Endangered species: Back to square one
To say the least, the draft Endangered Species Protection legislation adopted by Cabinet on October 27 is very inadequate. It will prove to be better than nothing at all only if it does not prevent revisiting the topic with a view to achieving more serious endangered species legislation in the future.
The only feature that goes any way towards redeeming the flawed legislation is provision for constructing a federal register of endangered species based solely on scientific assessments. There is hope that this will ensure that such a register will not be soiled by the attempt of industrial groups to involve protection of their own economic interests in the nomination of just what species can be considered formally as "endangered".
The legislation as it is currently drafted potentially gives fatally inadequate protection to endangered species and their habitats in many cases. It will apply only to Commonwealth land (making up just 1% of the continent) and waters and to Commonwealth projects and approvals, and can be overridden for economic reasons.
Heavy restrictions placed on third-party rights — that is the right of environmental and community groups and individual citizens to use the courts to challenge development projects on environmental grounds — constitute the greatest defect in the final draft. Consequently, the public cannot hope to serve as the watchdog over the legislation and virtually all power now resides with the resource ministers or with Cabinet as a whole.
It appears even the power of the environment minister to apply interim conservation orders in dangerous cases has been removed from the final draft and may apply now only for 24 hours in cases of emergency while the resource minister concerned is left with the decision to agree or not to a further 28-day prohibition. Therefore, in cases where big business interests would in any way be jeopardised by a clash between a project they want to put into operation and the habitat of an endangered species, the environment movement will be required to mobilise at a phenomenal level to achieve sufficient community pressure on the government to halt the project.
Clearly, Labor has failed to honour the spirit of its election promise of endangered species legislation and has met its formal commitment in the most minimalist way. The apparent acceptance of arguments from big business that the final form of the endangered species legislation is consistent with ecologically sustainable development means that Labor's ESD process itself should finally be abandoned by environmentalists. The preservation of biodiversity must be fundamental to ESD; making any species extinct for economic gain simply cannot be tolerated.
This episode has lessons which go beyond whether or not the environmental organisations ought at any time to have given their support to the Labor party, an act of faith that has been dealt with cruelly. The question is whether parliament and the courts should be st place as the sole or central focus for public action to preserve the environment or achieve other social goals. Back to square one: the environment movement is faced again with the need for the sort of action that, as in the case of the Franklin River, initially gave it such prominence — the independent popular mobilisation of grassroots supporters of environmental preservation.