The government has failed in its duty to protect the environment in its delivery of Australia’s national conservation laws, a scathing review by the national auditor general has found.
The Australian National Audit Office found the federal environment department has been ineffective in managing risks to the environment, that its management of assessments and approvals is not effective, and that it is not managing conflicts of interest in the work it undertakes.
The report also finds a correlation between funding and staffing cuts to the department and a blow-out in the time it is taking to make decisions, as highlighted by Guardian Australia.
The review, which comes in advance of the interim report on Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, has prompted renewed calls for the establishment of an independent national environmental regulator.
It is the sixth audit of the department’s administration of the EPBC Act.
The report examined how effective the department had been in administering referrals, assessments and approvals under the Act, which is the main decision-making work for developments likely to have a significant impact on nationally significant species and ecosystems.
“Despite being subject to multiple reviews, audits and parliamentary inquiries since the commencement of the Act, the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment’s administration of referrals, assessments and approvals of controlled actions under the EPBC Act is not effective,” the report concludes.
Among its findings, the auditor found the department could not demonstrate that the environmental conditions it set for developments were enough to prevent unacceptable risk to Australia’s natural environment.
Of the approvals examined, 79% contained conditions that were noncompliant with procedures or contained clerical or administrative errors, reducing the department’s ability to monitor the condition or achieve the intended environmental outcome.
The report also found that a document the department is required to produce to show how the proposed environmental conditions would produce the desired environmental protections was in most cases not being written.
From a random sample of 29 approvals from 2015 to 2018, the auditor found this document had not been produced in 26 cases.
In further findings, the audit concluded:
environmental assessments were not being undertaken in full compliance with procedures and decisions were being overturned in court;
the department is failing to keep key documents related to its decisions;
the department has been failing to meet statutory timeframes for decisions. This has been markedly the case since 2014-15 when the number of decisions made within legal timeframes dropped from 60% to 5% in 2018-19. This correlated with cuts to staff in the department who could assess development proposals
the department is not properly monitoring if developers are meeting their environmental conditions;
briefing packages written by the department when assessing environmental management plans for developments did not contain any consideration of other statutory documents under the Act that are supposed to protect threatened species, including recovery plans;
the department has not established any guidance or quality control measures for assessing the effectiveness of environmental offsets. It also has not mapped where all of its approved environmental offsets are, meaning they cannot be properly tracked;
agricultural clearing is rarely being referred to the department for assessment under national law;
potential conflicts of interest are not being managed, despite the existence of sound oversight structures;
the average overrun of statutory timeframes for approval decisions in 2018-19 was 116 days.
“This report is a scathing indictment of the federal government’s administration of our national environment law and highlights why we need a stronger law and a new independent regulator,” said James Trezise, a policy analyst at the Australian Conservation Foundation.
Trezise said the audit showed the government and department had failed in their duty to protect Australia’s unique wildlife and environment.
“Worryingly for an area of public policy in which commercial interests are constantly trying to influence, the auditor general found ‘conflicts of interest are not managed’,” he said.
He said the organisation had raised concerns with the auditor about the capacity for political interference in what should be independent decisions.
“That the department does not monitor or report, internally or externally, on the efficiency or effectiveness of its regulation of referrals, assessments and approvals is damning,” he said.
“The report highlights that the department has effectively stopped documenting how the decisions it recommends would deliver environmental outcomes.”
Australia’s conservation laws are currently subject to a statutory review by the former competition watchdog chair Graeme Samuel.
In advance of the interim report, due next week, the government has expressed a desire to streamline approvals and cut so-called “green tape”.
But environment groups said the audit confirmed Australia’s laws were “fundamentally broken”.
The Wilderness Society’s Suzanne Milthorpe said the findings showed a “catastrophic failure” to administer the law and protect the environment.
“This report shows that the natural and cultural heritage that is core to Australia’s identity is being put at severe risk by the government’s unwillingness to fix problems they’ve been warned about for years,” she said.
“It shows that even when the department is aware of high risks of environmental wrongdoing, like with deforestation from agricultural expansion, they are unwilling to act.
“The Morrison government announced last week that they want to load this failed system up even further by slashing approval times in the name of slashing ‘green tape’. But this audit shows that the current system is not capable of making good decisions, let alone quick ones.”
She said the only credible response was the establishment of an independent environmental protection agency.
“We call upon the Morrison government to commit to doing so immediately,” she said.
Nicola Beynon of Humane Society International said the audit showed the department was “grossly under-resourced to perform its role”.
“The audit report also confirms HSI’s criticisms that decision-making under the EPBC Act has been too permissive with decisions all too often weighted against the environment,” she said.
“Projects are rarely refused even when their impacts are significant. Conditions placed on approvals to mitigate impacts are unenforced or unenforceable.”
In a statement, the department said it had agreed to all of the report’s eight recommendations, including that it complete an up-to-date risk assessment of noncompliance with regulations, that it identify and address risks of conflicts of interest, and that it improve systems to ensure environmental conditions are monitored and enforced.
“We welcome the findings and agree to implement all recommendations to improve our efficiency and effectiveness in administering the EPBC Act,” the statement says.
“The department is a robust regulator with policies in place to ensure consistency in decision-making, compliance and administration of decisions under the EPBC Act.
“As an organisation, we are committed to the continuous improvement of our processes and procedures. The department has already made significant progress to improve our performance which addresses the core findings of the audit.”
Labor said the report “smashed” the government’s credibility on its management of both major project approvals and environmental protection.
“This disastrous report proves that the Morrison government is the problem on environmental protection and job delays for major projects,” Labor’s environmental spokeswoman Terri Butler said.
The Greens environment spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said the audit showed the department had failed and were “incompetent”.
“Heads should roll over this ineptitude and failure of duty,” she said.
“If this was the health minister who had overseen the botched implementation and enforcement of health and safety regulations, they and the head of their department would get the sack. The environment should be no different.”