As Scott Morrison plays to a Queensland audience to launch his government’s supposed “gas led recovery”, absent is any mention of climate change, the environment, water and biodiversity. Which is hardly surprising since they patently don’t give a toss about such things.
In June last year, the Australian National Audit Office published their findings on the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment’s handling of approvals under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
The EPBC Act defines nine matters of national environmental significance, which are:
- world heritage properties;
- national heritage places;
- wetlands of international importance;
- listed threatened species and ecological communities;
- listed migratory species;
- protection of the environment from nuclear actions;
- Commonwealth marine areas;
- the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park; and
- protection of water resources from coal seam gas development and large coal mining development.
On this most important of area’s for Australia’s heritage and future, the findings were appalling.
“Despite being subject to multiple reviews, audits and parliamentary inquiries since the commencement of the Act, the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment’s administration of referrals, assessments and approvals of controlled actions under the EPBC Act is not effective.
Governance arrangements to support the administration of referrals, assessments and approvals of controlled actions are not sound. The department has not established a risk-based approach to its regulation, implemented effective oversight arrangements, or established appropriate performance measures.
Referrals and assessments are not administered effectively or efficiently. Regulation is not supported by appropriate systems and processes, including an appropriate quality assurance framework. The department has not implemented arrangements to measure or improve its efficiency.
The department is unable to demonstrate that conditions of approval are appropriate. The implementation of conditions is not assessed with rigour. The absence of effective monitoring, reporting and evaluation arrangements limit the department’s ability to measure its contribution to the objectives of the EPBC Act.”
The report also specifically states that “Conflicts of interest are not managed.”
There are countless examples of Ministers, particularly Josh Frydenberg and Barnaby Joyce, pressuring, or overruling, the Department to give approval to projects proposed by Liberal party donors.
The Australian Conservation Foundation raised concerns with the ANAO about the capacity for political interference to shape what should be independent recommendations, such as those relating to the proposal for a marina and apartment complex on an internationally-significant wetland at Toondah Harbour, or the approvals of Adani’s groundwater plan.
“That the Department does not monitor or report, internally or externally, on the efficiency or effectiveness of its regulation of referrals, assessments and approvals is damning.
The report highlights that the Department has effectively stopped documenting how the decisions it recommends would deliver environmental outcomes.
It shows how failures of training and internal policy are leading to poor and unlawful decision making and staffing cuts have driven a decline in regulatory performance.”
Australia is a world leader in mammal extinctions. Three Australian animals have been declared extinct since 2009. Nearly 2,000 Australian plants, animals and ecosystems are threatened with extinction. These are just the ones we know about. In the 20-year history of Australia’s national environment law, an area of threatened species habitat larger than Tasmania (7.7 million hectares) has been logged, bulldozed and cleared.
If you care about our unique flora and fauna, our water resources, our magnificent reef, our agricultural land, the threat from climate change – understand that, under a Morrison government, all these things are up for sale.
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