{"id":134259,"date":"2025-11-14T06:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T06:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/134259\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T06:48:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T06:48:08","slug":"graeme-samuel-calls-for-labor-to-ditch-national-interest-workaround-for-environment-laws-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/134259\/","title":{"rendered":"Graeme Samuel calls for Labor to ditch \u2018national interest\u2019 workaround for environment laws | Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The former competition watchdog chief Graeme Samuel says the government should axe its proposal to allow the environment minister to make decisions in breach of national laws<\/a> if it is deemed in the \u201cnational interest\u201d.<\/p>\n

Samuel, who led a 2020 review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, also argued a loophole that effectively exempts native forest logging from the laws \u201cshouldn\u2019t be there\u201d.<\/p>\n

He made the comments to a Senate committee examining the Albanese government\u2019s bills to reform national nature laws, which Labor hopes to pass before parliament rises for Christmas.<\/p>\n

In his written submission to the committee he said \u201cnational interest\u201d should instead be incorporated as a consideration in new national environmental standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate the [forestry] exemption. It shouldn\u2019t be there,\u201d Samuel told the committee.<\/p>\n

He said if the government did retain it, the agreements \u201cshould be governed by a very tough national environmental standard\u201d.<\/p>\n

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The former Howard government environment minister Robert Hill \u2013 who introduced the original act in 1999 \u2013 said tighter regulation of land-clearing should be the \u201chighest priority\u201d of the reforms.<\/p>\n

In a submission to the inquiry, Hill also said that there was \u201cno credible argument\u201d for retaining the logging exemption.<\/p>\n

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While welcoming the bills as achieving \u201c80% of the aspirations\u201d of a consultative group formed during the review process, Samuel said the government\u2019s proposed national interest exemption could lead to the abuse of the power vested in the minister.<\/p>\n

Adopting similar language to the former treasury secretary Ken Henry<\/a>, Samuel warned the exemption could lead to lobbyists seeking favourable decisions.<\/p>\n

The proposed exemption would allow the minister to approve projects that do not comply with environmental laws if the approval was considered in the national interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019ll be a conga line of lobbyists that will be outside their door saying, \u2018Well, look, you just use the national interest exemption\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I would take it out of the legislation and simply say it is now a balancing matter that ought to be taken into account in determining approvals and assessments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill, in a submission co-written with Atticus Fleming, a former deputy secretary of the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service, wrote that the \u201cprimary shortcoming\u201d of the existing laws had been their failure to address the impact of land-clearing on Australia\u2019s biodiversity.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the impact on biodiversity, and the failure of state governments, the effective regulation of land clearing must be the highest priority for the EPBC Act,\u201d the submission states.<\/p>\n

Hill and Fleming suggested changes including provisions that would require land-clearing above certain thresholds to be assessed for impacts on threatened species and ecosystems.<\/p>\n

They also said \u201cthere is no credible argument for maintaining a blanket exemption for the logging of native forests\u201d and the bills should be amended to remove it.<\/p>\n

\u201cLogging operations should be subject to the same rules as mining, agriculture, urban development and so on,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former competition watchdog chief Graeme Samuel says the government should axe its proposal to allow the environment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-134259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}