Speaker 1: The draft decision on the World Heritage status of the
Speaker 1: Great Barrier Reef has confirmed all of the hard work
Speaker 1: that everyone has put in to continue to protect this
Speaker 1: wonderful natural acid.
Speaker 2: The Great Barrier Reef has avoided being placed on UNESCO's
Speaker 2: in danger list for now.
Speaker 1: We're backing practical action alongside farmers, local councils and communities
Speaker 1: to ensure it continues to be that wonderful icon of
Speaker 1: Queensland and we're backing in with a record investment in
Speaker 1: water quality.
Speaker 2: But the warning hasn't gone away. UNESCO says Australia still
Speaker 2: needs to do more to protect the reef, saying much
Speaker 2: of the damage to the reef begins far inland when
Speaker 2: bushland is cleared and soil washes into the rivers that
Speaker 2: flow out to the coral.
Speaker 3: The un body did raise utmost concern over declining coral
Speaker 3: cover following recent mass bleaching events. It also said poor
Speaker 3: water quality was a worry, asking for a progress report
Speaker 3: by twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2: Own Conservation Foundation says bulldozing for beef production is a
Speaker 2: major driver of that runoff, and now Australia's new national
Speaker 2: environment watchdog has opened its doors with more than one
Speaker 2: hundred potentially illegal land clearing cases already on its books.
Speaker 2: But as Labour promises stronger nature protection and faster approvals,
Speaker 2: will the new laws actually stop the clearing or just
Speaker 2: speed up a broken system. I'm Daniel James and you're
Speaker 2: listening to seven am today CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation,
Speaker 2: Adam band and the first test of Labour's new natural
Speaker 2: laws and whether they can make an impact before it's
Speaker 2: too late. It's Friday, July sevent eighth. Adam Bant, thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us pleasure, thanks having beyond. The Federal Environment
Speaker 2: Department says it had over one hundred open cases involving
Speaker 2: alleged breaches of National Gronment law, many around land clearing
Speaker 2: that was never referred for assessment. So can you start
Speaker 2: by telling me what kind of clearing we're talking about here.
Speaker 4: We're talking about clearing of forest and bush primarily for
Speaker 4: beef for burgers and paddies that are sold in fast
Speaker 4: food restaurants and in supermarkets. And the scale of the
Speaker 4: problem in Australia is really huge.
Speaker 5: More than half of the Australian continent is used for
Speaker 5: grazing livestock and there's been a growing push to stop
Speaker 5: deforestation link to beef.
Speaker 4: People know about the effects of clearing for palm oil
Speaker 4: of forests in Indonesia. Well, in recent years more forest
Speaker 4: has been and bush has been cleared in Queensland than
Speaker 4: in Indonesia for palm oil. It's why Australia is one
Speaker 4: of the global deforestation hotspots.
Speaker 5: In Queensland and alone Shamefully, analysis from the Wilderness Society
Speaker 5: shows that every four minutes, threatened species habitat the scale
Speaker 5: of Sydney harbor Bridge area is bulldozed for beef every four.
Speaker 4: Minutes, and with half of Australia zone for agriculture. This
Speaker 4: supermarket and fast food corporation driven clearing that we've been
Speaker 4: saying is a big part of the reason that we
Speaker 4: now have koalas on the threatened species list in parts
Speaker 4: of the country. So it's destruction of koala habitat and
Speaker 4: of course other species as well, regient honeyeaters gliders that
Speaker 4: are being pushed closer to extinction. We are one of
Speaker 4: the only developed countries in the world still driving large.
Speaker 2: Scale deforestation on nature.
Speaker 5: Our record is tragically one of the worst.
Speaker 4: They're losing their homes and in Australia. It's being driven
Speaker 4: by this deforestation crisis.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about hectares of land I have much
Speaker 2: and over what timescale? And is this this thing that
Speaker 2: is speeding up.
Speaker 4: Look, we're talking about a small number minority of landholders
Speaker 4: who are doing this. You're talking about around about two
Speaker 4: hundred across the entire country, responsible for about half of
Speaker 4: this kind of deforestation. But in terms of the size
Speaker 4: of the area, looks since twenty nineteen lost an area
Speaker 4: about the size of the act. Part of the problem
Speaker 4: is that a lot of the surveying and monitoring of
Speaker 4: this is being done by groups like ACF through Citizens
Speaker 4: Science for our Investigates process, and it has been something
Speaker 4: that over many years federal governments have really not paid
Speaker 4: attention to.
Speaker 2: So a lot of them monitoring the date has relied
Speaker 2: on a lot of citizens. That's right.
Speaker 4: There are people on their tram on the way to
Speaker 4: work looking at their mobile phone. Some of them might
Speaker 4: actually be stopping bulldozers because ACF runs a program ACF
Speaker 4: Investigates where citizen scientists can anyone can jump on the
Speaker 4: phone and compare before and after pictures from satellite and
Speaker 4: we've got it down to sort of more or less
Speaker 4: close to real time around about two weeks as you're
Speaker 4: looking at the before and after pictures. And in our
Speaker 4: most recent round of ACF investigates had about sixteen hundred
Speaker 4: citizen scigentis from across thirty nine countries who were monitoring
Speaker 4: this data and that's resulted in some of these cases
Speaker 4: that have been referred to the government. And you said
Speaker 4: that the new EPA will have about just over one
Speaker 4: hundred cases on its books. About a third of those
Speaker 4: have been preferred by ACF, and a lot of that
Speaker 4: has come through people on the train on the way
Speaker 4: to work comparing the before and after pictures on their
Speaker 4: phones and we've been taking those to the government department. Historically,
Speaker 4: federally and indeed in many of the states, it was
Speaker 4: often met with a bit of a shriker of the shoulders,
Speaker 4: but that's changing now with the laws that have been changed.
Speaker 4: Now this kind of bulldozing of the bush has to
Speaker 4: now go through the federal processes, especially if you're in
Speaker 4: one of the great Barrier reef catchment areas in Queensland.
Speaker 2: So before the clearing takes place, what is supposed to
Speaker 2: happen before the bulldozeres come in, what is the process?
Speaker 2: Can you just lay it out for us a little bit.
Speaker 4: So to rewind a little bit, was understood sort of
Speaker 4: across the board that the previous rules didn't have strong
Speaker 4: standards in them to protect vulnerable species and vulnerable areas.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that the recommendation when looking
Speaker 4: at reforming those rules said was you don't know what
Speaker 4: is meant to be protected, and there aren't strong standards
Speaker 4: in the legislation that say this is what counts as
Speaker 4: real protection, and it was all like a lot of
Speaker 4: it was left up to discretion. Historically, there was an
Speaker 4: exemption for what was called continuous use. If you've done
Speaker 4: it before, you were allowed to keep doing it in
Speaker 4: an utshell in certain respects. That's now gone. And similarly,
Speaker 4: one of the new parts of the law requires that
Speaker 4: if you're within a fifty made an area of one
Speaker 4: of the water courses that feeds into the rivers that
Speaker 4: go out into the Great Barrier Reef, and you're wanting
Speaker 4: to clear forest in there that's over fifteen years old,
Speaker 4: then you have to go through the application process. Now
Speaker 4: that's a huge step forward, and this is why the
Speaker 4: National EPA is now going to be looking at a
Speaker 4: number of these cases to determine whether or not they
Speaker 4: should have gone through the process of seeking a permit
Speaker 4: before doing it. But there's still second part to it,
Speaker 4: which we're waiting on the federal government to actually set
Speaker 4: out what the rules are against which these applications are
Speaker 4: going to be assessed. That's still to be laid down
Speaker 4: in law by the Environment Minister Murraybott. And the draft
Speaker 4: that's out at the moment doesn't do the job, doesn't
Speaker 4: protect nature. The draft that's out really just says if
Speaker 4: a developer says they've looked at how they can protect
Speaker 4: in the environment, then by and large that's going to
Speaker 4: be enough. Now that's the legal device that we've received
Speaker 4: about the effects of the legislation, it becomes very much
Speaker 4: a process question, like as long as you go through
Speaker 4: a certain process and tick a box, then you'd comply
Speaker 4: with the draft standard as it's out at the moment.
Speaker 4: That's our real concern is that we go back to process,
Speaker 4: we go back to a ticker box approach and those
Speaker 4: really strong standards with teeth just won't be in there.
Speaker 2: Still to come, Can Australia really build a clean energy
Speaker 2: transition without clearing more habitat.
Speaker 6: We now have a strong regulatory toolkit. We have stronger
Speaker 6: powers for environmental protection. We have expanded orditing framework. We
Speaker 6: have increased enualities for serious and deliberate environmental harm. It
Speaker 6: means you get consistency, means you get transparency. It means
Speaker 6: you get integrity in environmental decision making. At a national level.
Speaker 6: The EPA will be a strong independent regulator.
Speaker 2: Out of this, Watchdog is one part of a much
Speaker 2: bigger reform. There was broad consensus that Australia's nature laws
Speaker 2: won't fit for purpose. Conservationist said it was failing nature
Speaker 2: and business, that it was slow and uncertain. Is that
Speaker 2: the basic contradiction that the government is trying to fix here.
Speaker 4: That's certainly how the government expresses it, but really what
Speaker 4: we just hope that that's not code for is that
Speaker 4: standards are too strong. What we want to make sure
Speaker 4: is that, yes, decisions can be made in an efficient way,
Speaker 4: But really what it comes down to is what are
Speaker 4: they going to be assessed against. If they're strong and
Speaker 4: often nature real protection, then I imagine you could make
Speaker 4: a number of assessments quite quickly. But in a context
Speaker 4: where the new laws allow some of this decision making
Speaker 4: to be handed off to state governments, where we know
Speaker 4: state governments don't always have a great track record on
Speaker 4: this front, and in many instances, like historically you look back,
Speaker 4: it's been the federal government that's had to come in
Speaker 4: over the top of rogue state and territory governments. Well,
Speaker 4: if these state and territory governments now are given the
Speaker 4: power to decide under the federal laws whether a process
Speaker 4: can go ahead, then that's all the more reason why
Speaker 4: there has to be really strong, clear and precise standards,
Speaker 4: because then, yes, you could make a decision quickly that no,
Speaker 4: this is going to push some threatened species closer to extinction,
Speaker 4: and so it's not allowed to go ahead. But if
Speaker 4: it's still just essentially a ticker box exercise, then you
Speaker 4: could end up with the worst of both worlds.
