Delayed environment laws spark calls for urgent government action on water and fracking

Minister Tanya Plibersek should strengthen ‘trigger’ protection to ensure projects are assessed for impact on water resources

The Greens say the Albanese government has indicated it could be a year before promised environment laws are passed, a delay that potentially pushes the revamp close to the next federal election.

The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said last year she planned to introduce legislation in 2023 to reform the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act after major reviews found the law was failing and Australian nature was in poor and deteriorating health.

That timeframe has been pushed out. In a statement last week, Plibersek said the government would begin consulting this month with more than 30 environment, business, and industry groups on legislation that would be introduced to parliament next year. She said the new laws were complex and the legislation would be more than 1,000 pages.

In a letter to Plibersek released publicly, the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young said it had been indicated during a government briefing for her office in September that the legislation would not reach the Senate for “at least another 12 months”.

The independent MP Sophie Scamps and Hanson-Young said, given the delay, the government should bring forward one part of the promised changes – strengthening the “water trigger” to ensure local water resources were protected from fracking for gas – and pass it this year.

Scamps and Hanson-Young both introduced water trigger bills – Scamps in the lower house and Hanson-Young in the Senate – on Monday, and urged the government to back them.

The water trigger requires the environment minister to consider the impact of large coal and coal seam gas proposals on local water resources. Labor has promised to expand it to include all types of unconventional gas development, including the shale gas found in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin, where fracking is a looming issue.

The change is supported by environment groups, traditional owners and NT farmers.

Scamps said it was a simple change that the government had already indicated it would support. She said it could be agreed and passed this week with backing from the crossbench.

“With the threat of drought again looming large and the approval of new shale fracking projects in the Beetaloo Basin imminent, it is urgent that we act now to protect our water resources from potentially destructive unconventional fracking practices,” she said.

Hanson-Young said the bills would close a loophole that meant developments in the Beetaloo Basin now did not have to be assessed for their impact on water resources.

“Water is life, but right now a legal loophole means fracking corporations have a licence to drill without regard for our rivers, the climate or the voices of traditional owners,” she said.

Plibersek did not directly address the call for action now but said the legal overhaul would include an expanded water trigger. “We would welcome support, across party lines, to expedite our strong new laws through the parliament next year,” she said.

The Coalition’s environment spokesman, Jonno Duniam, said the delay in introducing the laws “should be regarded as yet another case of embarrassing incompetence from the Albanese government”.

“The basic reality is that Ms Plibersek has spent far more time distracted by other personal priorities, including pushing for a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum on the Indigenous voice to parliament, than on the core issues in her portfolios,” Duniam said.

Plibersek said she was getting the details of the new environment laws “in front of experts early” and would introduce them “as soon as possible next year”.

“These are detailed laws and we’re determined to get them right,” she said. “I certainly won’t be lectured by the Liberals who presided over these broken laws and, even worse, hid the review that recommended we change them. They have never been interested in protecting our environment. No one believes they are now.”

The Greens and the Wilderness Society said they were concerned the government was no longer promising to release the new laws for broad public consultation before introducing them to parliament.

A Wilderness Society spokesperson, Sam Szoke-Burke, said the community had played a key role in pushing for environmental law reform – nearly 30,000 people and organisations made submissions to a review of the existing act by former consumer watchdog Graeme Samuel – but was now “being shut out of the process”.

“No public consultations means that vested interests will be able to do their bidding behind closed doors with no oversight,” he said. “In large part, only elite and connected actors will have access.”

Photograph: Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources - A shale gas well in the Beetaloo Basin, Northern Territory, where there is concern about the impact on water.