," he said.
"The mess of poorly constructed environmental laws has undermined productivity. These reforms promise to fix that mess."
Dr Henry said the reforms ended the false dichotomy between the economy and the environment.
"For centuries, humans have believed that economic and social progress necessarily comes at the expense of the environment," he said.
"We have acted as if we can choose, indefinitely, to trade-off environmental integrity for material gains. Our choices have created deserts, waterways incapable of supporting life, soils leached of fertility, and climate change driving weather events of such severity and frequency that whole towns, suburbs and agricultural landscapes are fast becoming uninsurable.
"This week's amendments are the first package of reforms in Australia to acknowledge that the state of the natural world is foundational. That without its rebuilding, future economic and social progress cannot be secured.
"Writing into law an acknowledgement that environmental protection and biodiversity conservation necessarily underpin everything else, and that they must therefore have primacy, is a profound achievement."
Dr Henry congratulated Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, Minister Murray Watt, Greens Leader, Senator Larissa Waters, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, and Liberal Leader Sussan Ley and Shadow Minister Angie Bell for their constructive engagement in reaching agreement.
"Courageous leadership has been rewarded with agreement. The national interest has come first, rising above debilitating personality politics and culture wars."
