1 September 2011
Changes to federal environment law will send more decisions to Canberra
The Federal Governments long-awaited response to the Hawke review of national environmental legislation will give Canberra more power, and expose property owners to even greater restrictions on the use of their land, according to the Urban Taskforce. Allan Hawkes review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act was publicly released in December 2009.
The Urban Taskforces chief executive, Aaron Gadiel, said the reach of federal environmental regulation would be extended through an expanded list of matters which are of national environmental significance.
The plan to identify ˜ecosystems of national significance will massively increase Canberras regulatory reach, Mr Gadiel said.
Private land will be able to be declared a home to a nationally significant ecosystem based on vague criteria that will mean whatever a bureaucrat or politician wants it to mean.
This process will inevitably become politicised, as those campaigning against new housing and employment precincts demand more federal involvement.
Mr Gadiel said that under the proposals the Commonwealth could declare a nationally significant ecosystem if land:
¢ could make a significant potential contribution to building resilient sustainable landscapes; or
¢ could be significant in building a comprehensive, adequate and representative system of habitat types; or
¢ has high comparative biological diversity, within its ecosystem type.
Almost any land with biodiversity values could meet these Commonwealth definitions, Mr Gadiel said.
State laws already protect these lands, but now, there will be no practical limit to what the Commonwealth can regulate, if it sees fit.
We wouldnt mind so much if the Commonwealth took over all biodiversity-related regulation, but the truth is, they will continue to pick and choose, and we will continue to have two competing regulatory systems to juggle.
Mr Gadiel said that federal power would also be extended by including the less-threatened vulnerable ecological communities as matters of national environmental significance, and allowing private land generally to be identified as critical habitat.
Mr Gadiel said that the planned increased emphasis on strategic approaches, with a reduced need for individual project approvals, sounded good, but the devil was in the detail.
The proposed new regional environment plans will theoretically reduce the need to seek approvals under both state and federal laws for the same project, he said.
This would be a commonsense move, if the proposal stood alone, without any additional power grabs.
However, these plans will also be used to identify ˜nationally significant ecosystems, so its likely that the burden of federal environmental regulation will be heavier, not lighter.
Additionally, experience both at a federal and state level demonstrates that such plans are much easier to promise than to deliver.
It will many years before theyre finished, and the meantime, we can expect an increased need for national project-specific approvals, due to the new, longer list of nationally significant environmental matters.
Mr Gadiel said he was pleased that the Federal Government had opposed the notion that development must always be rejected whenever there were tensions between environment, social and economic priorities.
Ecologically sustainable development requires integrated decision-making, where environmental, social and economic factors are sensibly balanced, he said.
The Hawke review got this wrong, and were glad to see that the Federal Government has not acted on their advice in this regard.
The Urban Taskforce is a property development industry group, representing Australias most prominent property developers and equity financiers.
