Overview of the Conservation of Australian Marine Invertebrates

The EPBC Act represents an attempt to explicitly define the environmental responsibilities of the Commonwealth, rather than relying on indirect triggers such as foreign investment approval and Commonwealth funding decisions. Under this Act, Commonwealth environmental responsibilities are limited, in accordance with an agreement given in-principle endorsement by the Council of Australian Governments in 1997, to “matters of national environmental significance”. These are explicitly defined in the Act as:

The Commonwealth marine area;
World Heritage properties;
RAMSAR wetlands of international importance;
Nationally threatened species and ecological communities;
Internationally protected migratory species; and
Environmentally significant nuclear actions (Hill 1998).

The Act also applies to actions on Commonwealth land and actions by the Commonwealth and Commonwealth agencies. However, it excludes from Commonwealth jurisdiction other major environmental issues of concern, such as land clearance and degradation, the allocation of water rights, climate change and greenhouse gas emissions and forest management and protection (EDO 1999). An activity which does not have a significant impact on one of the matters of national significance will no longer trigger Commonwealth involvement in the assessment and approval process, even if it requires a Commonwealth decision or approval such as foreign investment approval (Hill 1998).

Another key change in this Act involves the capacity of the Commonwealth to ‘accredit’ State and Territory procedures and decisions, if the appropriate outputs or standards of outcome are guaranteed, by means of bilateral agreements between the Commonwealth and each State and Territory. It has been argued by some that this allows the Commonwealth to further reduce its role in environmental protection (Münchenberg 1998), by ‘delegating’ to the States the responsibility for conducting environmental impact assessments, even with respect to matters of national significance. To date, as far as we can determine, no bilateral agreements have been entered into, despite an original intention to have draft agreements prepared for consultation during early 2000. The situation is currently uncertain with some States having stated that they will not enter into such an agreement.