THE Federal Government last week formally responded to the Samuel Report, announcing a broad overhauling of our national environmental laws with the release of its ‘Nature Positive Plan’.

The response includes the announcement of a new national Environmental Protection Agency that will have powers to reject development proposals on the biodiversity grounds.

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Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek said the Nature Positive Plan is a “win-win: a win for the environment and a win for business”.

Ms Plibersek the Plan delivers stronger laws designed to repair nature, to protect precious plants, animals and places.

“For the first time, our laws will introduce standards that decisions must meet. Standards describe the environmental outcomes we want to achieve.

“This will ensure decisions made will protect our threatened species and ecosystems.”

Greens NSW spokesperson for the environment, Sue Higginson said the plan was a welcome “first step from the Federal Government in slowing down the extinction crisis”.

“For too long we have been worsening the extinction crisis with no real measures in place to protect our rapidly declining native species and ecosystems.

“The introduction of national standards and greater engagement with First Nations people is very long overdue.

“The traffic light system that has been announced is an important approach which acknowledges that some things simply can not be harmed, but we need to see the settings.”

Ms Higginson also welcomed the announcement of tightening of logging regulations, but said the plan should have gone further.

“Currently there is no Federal oversight of logging whatsoever.

“Today should have indicated that public native forest logging will be ruled out altogether.”

Concerns were raised however over the federal offset scheme, which Ms Higginson said was “set to allow developers to pay into a fund rather than requiring a genuine like for like offset”.

“This is shaky ground when it comes to genuinely protecting and improving biodiversity.

“We have seen the results of this in NSW, with millions of dollars sitting in a fund and the biodiversity not being available to offset the destruction, pushing more species towards extinction and ecosystems to collapse.

“If the Federal Government is going to take this approach they need to learn from the failure of the NSW scheme and establish strict rules that will improve environmental outcomes in real terms.”

Business Council of Australia President Tim Reed said, “Business welcomes the government’s commitment to implementing recommendations of the Samuel Review of our environmental protection laws but we’ll need to work closely together to avoid creating more complexity.

“Big reform is hard, so we appreciate the government’s willingness to design these changes through a consultative process that gives us the opportunity to work through the detail.

“The current system doesn’t deliver businesses certainty or facilitate environmental outcomes.

“Complexity makes project approvals too slow and a lack of clear accountability means we’re not getting the best environmental results, we need a win-win system.”

Greenpeace Australia Head of Advocacy and Strategy, Glenn Walker said, “The reforms outlined are a very welcome and long-overdue step to better protecting Australia’s extraordinary wildlife, forests and natural environment.

“The reforms announced today present a major opportunity to set Australia on a path to stronger environmental protection and should bring hope to all Australians.

“We congratulate the Minister for showing leadership on this critical issue.”