One stop shop for environmental approvals a messy backward step for Australia

The new Australian Government is establishing what it calls a “one stop shop” for environmental approvals. This principally involves entering approval bilaterals with State and Territory governments to accredit their decisions as satisfying any approval requirements under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth). The Federal Environment Minister claims that the one stop shop “will slash red tape and increase jobs and investment, whilst maintaining environmental standards”. Whether the claimed benefits are achievable is an open question and there are serious potential problems with the proposed system. There is remarkably little evidence to support the claim that significant time and costs savings will be achieved by the policy. It also undermines one of the key functions and benefits of the EBPC Act in practice – to provide an appropriate level of oversight for State government decisions. This problem will be exacerbated if the Australian Government breaks its pre-election commitment to retain power for decisions on State government projects