While my attention is focussed on Australasia I might as well mention this story reported in The Age today:
" The report by the Australia Institute found that since the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act came into operation in 1999, only two activities had been stopped out of thousands that posed threats to conservation "
A spokeswoman for the Environment Minister, Senator Ian Campbell, is reported as saying:
" To judge the success of the Act on the basis of the number of project approvals and rejections is simplistic and demonstrates a lack of understanding of how the legislation operates"
There's a summary of the report available from the Australia Institute's site and here's a direct link to the PDF "Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act: A Five Year Assessment"
In the document Andrew Macintosh and Debra Wilkinson argue :
"In almost all areas, the regime has failed to produce any noticeable improvements in environmental outcomes. The activities that pose the greatest threat to the Act’s ‘matters of national environmental significance’ are rarely being referred to the Minister and, when they are, the Minister is not taking adequate steps to ensure appropriate conservation results. In five years, the EAA provisions have been responsible for stopping only two activities out of potentially thousands and the conditions that have been imposed on developments under the regime have largely been ineffectual, unenforceable or a mirror of those already imposed under other processes."
Some of the most powerful points they make are that the land clearance rates in Queensland have increased and that the greatest increases are in areas with national environmental significance. Additionally they suggest that both of the actions that were taken by the EAA were both failures. The firt action being dismissed at comittal hearing and the second taking so long that 80% of the clearing occured while the Commonwealth was trying to negotiate a settlement and that this poor state of affairs is aggravated by their accusation that the illegal clearing had been notified 10 months before initiation of the case.
Not having access to the full report its hard to make a fair judgement. I certainly don't know enough about the actions of the government to know if their defence is valid. On the other hand the whole matter reminds me of many governments around the world that make a lot of noise about the environment and then do just about enough, to be able to say that they do something.
Contrast the defensive comments reported in The Age :
"In the five years of operation of the Act more than a thousand environmental matters have been protected nationally which would not otherwise have been possible. Some examples include numerous plant and animal species such as rare orchids and whales, and a number of heritage places including the Great Barrier Reef." Source : The Age
With:
"Similarly, in the five years since the Act commenced, the Minister has listed only ten ecological communities when the available evidence suggests the total number of threatened terrestrial ecosystems and ecological communities alone is in the vicinity of 3 000." Source : Australia Institue Report
For all I know the Australia Instiute might be some rabid anti-instutional body that just likes to take pot shots at government but their summary reads like a well reasoned document. While the spokeswomans comments don't really seem to tackle the points in the report and sound like the familiar flim-flam of politicians under the microscope.
Image: Ocean near Bondi Beach Courtesy: thenoodleator / Janeen
11:10:21 PM 
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