The EPBC is one of the strongest pieces of environmental legislation in Australia which was ironically passed by the previous Liberal Govt when Robert Hill was Minister for the Environment. Certain threatening processes trigger the need to have a project’s environmental impact reviewed under the EPBC and the Federal Minister can stop a project despite it having State Govt approval.

Climate change is clearly as much a threatening process as those that are already “triggers” under the EPBC.  Last year’s review into the Act recommended that it should include a trigger for projects that are expected to emit over 500,000 tonnes CO2-e until an CPRS/ ETS comes into effect.

This was one of only two recommendations from the entire review to be rejected (the other was to review Regional Forest Agreements).  The reason for rejecting it was the imminent start of the CPRS – this was delayed for 2 or 3 years (forever?) I think about a month later.

No one (not even the greens) have mentioned this again – it is time the media asked

Howard and the Liberals did very little but while they definitely didnt actively and overtly respond to global warming they didnt stop a market to form for carbon offsets. They also enhanced a previous ALP (Keating Govt) program that enabled any company to document and have externally verified their emissions and what they were doing to abate their emissions. Their response took a lot longer, was minimal and wasnt because the party really wanted to act on the issue of climate change – though the ministers in charge of their greenhouse response did propose a trading scheme and other more substantial responses which ultimately led to NGERS and the development of carbon forests.

ALP comes into office and arrogantly destroys all the work that had taken place over more than a decade and replaces it with ????? – nothing of substance

Got rid of voluntary schemes for industry and business, local government, mitigation projects creating Australian voluntary carbon offsets, Australian Government certification of a full carbon neutral position for businesses and/or product lines etc etc

Replaced these with a mandatory emission and energy reporting system (NGERS) which had already been legislated by the Liberals but limited the coverage to the very top emitters. NGERS does not care about abatement – it is all about the emissions and energy use – all good things but a very narrow focus with no driver to identify what the company is doing.

Smaller companies were left with no way of reporting their emissions and what they were doing to reduce emissions, increase efficiency, continually improve their greenhouse performance and change the culture within their sphere of influence. They were provided with no opportunity to be in a rigorous Govt administered scheme that provided an opportunity and incentive to gain a competitive advantage by doing good deeds for the environment.

Cant point to renewables as the thing ALP has done – always start-stop-start-stop, heres some funding-now we take it away, combine non renewables funding (“clean coal”) with renewable funding to make the total amount much larger due to the greater and more immediate supply of money to the coal industry to try to clean its image.

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