Antinuclear

Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to weaken Australia’s environmental protection

The ‘Green Tape’ Furphy, New Matilda By Ben Eltham, 13 April 12,  Reducing ‘green tape’ is on the COAG agenda – but fast-tracking environmental regulation will end up hurting productivity in the long term, writes Ben Eltham“……..Yesterday’s roundtable ended with a statement from those assembled which pledged to cut some of the burdensome duplication of regulatory approvals between state and Commonwealth levels. “The Government has agreed to develop bilateral arrangements with the states to fast-track state assessments and approvals,” it reads. “This means states will be accredited to do certain Commonwealth assessments.” There will also be a commitment to form inter-governmental taskforces for major projects, “so approvals are administered by a single state agency and unnecessary duplication is removed.”

But the Greens maintain that federal environmental legislation is sometimes the only thing that prevents pro-development state governments from giving bulldozers the green light. “All the big environmental wins of recent history have been when the federal government stepped in to protect an area from development the state government had approved,” Queensland Greens Senator Larissa Waters pointed out.

Waters is right. Federal legislation is generally the last line of resort for blocking big projects that impinge on sensitive habitats or threatened species, but which have been waved though by state authorities. The experience of Tasmania shows how, in a small state, the interests of a powerful industry can often subvert the interests of the broader environment, as happened when regulatory approval the Bell Bay pulp mill proposed by Gunns was rammed through parliament with little due diligence. It was the Commonwealth that stepped in protect the Franklin in the early 1980s, and the Commonwealth that stepped in to protect Coronation Hill. More recently it is the Commonwealth that has provided world-leading benchmarks for no-fish zones in the Great Barrier Reef…. http://newmatilda.com/2012/04/13/greentape-furphy

April 13, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics