“I’m not frightened of using the laws that we’ve got, but I think the laws that we’ve got are not fit for purpose,” she said.
Loading
She is planning to beef up the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, including new national standards for development assessments and a national environment protection agency to oversee regulations, and has pledged to introduce the reforms to parliament by the end of the year.
“When these laws are drafted, I think they will see that this is an enormous improvement on what we’ve got now … not just slowing down the inevitable decline, which is what is happening now under business as usual, but actually protecting more of what’s precious, repairing more of what’s damaged and better managing what we’ve got for the future,” she said.
But Plibersek told this masthead she would not rule out handing over control of environmental assessments to state governments, which would contradict Labor national policy platform and anger the influential Labor Environment Action Network.
Loading
To fund the government’s environmental ambitions, she talks of turning Australia into a “green Wall Street” by creating a market for biodiversity credits bought by businesses to offset development and attain a social licence.
The Coalition is expected to oppose the government’s move to strengthen the act, which means the Greens will likely hold the balance of power in the Senate. The minor party is demanding a new “climate trigger” in the EPBC Act to block fossil fuel projects, and Greens environment spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said Plibersek’s proposed biodiversity market could allow developers to pay to remove habitat.
“The push for a green Wall Street has sent shivers up the spine of every koala in the country,” Hanson-Young said.
But Plibersek said it would be hypocritical of the Greens to demand tougher environment reforms as they are also calling for more renewable energy, which requires thousands of kilometres of transmission lines to link into the grid, as well as a massive social and affordable home-building program.
“The Greens want to build a million new homes. Where?” Plibersek asked.
“We have to decide where these homes are going to go … When we’re upgrading the grid, we’re going to have some difficult decisions about where these new transmission lines go, we have to minimise the environmental impacts of them.”
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.
For more latest Politics News Click Here