The
government has failed in its duty to protect the environment in its
delivery of Australia’s national conservation laws, a scathing
review by the national auditor general has found.
The
Australian National Audit Office found the federal environment
department has been ineffective in managing risks to the environment,
that its management of assessments and approvals is not effective,
and that it is not managing conflicts of interest in the work it
undertakes.
The
report also finds a correlation between funding and staffing cuts to
the department and a blow-out in the time it is taking to make
decisions, as highlighted by Guardian Australia.
The
review, which comes in advance of the interim report on Australia’s
Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, has
prompted renewed calls for the establishment of an independent
national environmental regulator.
It
is the sixth audit of the department’s administration of the EPBC
Act.
The
report examined how effective the department had been in
administering referrals, assessments and approvals under the Act,
which is the main decision-making work for developments likely to
have a significant impact on nationally significant species and
ecosystems.
“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,” the report concludes.
Among
its findings, the auditor found the department could not demonstrate
that the environmental conditions it set for developments were enough
to prevent unacceptable risk to Australia’s natural environment.
Of
the approvals examined, 79% contained conditions that were
noncompliant with procedures or contained clerical or administrative
errors, reducing the department’s ability to monitor the condition
or achieve the intended environmental outcome.
The
report also found that a document the department is required to
produce to show how the proposed environmental conditions would
produce the desired environmental protections was in most cases not
being written.
From
a random sample of 29 approvals from 2015 to 2018, the auditor found
this document had not been produced in 26 cases.
In
further findings, the audit concluded:
environmental
assessments were not being undertaken in full compliance with
procedures and decisions were being overturned in court;
the
department is failing to keep key documents related to its
decisions;
the
department has been failing to meet statutory timeframes for
decisions. This has been markedly the case since 2014-15 when the
number of decisions made within legal timeframes dropped from 60% to
5% in 2018-19. This correlated with cuts to staff in the department
who could assess development proposals
the
department is not properly monitoring if developers are meeting
their environmental conditions;
briefing
packages written by the department when assessing environmental
management plans for developments did not contain any consideration
of other statutory documents under the Act that are supposed to
protect threatened species, including recovery plans;
the
department has not established any guidance or quality control
measures for assessing the effectiveness of environmental offsets.
It also has not mapped where all of its approved environmental
offsets are, meaning they cannot be properly tracked;
agricultural
clearing is rarely being referred to the department for assessment
under national law;
potential
conflicts of interest are not being managed, despite the existence
of sound oversight structures;
the
average overrun of statutory timeframes for approval decisions in
2018-19 was 116 days.
“This
report is a scathing indictment of the federal government’s
administration of our national environment law and highlights why we
need a stronger law and a new independent regulator,” said James
Trezise, a policy analyst at the Australian Conservation
Foundation....
In
advance of the interim report, due next week, the government has
expressed a desire to streamline approvals and cut so-called “green
tape”.
But
environment groups said the audit confirmed Australia’s laws were
“fundamentally broken”.
The
Wilderness Society’s Suzanne Milthorpe said the findings showed a
“catastrophic failure” to administer the law and protect the
environment.
“This
report shows that the natural and cultural heritage that is core to
Australia’s identity is being put at severe risk by the
government’s unwillingness to fix problems they’ve been warned
about for years,” she said.
“It
shows that even when the department is aware of high risks of
environmental wrongdoing, like with deforestation from agricultural
expansion, they are unwilling to act.
“The
Morrison government announced last week that they want to load this
failed system up even further by slashing approval times in the name
of slashing ‘green tape’. But this audit shows that the current
system is not capable of making good decisions, let alone quick
ones.”....
Note
Referrals, Assessments and Approvals of Controlled Actions under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 [the ANAO audit] can be found at
https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/referrals-assessments-and-approvals-controlled-actions-under-the-epbc-act.
