ACT Independent Senator David Pocock said the agreement the Albanese Government has today reached with the Australian Greens represents an improvement on current national environment laws but still falls short in six key areas.

While welcoming improvements to the government’s legislation, Senator Pocock lamented the lack of policy courage in the rush to finalise the laws to meet a self-imposed deadline, rather than focussing on policy detail and how we ensure our environmental laws protect nature.

Senator Pocock also criticised the failure to respect the role of the Senate in how the laws were rushed through.

“Nature was only a partial winner in today’s deal and as a parliament we have failed to update our national environmental laws in a way that fully protects the places and species we love,” Senator Pocock said.

“Political considerations have prevailed over policy. While negotiation and compromise is necessary in parliament, I’m disappointed that key protections are lacking from the final legislation.

“More nature-destroying projects will continue to be approved under these bills.

“Also disappointing is the complete disregard for the role of the Senate in how the environment bills have been dealt with.The Senate's job is to provide scrutiny. This is so important especially on controversial legislation. 

“The bills were rammed through with almost no time for scrutiny. 

“Over 20 Senators, including myself, were denied any opportunity to speak on the bill and the time to question the Minister was severely curtailed to around an hour.

“Despite submitting more than 22 substantive amendments on the bills for drafting last week, only six were completed in time and circulated to be voted on. 

“This makes a mockery of our role as Senators to seek to scrutinise and improve legislation on behalf of our communities.

“Clearly we need more community representatives in parliament if we are going to have a parliament that thinks longer-term and makes the decisions that ensure we can leave this incredible continent in better shape for the next generation.”

Senator Pocock had proposed 15 key changes to the bills. The final agreement included six of those.

Importantly the loophole relating to the consideration of native forest logging under federal environmental law will be closed on 1 July 2027, the exemption on land clearing for the continuous use exemption is significantly narrowed, fossil fuel projects are carved out of fast-tracking of projects, and various safeguards around offsets and assessments.

Reflecting feedback from the ACT Community, Senator Pocock voted in support of the bills despite serious outstanding concerns that they fail to fully deliver the once-in-a-generation potential this process offered.

Most critically, the final legislation that passed the Senate today:

• Does not provide for consideration of emissions from projects and their impact on climate change to be accounted for when considering applications under the laws, despite the fact that climate change is one of the greatest threats to nature
  
  
• Establishes an offsets scheme that includes a ‘pay-to-destroy’ model, which in New South Wales has been found by the Audit Office of New South Wales to have been poorly designed and has issues with ‘integrity, transparency and sustainability’
  
  
• Includes a “rulings power” that sets a dangerous unprecedented extension of executive power for the Environment Minister of the day and unjustifiably reduces the of role of the judiciary
  
  
• Creates uncertainty for business and nature by basing many of the statutory tests on subjective standards
   
• Creates vague new powers for the Minister to declare projects in the ‘national interest’, reducing transparency and introducing further uncertainty for business and nature, including the prospect of legal challenge and potential corruption allegations
  
  
• Fails to establish a truly independent National Environmental Protection Agency because it won’t be governed by an independent board and the Chief Executive Officer will be appointed by the Minister 

Senator Pocock thanked all the experts, NGOs, other stakeholders and especially members of the Canberra community including the almost 1,000 people who have engaged with the office over the past 24 hours for sharing their views on the legislation.