Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese
(Bloomberg) — Australia has passed a landmark bill to overhaul the nation’s environmental laws after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government struck a deal with the left-wing minority Greens party.
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Both houses of the country’s parliament had passed the legislation, Environment Minister Murray Watt said in Canberra. It amends the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, a framework widely viewed by industry and environmental advocates as outdated and in need of reform. Past efforts to update the laws, the most recent earlier this year, had foundered.
The new laws strengthen protections for the environment while also streamlining approval processes for major developments in areas like mining.
“As a result of these laws being passed, Australia’s natural environment will be better protected for generations to come,” Watt said.
“In addition, these reforms will deliver much quicker processes to ensure we can deliver the housing, renewables and critical minerals that our country desperately needs,” he said. Earlier on Thursday, Watt said the bill could inject up to A$7 billion ($4.5 billion) into the economy.
Australia, the world’s driest inhabited continent, is constantly grappling with tradeoffs between its powerhouse mining and energy industries that underpin the nation’s prosperity, and its unique and often fragile environment. The new laws will increase scrutiny of major projects related to the country’s three largest exports: iron ore, coal and liquefied natural gas.
The government will now establish a nationwide Environmental Protection Authority and require large projects to disclose their emissions, law firm Clayton Utz said in a note this week.
The agency will operate concurrently with separate bodies by the same name in Australia’s eight states and territories. The law also creates national standards to guide departmental decision-making and overhauls the way carbon offsets are implemented and used.
–With assistance from Keira Wright.
(Corrects year in second paragraph to 1999.)
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