When considering the laws that have been presented, it is important to consider two core questions: Do the new laws  

1. address, not exacerbate, the failings of the previous Act, and 
2. strengthen national nature legislation in order to actually protect our iconic matters of national environmental significance and deliver outcomes for nature, community, a safe climate and future generations. 

Conservation Council of WA considers the newly passed laws to fall short of the protections our environment urgently needs. 

The new nature laws, as they stand, remain highly skewed towards industry. 

However, there have been some positive amendments secured in negotiations between the Albanese Labor government and the Greens that will improve environmental protection.  

Some of the positives

1. Australia will have National Environmental Standards, with legally enforceable rules to protect endangered wildlife and ensure ecologically sustainable development. The government has committed to an inquiry reviewing the National Environmental Standards so that once the standards are drafted they can be scrutinised. As part of this process, it is important that the community speaks up for the strongest possible new national standards. Strong National Environmental Standards are essential as they will provide a benchmark that can challenge ministerial overreach, set enforceable precedents, and hold the EPA to account. Consultation on National Standards for Matters of National Environmental Significance and Environmental Offsets is currently open until 30 January 2026.
   
   
2. Regional Forest Agreements and "continuous use" Land Clearing will no longer be excempt from environmental assessments and cannot be approved where it will have 'unacceptable impacts', assessed against the new National Environmental Standards. This means clearing remnant vegetation that will have a significant impact on threatened species, ecological communities, globally listed wetlands will now be assessed by federal government processes. 
   
   
3. New rules require big polluting companies to report their Scope 1 and 2 emissions and outline their plans to reduce them.
   
   
4. Large coal mining, coal seam gas fracking and all types of unconventional gas developments that may have significant impact on water resources will continue to be assessed by the Federal government under the "water trigger" in the EPBC Act. This will be retained by the Federal government instead of being handed to state and territory governments. 
   
   
5. The Minister will be able to prevent projects from proceeding that are deemed to have “unacceptable impacts” for respective Matters of National Significance before the projects are fully assessed. In addition, specific threatened species/"protected matters" will be excluded from being 'offset' through new "Restoration Contributions Fund".
   
   

Some of the concerns 

1. New huge sweeping Ministerial powers that means the Minister can make rulings on how the EPBC Act and related mechanisms (such as National Environmental Standards) should be applied. This includes overriding environmental protections in the 'national interest'. Ministerial powers should be limited.
   
   
2. New pathways to hand approval powers to state and territories (known as 'devolution' through bilateral agreements). These laws will enable the handing of powers to state and territory governments, which have shown they can't be trusted to protect our nature and climate. In Western Australia, conditions attached to state approvals often end up weaker than those imposed by the Commonwealth. We have a similar EPA set-up in WA – and it has not worked to halt the steep decline of nature. It is imperative that the federal government retain decision-making powers for destructive projects like Woodside’s Browse Basin. The federal government must have oversight and limit state and territory government approval powers.
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3. Streamlined assessments pathways which could fast-track project approvals without proper considerations. These include: 
   
   
   • the ‘streamlined assessment pathway’  
   • the ‘bioregional plans’ pathway that delivers ‘go’ and ‘no-go’ zones in designated geographical areas, which appears to function more as a development zoning tool than a mechanism for conservation and protection. However, it does introduce landscape scale planning rather than project-by-project assessment. Bioregional planning zones need to be strengthened. 
   • the ‘national interest pathway’, which could approve projects even if they would otherwise be inconsistent with the Act's standards or have "unacceptable impacts" 
   • Note: Coal and gas projects are now explicitly excluded from these three streamlined assessment pathways and will be assessed under a full environmental assessment process, including public consultation. 
4. For the first time, Australia will have a National Environment Protection Agency with powers to enforce Australia’s new environmental laws, issue orders and penalties, and conduct audits. However, it will not be fully independent and will act on instruction from the Minister, who has sweeping power to override departmental and scientific advice. 
   
   
5. The laws remain silent on climate impacts.We will continue to advocate for the Government to consider climate pollution when making decisions, and for decision-makers to have the ability to halt projects that would cause significant climate harm – like polluting coal and gas projects.

We need to make sure the new elements of the EPBC Act are designed to be effective and capable of reversing our trajectories of environmental degradation and extinction. For example, we must ensure the laws prevent decisions that are inconsistent with recovery plans, and that these plans can be fully implemented, with critical habitat properly protected. 

Much more work lies ahead, particularly in Western Australia, where we have a state government that famously took credit for sinking the last round of attempted reforms. Read about the reforms needed in WA to bring nature back from the brink.