The Albanese government wants the power to strip companies of any financial gains made from breaking environment laws, as part of a package of landmark reforms to be put before parliament in the next two weeks.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Guardian Australia, the environment minister, Murray Watt, also revealed he wants a definition of \u201cunacceptable impact\u201d to be part of the nation\u2019s new environment laws.<\/p>\n
Watt said consultations with environment groups and industry had landed on the need for a \u201cclear, strong definition of an unacceptable impact\u201d, which would mean areas were protected and businesses wouldn\u2019t \u201cwaste their time\u201d in pursuing projects that would never be approved.<\/p>\n
He said several areas of contention on the laws \u2013 including how they deal with climate change and on the exact role of a new independent environment watchdog \u2013 were still to be finalised.<\/p>\n
But he said he remained \u201coptimistic\u201d the laws would be passed before Christmas, and was willing to make deals with the Coalition<\/a> or the Greens \u2013 or both \u2013 to make it happen.<\/p>\n The Guardian has reported that Watt<\/a> has been privately encouraging business groups to lobby the Coalition to support the legislation, sparking concerns among environment groups that protections could be weakened.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Watt said penalties for breaking environmental laws would be increased under the proposed reforms, including a new rule \u201cto strip offenders of any financial advantage they gained from breaching environmental law\u201d.<\/p>\n Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton\u2019s Clear Air column as a free newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n Penalties for significant breaches would be set at $1.6m for an individual, and up to $825m for a business, while a new \u201ccivil penalty formula\u201d would recoup any income offenders gained by a breach.<\/p>\n A new EPA would also have the power to issue a \u201cstop work order\u201d to prevent environmental harm, Watt will announce on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Watt also said the government had not determined whether a minister would retain the right to make final decisions on major projects \u2013 a role that could be in the remit of a new independent Environmental Protection Authority. This came after it was reported<\/a> that he would remain the key decision-maker.<\/p>\n Watt hopes his more than 80 meetings with stakeholders have built up enough goodwill to allow for compromise and agreement. Photograph: Jamila Filippone\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Almost five years ago, a review of the current Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act found the laws were failing habitats and species.<\/p>\n A centrepiece of the review\u2019s recommendations was the need for a set of national environmental standards, but Watt said those standards won\u2019t be finalised until next year.<\/p>\n The standards would be set under regulation but Watt said the legislation would include a \u201cnon-regression clause\u201d which he said \u201cmeans that the standards over time won\u2019t be able to go backwards\u201d.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Clear Air Australia<\/p>\n Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Watt said the legislation would include a provision where projects must demonstrate a \u201cnet gain\u201d for the environment, which he said could be achieved through offsets.<\/p>\n He said there would be \u201ca legislated requirement that proponents of projects need to avoid or mitigate environmental damage before they look to offsets\u201d.<\/p>\n Watt said he had held more than 80 meetings with industry, environment groups and other stakeholders on the reforms since taking over as environment minister from Tanya Plibersek in May.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the most challenging task I\u2019ve taken on while I\u2019ve been a minister,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnyone who\u2019s got an interest in this legislation does want it to be enduring, and they realise this is the one chance we\u2019re probably going to have, maybe for a generation, to solve these issues and to get these reforms in place.\u201d<\/p>\n He said he hoped that as final negotiations started, the lengthy meetings and engagement in recent months had built up enough goodwill to allow for compromise and agreement.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of the stakeholders recognise that they\u2019re better off trying to get most of what they want rather than get nothing and to have to stick with the laws that we\u2019ve got in place at the moment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the alternative we\u2019ve got here, is we either make these changes or we stick with a law that everyone recognises is broken.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Albanese government wants the power to strip companies of any financial gains made from breaking environment laws,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-241517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}