Labor’s Environment Minister has quietly tabled a bill in the Senate that threatens to mire the resources industry in even more productivity-stifling red tape.
With Australia’s economic performance continuing to stagnate, last week’s parliamentary sitting was an opportunity to focus on the federal government’s red tape agenda, which continues to hold domestic industry back.
Earlier this year, while most attention was fixed on the Liberal party spill, Environment Minister Murray Watt quietly tabled in the Senate the government’s newest attack on the resources industry, the High Seas Biodiversity Bill 2026.
On Monday of last week this bill was debated in the Senate.
This bill will embed the United Nation’s High Seas Biodiversity Treaty into Australian law.
The high seas refer to the roughly 65 per cent of the world’s ocean surface that are not within the jurisdiction of any sovereign power.
On the surface level, it is unobjectionable that the international community should come together to address issues that may affect these areas.
The problem is in what the treaty will enable domestic governments to do.
The High Seas Treaty has opened the door for governments to regulate industries in “Australian jurisdiction” on the basis that these activities could have flow on effects to international waters.
Australian jurisdiction as defined in the bill is wide ranging and will likely capture operation that aren’t in the ocean at all.
It is defined as “the land, waters, seabed, subsoil and airspace in, under or above Australia; or the land, waters, seabed and subsoil in or under the exclusive economic zone of Australia; or the seabed and subsoil of the continental shelf of Australia.”
Part 4 of the Albanese government’s bill introduces yet another assessment process project proponents will have to jump over should it be determined that a proposed project in Australian jurisdiction poses a risk to a marine environment thousands of kilometres away.
That these laws will be weaponised should be clear given the brazen nature of green activists in the past hijacking existing green laws to hold up projects in the courts.
In 2022, the Australian Conservation Foundation launched a legal challenge to the Scarborough gas project, arguing that its impact on the Great Barrier Reef in unacceptable given its projected emissions.
The Scarborough gas project is located 375 km off the Pilbara coast of Western Australia, approximately 3,000 km away from the Great Barrier Reef.
If Australia’s radical green activists already believe, and have for years, that job creating projects should be cancelled because of the impact an entire continent away, then this bill is a godsend to them from the Albanese government, and yet another blow to our invaluable resources sector.
The only party to point out this increase in red tape during the second reading debate was One Nation.
Every other party on the floor supported the bill, largely without critique.
This latest assault is another example of the Albanese government’s lack of impulse control when it comes to increasing red tape on our industries
As Institute of Public Affairs research has identified, the private sector has never been more burdened by red tape than it is now, with regulatory restrictions nearly doubling over the last two decades, and growing at a rate two-thirds greater than the national economy in that time.
The Albanese government has not been shy about adding to the burden, with the creation of the duplicative Environmental Protection Agency – the country’s seventh when added to state and territory EPAs – to the rapid regulation of industrial relations just the tip of the iceberg.
Australians will not see their living standards recover unless we allow our most important industries, the ones that pay the taxes and royalties which fund our roads, schools and hospitals, to thrive.
This bill is a covert attack on our resources industry and gives more power to green activists to cancel jobs and investment in our economy.
