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He has promised to provide a “clear, strong definition of an unacceptable impact”. This is progress of a sort. For decades, the law has allowed the destruction of nature without ever distinguishing between really bad and disastrously bad. Now, at last, we will know what is bad, and then we can keep doing the bad things, but with greater definitional accuracy. Watt is also seeking to establish an environment protection agency to enforce the existing rules. Of course, the rules themselves won’t change – and they don’t work. The plan, as it stands, is to enforce the ineffective rules, but with more enthusiasm. It’s like appointing a lifeguard to supervise a swimming pool with no water in it. The minister will also have final say over the EPA, which means the agency will be “independent” only in the sense that it is completely at the mercy of whichever major developer has the most influence over the minister at the time. Under a better model, of course, the government would set strong national environmental standards – clear science-based protections for nature – while the EPA independently assesses and approves projects, and enforces those standards without political interference. Alongside the EPA, the minister announced that development projects will need to demonstrate a “net gain” for nature, which is a polite way of saying projects will continue as usual, but developers will be encouraged to offset their damage. In practice, this could conceivably mean that one could smack a koala across the face in one forest and pay for another koala to keep its favourite tree in another.
