If Albanese can’t pass this test, ‘we should stop dreaming’: former Treasury boss

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Anthony Albanese’s plan to build 1.2 million homes, improve the nation’s transport system and lift Australians’ living standards will fail if the government cannot fix broken nature laws and arrest the decline of the environment, former Treasury boss Ken Henry warns.

In a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday, Henry will argue that despite pressure on fast-track important developments, the country also needs a resilient and rich natural environment. Without that, Australia will be just “building a faster highway to hell”.

Former Treasury secretary Ken Henry says environmental law reform should be a priority for Australia.

Henry, who served as Treasury secretary under John Howard and Kevin Rudd, will argue there is “no chance” the government will reach its many key policy goals without fixing the broken project approval system in the federal Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act and also state environmental laws.

“If we can’t achieve environmental law reform, then we should stop dreaming about more
challenging options,” he will tell the press club.

“Boosting productivity and resilience relies upon environmental law reform.”

The 2020 Samuel Review found the EPBC Act, established by the Howard government in 2000, was failing. The regime overlays state nature laws to protect matters of national environmental significance, like threatened species or rare habitats.

Since colonisation, about 100 of Australia’s unique flora and fauna species have become extinct. The rate of loss, which is as bad as anywhere else on Earth, shows no sign of slowing, with more than 2000 species listed as threatened with extinction and ongoing habitat degradation.

The Albanese government promised in 2022 to bolster the EPBC Act with the creation of an Environment Protection Agency (EPA). A federal watchdog, the agency would police compliance of big projects that affect the environment, such as mines and tourism resorts, handing out fines for breaches.

Environment minister for the first term of the Albanese government Tanya Plibersek also promised to drive reforms of the EPBC Act.

However, neither of the goals was delivered, as first Plibersek scaled back the reforms early last year in a bid to get them through parliament, before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ultimately scuppered a deal with the Greens late last year on the EPA.

Albanese has since declared the agency is the top priority for new Environment Minister Murray Watt, who has said he could bring a reform bill to parliament within 18 months.

The business community has consistently argued the EPBC Act is a major hurdle for economic growth. Mining companies and renewable developers have petitioned government for years to hasten bureaucratic assessments of their projects.

Henry will acknowledge the act’s importance for business, but warned any reforms would be counterproductive if the government only hastened the assessment process.

He said it is “simply nuts” that the act only judges the environmental impact of projects on a case-by-case basis rather than assessing the cumulative impacts of ongoing development.

Henry will say the government must deliver the Samuel Review recommendation to create the first set of national environmental standards, to deal with cumulative impacts and speed project assessments with hard-and-fast rules, which would designate appropriate and out-of-bounds areas for development.

“We do need faster, more certain project approvals processes. But we also need a more resilient and nature-rich environment,” he will say.

“With due acknowledgement of the genius of AC/DC, there is no point in building a faster highway to hell.”