Nature has been the biggest loser of this year's Federal Parliament.
We came so close to getting a deal to secure an independent environmental regulator.
The national EPA would have put a stop to political interference in decision-making on projects that harmed the environment.
The irony? The deal was shot down at the eleventh hour by the Prime Minister at the behest of the Western Australian mining industry.
Senator David Pocock, along with the Greens, worked hard to negotiate a deal with Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.
They got close, but finding agreement took too long.
It allowed the lobbyists to mobilise. The WA Premier along with the business and mining lobby convinced the Prime Minister that nature law reform would lose him seats in WA at the next federal election.
Here's the flip side.
Recent YouGov polling reveals 86% of Australians want stronger nature laws. The Albanese government has squandered a golden opportunity to give Australians hope ahead of the next election.
Australians love nature and we want to see it protected for years to come.
Nature in Australia is in dire trouble. Perhaps our Prime Minister and the WA Premier have become desensitised to the fact we will lose species if they don't take urgent action.
Our beloved koalas are threatened with extinction. Their homes and our forests are being bulldozed. Ecosystems like the Murray-Darling and the Great Barrier Reef are collapsing.
When nature is in trouble, we are too. We rely on nature for everything - clean air, clean water, food, our health and the joy that every person feels seeing a koala snoozing in a big old gum tree.
When nature is in trouble, business is too. Every industry and job depends on nature and half of our industries are so dependent on nature they will fail without healthy forests, rivers and bees to pollinate their crops.
It is utterly confounding that every government for the last two decades has fundamentally failed to overhaul the national laws that are meant - but are failing - to protect nature.
The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act was made in 1999, by the conservative Howard government. But it doesn't do what it says on the label.
Since 1999, more than 7 million hectares of threatened species habitat has been bulldozed. That's the size of Tasmania.
The act has been formally reviewed twice, the last time in 2020 by Professor Graeme Samuel who found the laws were fundamentally broken. Samuel recommended the laws be fixed to include national environment standards - rules that define which natural places are so important they should be off limits for commercial projects and to set out where projects can sustainably go ahead.
He also recommended a strong cop on the beat to enforce the rules. He was clear, the laws were broken for nature and for business.
The Morrison government did not deliver Professor Samuel's recommendations, thanks to the Abbott government's efforts to gut the national nature laws. In 2023 Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek announced the Albanese government's recommendations in a blaze of commitments to reform the laws and create a national EPA to help end extinction.
Fast forward to the final week in Parliament and we are leaving bitterly disappointed.
The big mining and logging companies got their way. In a fit of short-sightedness and greed, the Business Council of Australia and WA miners like Gina Rinehart threw nature to the wolves and sent WA Premier Roger Cook to convince the Prime Minister to kill the deal.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did just that and the deal was dead. It is particularly galling to see the Business Council, under its new chair and CEO, backflip on the peak body's previous support for national environmental standards. The Business Council supported standards because they provided certainty for business, which would lead to faster, more predictable decisions.
Their members, which are the most powerful companies in Australia, should demand answers from their peak body why it advocated for more uncertainty.
Nature law reform is good for business. If we want to attract investment into Australia and keep exporting our food and products to the world, the federal government and Australian business need to get serious about protecting nature.
Our trading partners are starting to demand it.
Broken nature laws really do make doing business harder, and the way we know that is because business has said so. A national EPA and environmental standards set a clear, predictable process for businesses to do business. It helps them know where to develop and what rules they need to abide by to make sure important natural areas are not harmed.
Strong nature laws would help accelerate clean economies - renewable energy, critical mineral mining and deforestation free agriculture - and it would do all this while protecting our most important places and wildlife.
A healthy economy is vital to our survival.
But nature is priceless.
In this moment of weakness, the Albanese government has failed our unique species, the places we love and the future prosperity of our country.
Not passing the Nature Positive bills has also failed the next generation of kids who may never grow up to see a koala in a big old gum tree.
Kelly O'Shanassy is the chief executive of the Australian Conversation Foundation. Dermot O'Gorman is the chief executive of the World Wildlife Fund Australia.
This piece was published in the Canberra Times