Speaker 2: There's another tension that if the watchdog is actually tough,
Speaker 2: doesn't that mean that some projects will be slow or
Speaker 2: get knocked back at a time when the government is
Speaker 2: hoping to speed up approvals for housing, renewables and other infrastructure.
Speaker 4: Look, we're in an extension crisis, and we have got
Speaker 4: iconic species years threatened with extinction.
Speaker 2: Australia's already a world leader.
Speaker 4: In mammal extension and we've now got the climate crisis
Speaker 4: coming along as a massive threat multiplier. The government's Environment
Speaker 4: Department has been saying for years now that climate crisis
Speaker 4: is the number one threat to Australia is biodiversity and
Speaker 4: so really, how much more can nature take in Australia.
Speaker 4: It can't take anymore and it's already on the brink.
Speaker 4: So now it's the time to actually invest in protecting nature,
Speaker 4: which is the life support system for us all and
Speaker 4: decisions that get made now will reverberate for generations. And
Speaker 4: once biodiversity and ecosystems are gone, that could be very
Speaker 4: difficult to recover. And once the species is extinct, like
Speaker 4: extent is forever. And so we would say there's no
Speaker 4: argument for saying you've got to speed up decisions that
Speaker 4: that's going to result in some species being pushed a
Speaker 4: step closer to extinctionion because once that happens it could
Speaker 4: be a reversal.
Speaker 2: And finally, Adam, I think the question that really sits
Speaker 2: at the heart of all is we do need transition
Speaker 2: to renewables at speed, which requires large infrastructure and transmission lines.
Speaker 2: How do you realistically do that quickly and still protect
Speaker 2: these habitats.
Speaker 4: Well, luckily, Australia's pretty blessed with a lot of space,
Speaker 4: a lot of sun and a lot of wind, and
Speaker 4: you can build the renewables in places that's good for nature.
Speaker 4: And we've done the work and know that you can
Speaker 4: build them in those places. Now that's going to involve
Speaker 4: a require a bit of planning from the government about saying, well,
Speaker 4: you know, you develop a X, you might want to
Speaker 4: build it over here, but actually we're going to ask
Speaker 4: you to move it to a different place to ensure
Speaker 4: that it's not a threat to biodiversity. Again, I think
Speaker 4: these are the challenges that are there with any project,
Speaker 4: and the challenges that can be solved because of the
Speaker 4: size of Australia and the amount of resources that are available.
Speaker 4: Ultimate leaders as a scientific and a planning question, and
Speaker 4: it shouldn't be driven by the dollars. It should be
Speaker 4: driven by let's get the renewables built that let's do
Speaker 4: it in aa that's good for nature, and we.
Speaker 2: Firmly believe he can have both.
Speaker 4: We're going to call out any kind of development, whatever
Speaker 4: it is, if it poses a threat, but we bled
Speaker 4: he can have both. And I hope that as this evolves,
Speaker 4: as we see what kind of decisions get made by
Speaker 4: the Minister and the state governments under this new legislation,
Speaker 4: that that's what they think too.
Speaker 2: Adam, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 2: Also in the news, a federal inquiry into racism against
Speaker 2: Aboriginal toorist rat older people will hold the public hearing
Speaker 2: in Alice Springs today while brialda Japanese by Hardgraves I
Speaker 2: suspected to give evidence about the death of his grandson,
Speaker 2: Kuminji White, he died while being restrained by playing closed
Speaker 2: police officers in an Alice Springs supermarket last year. The
Speaker 2: inquiry will also hear from Robin Jepanyanka Granites, the grandfather
Speaker 2: of five year old Kimenji Little Baby, who was found
Speaker 2: dead near Alice Springs in April. During hearings in Darwin
Speaker 2: this week, Aboriginal organizations called for stronger laws against hate
Speaker 2: speech and for racial motivation to be treated as an
Speaker 2: aggravating factor when courts sentenced file offenders. The inquiry is
Speaker 2: due to report back to Parliament in September and the
Speaker 2: Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry has confirmed a
Speaker 2: second petrol has tested positive for the H five strain
Speaker 2: of bird flu in New South Wales. Testing by the
Speaker 2: CSIIRA confirmed the virus in the bird found at Hawk's
Speaker 2: Nest on the state's bit North Coast, twelve days after
Speaker 2: another petrol found nearby tested positive. There have now been
Speaker 2: fifteen confirmed or presumed positive detections of H five bird
Speaker 2: flu in Australia, fourteen of which have been in margaretry birds.
Speaker 2: Authority say there is still no evidence of mass deaths
Speaker 2: and that the virus is not being detected in poultry
Speaker 2: or agricultural production. Thanks for listening to seven AM. We'll
Speaker 2: be back tomorrow