Labor’s reforms to environmental law establish a new power to wave through any project a government wants, for any reason. And it can do so in secret.
The ministerial override power at the centre of Labor’s proposed reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act would not merely give politicians a completely unfettered power to ignore environmental laws in the name of the “national interest”, but enable them to do so in total secrecy.
After five years of waiting since Graeme Samuel handed his review of the EPBC Act to the Morrison government, draft legislation to overhaul the act was introduced into parliament yesterday, before a Press Club address by Environment Minister Murray Watt.