The Australian government on Thursday announced its plan to fix the country’s broken environmental protection laws.<\/p>\n
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Earlier in the day, Tanya Plibersek, Minister for Environment and Water, released a 50-page plan to halt Australia’s nature crisis, reports Xinhua news agency.<\/p>\n
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It comes two years after the former government was handed a review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which found the laws are outdated, ineffective and incapable of producing good outcomes for flora and fauna.<\/p>\n
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Under the sitting Labor government’s plan, an independent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be established with the power to decide whether developments that will affect natural assets should go ahead.<\/p>\n
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New environmental standards for conservation, protection and major development applications will also be introduced to underpin all decisions by the EPA.<\/p>\n
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“Our reforms are seeking to turn the tide in this country, from nature destruction to nature repair,” Plibersek told reporters.<\/p>\n
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“We will build our legislation on three basic principles: clear national standards of environmental protection, improving and speeding up decisions, and building trust and integrity.”<\/p>\n
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A new traffic light system will identify areas that should be protected from development, developed with caution, or fast-tracked for development.<\/p>\n
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Legislation for the plan will be completed by the middle of 2023 and introduced to Parliament by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
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Plibersek said shifting responsibility from politicians to a legislated independent body would restore Australians’ confidence in the system.<\/p>\n
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A national legally binding standard on First Nations engagement will also be developed to guarantee Indigenous Australians are involved in decisions relating to their country.<\/p>\n
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The overhaul will also boost protection for native forests, which are currently exempt from national environmental laws, and close a loophole in which they can be logged without assessment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Australian government on Thursday announced its plan to fix the country’s broken environmental protection laws. Earlier in the day, Tanya Plibersek, Minister for Environment and Water, released a 50-page plan to halt Australia’s nature crisis, reports Xinhua news agency. It comes two years after the former government was handed a review of the Environment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21891,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21889\/revisions\/21891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}