Environmentalists say our green goals don't protect nature or work for business. Here's how Labor plans to fix the problem
In his first decision as environment minister, Murray Watt gave provisional approval to Woodside to extend its North West Shelf gas project until 2070, overruling warnings from climate activists and traditional owners that it could damage rock art and produce vast greenhouse gas emissions.
Watt's initial act in the Albanese government's second term, following its May re-election, followed a rocky environmental record for Labor in its first term. It failed to deliver on an election pledge to create a federal environment watchdog by 2025 and made limited progress on its open-ended promises to reform federal environment laws and enhance Indigenous heritage protections.
The government's former environment minister Tanya Plibersek made three other ambitious pledges in 2022. She promised there would be 'no new extinctions' of Australia's native wildlife and to reform Indigenous cultural heritage laws following Rio Tinto's legal 2020 destruction of the globally significant Juukan Gorge, which contained 46,000 years of cultural heritage, to expand one of its mines.
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Plibersek also pledged to conserve 30 per cent of Australian land and 30 per cent of its seas by 2030 – known as the '30 by 30″ commitment – barring all extractive industry such as fishing or mining in line with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
Australian Conservation Foundation policy officer Brendan Sydes said the government needed to deliver on it promises to protect thousands of native plants and animals at heightened risk of extinction.
'There's an urgent need to fix our national environmental laws. They're not working, they don't protect nature, and they don't work for business either,' Sydes said.
'We're now up to well over 2000 species listed as threatened under Commonwealth environmental laws and the numbers are only going up. They are being listed because they're at imminent risk of extinction.
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