Nearly 40 nature organisations have written to Anthony Albanese urging him to “demonstrate the political leadership required at this moment” and negotiate with the Senate crossbench to pass changes to environment law to better deal with the climate crisis and native forest logging.
In a letter sent last week, 37 groups told the prime minister they were dismayed he told Seven West Media he would contemplate weakening the government’s proposal to create an environment protection agency (EPA) in a deal with the Coalition.
The organisations, including Greenpeace Australia, WWF-Australia, the Australian Marine Conservation Society and all major state and territory conservation councils, said it was vital Albanese worked to secure a deal that improved protection of forests and addressed “the climate blind spot” in national environment laws.
Debate over environment laws remains gridlocked in parliament. The government has struggled to secure support for legislation to establish an EPA and separate environmental data agency after it delayed a promised broader overhaul of nature laws.
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, has spent parts of the past two days hosting what was billed as a global nature positive summit in Sydney, bringing together about 1,000 business figures, investors, environmentalists, First Nations leaders and bureaucrats.
Closing the summit, the minister said the event had not produced a formal communique, but a common theme of the talks was that nature needed to be factored into economic and business decisions.
“To make good decisions, we need to understand, measure and report on our economic dependence on nature, our impacts on nature and the value of ecosystem services that our communities and our economies rely on,” Plibersek said.
In their letter to Albanese, the nature organisations said a handful of business and mining interests, predominantly in Western Australia, had sought to “undermine and derail” a broad consensus on the need to overhaul environment laws that was established by a 2020 review led by the former consumer watchdog head Graeme Samuel.
The organisations wrote: “We are dismayed by your recent statements that your government would contemplate weakening its own proposed new environmental regulator, Environment Protection Australia.
“We are further disappointed in your current reluctance to negotiate with the Senate crossbench to establish an independent national regulator and national data body, and to improve critical protections for Australia’s forests, oceans and wildlife.”
The letter contrasted the prime minister’s 2022 decision to sign a global leaders’ pledge for nature that promised ambitious action to reverse biodiversity loss and the government’s commitments in its nature positive plan with the “significantly more modest set of reforms” it had put to the parliament . It said even these steps were at risk of being “further weakened or abandoned altogether”.
In response, a government spokesperson said the Greens and the Coalition should vote for the laws it had put forward, which would create an EPA and a second body called Environment Information Australia.
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“The Albanese government is focused on delivering nature positive legislation that helps to protect the environment and also helps speed up environmental approvals,” the spokesperson said.
The Australian Conservation Foundation’s Brendan Sydes said the Greens and other crossbench senators had offered a pathway that would enable the government to pass its EPA legislation.
In exchange for support for the legislation, the senators want “climate considerations” to be added to the assessment of a development proposal under environment law, an end to the effective exemption for logging and greater inclusion of First Nations knowledge in decision-making. “We urge the government to take up the offer,” Sydes said.
The Wilderness Society’s Sam Szoke-Burke argued it had “become increasingly clear” the prime minister had “inserted himself into the conversation in a really unhelpful way”.
“The environment movement is just growing tired of the government’s attempts to be a small target when nature is in crisis,” he said.
The Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young said the minor party was willing to compromise on environment legislation, but Albanese needed to have “the courage to deliver what nature needs”.
Environment campaigners had earlier accused the government of hypocrisy for hosting a nature positive summit while logging forests in New South Wales that were habitat for threatened greater gliders.
Samuel’s 2020 review recommended an overhaul of Australia’s nature laws after finding successive governments had failed for two decades to protect Australia’s beloved ecosystems and wildlife.
