In this article, Saxon Davidson contextualises and disseminates the IPA’s research on Nature Positive.
The multi-billion-dollar critical minerals deal with the US, signed last month, hails the return of Australia’s “dig and ship” economy which has underpinned our wealth since settlement.
Whether it is wool, gold, coal, gas, or iron ore, the basis of Australia’s economic success has been the resources sector.
And this is now set to continue into the next decade with critical minerals and rare earths, which are inputs into everything from smart phones to fighter jets.
But, as ever, there is one thing standing in the way – the Canberra bureaucracy – which is soon to be armed with another red tape weapon in the form of a national Environmental Protection Agency.
This new government body, included in a suite of bills introduced into federal parliament last month, will be tasked with regulating the resources and agriculture sector, on top of the record amount of red tape they already have to abide by.
Every state and territory, bar Queensland, already has a functioning EPA; the only reason for the federal government to introduce this body is to bury Australian industries in even more red tape.
This body will be one of the largest in the federal government.
Research by the Institute of Public Affairs has found it will cost taxpayers approximately $1.8 billion per annum once fully operational and will increase the number of bureaucrats in the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water by up to 4,760.
This not only affects our existing industries, but it also undermines the critical minerals deal made with the US.
The new agreement requires projects to be dramatically accelerated, not forced to deal with yet another government agency designed to choke our nation-building projects with red tape.
The policy settings that are impeding this deal from materialising are the rigidity and complexity of our environmental laws, the level of regulation imposed by government, and the government policy of net zero emissions by 2050.
Introducing a federal EPA does nothing to address these issues.
The processing of critical and rare earth minerals is emission intensive and will be largely unfeasible while environmental regulation is made with the determination to reduce emissions.
While there are provisions for streamlined approvals in the proposed legislation, these provisions will become less influential over time, as the bills do nothing to substantially reduce the broader green tape, cultural heritage laws and activist lawfare that prevent and delay major projects from going forward.
Does anyone remember the experience of the Adani coal mine in Central Queensland?
A critical project that was held up by red tape and regulation for nine years, faced over ten legal challenges, and was forced to prepare a 22,000-page environment impact statement?
If the federal government were serious about reforming our broken environmental laws, it would shelve these bills immediately and implement a wide-ranging deregulatory agenda that reduces the size of the environmental bureaucracy, rather than increase it.
