Prime minister urged to reject push by business leaders and state governments to wind back federal environmental laws
Environment groups claiming 1.5 million supporters have written to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd demanding he reject a push by business leaders and state governments to wind back federal environmental laws.
The Business Council of Australia and NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell have sought to use the change of prime minister to resurrect their campaign for the federal government to hand over environmental approval processes to the states in the interests of cutting "greentape".
But Australian Conservation Foundation executive director Don Henry said the whole notion of "greentape" was a furphy. "This is an agenda by mining and oil and gas industries to bulldoze their way through proper environmental laws," he said.
Henry and the heads of other environmental groups have written to Rudd, urging him to "hold the line" and not to revisit a plan considered and then abandoned by former prime minister Julia Gillard to hand over approvals to the states.
The environmental leaders said a group formed to fight the plan – the "Places We Love" alliance – had a combined supporter base of 1.5 million.
In the letter, Henry, World Wildlife Fund chief executive Dermot O'Gorman, Glen Klatovsky, acting national campaign director for The Wilderness Society and others claimed state governments could not be trusted with environmental protection.
"We have witnessed the continual erosion of environmental laws and protections by recently installed state governments. These attacks include gutting state environment departments with significant cuts to staff and resources, reductions in third-party rights and reduced oversight by environment portfolio ministers as decision-making powers are fast-tracked and handed solely to development ministers," they wrote.
"Increasingly we are seeing state governments demonstrating a blatant disregard for Australia's national and international obligations to the protection of biodiversity with our relatively small protected area estate under attack from governments ideologically opposed to nature conservation. You will no doubt be familiar with the recent activities of the Queensland government in this regard.
"... the Queensland, NSW, and Victorian governments are opening up national parks to a wide range of inappropriate uses and threatening even more. Queensland is winding back protection of rivers and bushland. If states are given powers under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, they will be making key decisions that affect the very future of the Great Barrier Reef and Wet Tropical Rainforests, World Heritage listed National Parks, the Franklin River and Tasmanian World Heritage areas, Lake Eyre and the Murray Darling River System, and our threatened wildlife."
Rudd has also received a letter from O'Farrell saying if he was serious in his stated intention of rebuilding relationships with the business sector, then "streamlining" environmental approvals should be a high priority.
And the BCA, at a meeting with Rudd on Tuesday, put "greentape" reduction at the top of its list of desired policy changes.
The Coalition has promised to hand back environmental approvals to the states, under agreed guidelines.
New environment minister Mark Butler did not say whether the government was reconsidering the issue.
His office released a statement saying; "The Government is committed to working with state and territory governments to create a more efficient and effective environmental approval system, however we won't compromise on our high environmental standards."