Australia's new environment laws
Tell Minister Watt: make the next decisions count for nature
Some of the most consequential decisions about how Australia's new environment laws work in practice are being made right now.
Send Environment Minister Murray Watt a quick email and encourage him to make sure these key implementation decisions actually protect nature.
Minister Watt needs to know people care about what happens next – and are paying attention.
Tips for writing your email
Write in your own words. A short, personal email is more powerful.
You don’t need to cover everything. Read more about the key issues >
For example, you could ask Minister Watt to:
- Keep national environmental decisions in national hands – don’t hand federal powers to states and territories without strong national Standards and robust systems that actually protect nature.
- Set strong, science-based limits on offsets and restoration payments – make clear that some species and ecosystems are simply too precious to offset
- Make sure restoration payments deliver real outcomes for nature – with strong rules about how the money is spent and what it must achieve
- Keep decisions transparent and accountable – so communities can see what was promised, what decisions were made and whether protections for nature are actually being delivered.
You could also share why protecting nature matters to you – and ask the Environment Minister to make the next decisions count for nature.
Why this matters
Australia’s new environment laws are meant to help set the national bar for decisions affecting threatened wildlife, important habitat and other nationally protected nature.
But key National Environmental Standards fall seriously short. They still give decision-makers too much discretion and do not require decisions to actually achieve the environmental outcomes the Standards are meant to deliver.
That makes the safeguards around the next decisions even more important.
The Albanese Government is still developing important parts of the new system – including rules about environmental offsets and restoration payments, what impacts should simply be unacceptable, and how federal environmental assessment and approval functions can be handed to states and territories.
The detail is vitally important.
These rules could determine whether irreplaceable habitat can be traded away, whether national environmental decisions are handed to states without strong guardrails, and how much accountability there is for decisions affecting nationally protected nature.
See more of our work on nature law reform
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