Australians love this country for its immense natural wealth: bush, rivers, reefs and wildlife. It’s who we are and how we thrive. But our nature is shrinking fast.
Every two minutes, a football field’s worth of nature is destroyed and since our current laws came into force, an area of native bushland larger than the size of Tasmania has been bulldozed.
Destroying nature destroys what matters most to Australia: our natural wealth, our prosperity, our way of life.
If we want a strong Australia, we need strong nature laws.
After years of undelivered promises, the Albanese Government will finally introduce its revamped national nature protection laws to parliament by November this year. But will they actually protect Australia’s nature and all of us who depend on it?
To be successful, the government must:
Close deforestation loopholes
Set clear, strong rules for nature protection
Establish an independent Environment Protection Agency to provide accountable and expertise-based decision making
Address climate harm in all decisions
Let’s unpack the four things Albanese’s nature laws must do and what’s at stake:
Close deforestation loopholes
Case study 1: Koalas are being driven to extinction by rogue bulldozers and lax laws.
The koala is our beloved national icon, and it’s in big trouble.
Since 2011, the koala has been recognised as threatened with extinction, and the federal government notes the destruction of its native forest and woodland homes as a “severe” and “increasing” threat to its existence.
Despite this, 2.3 million hectares of likely koala habitat in Queensland and New South Wales has been destroyed in that time. That’s more than 2.5 times the size of Greater Melbourne.
Of this, more than 98% was destroyed 'outside’ of the national nature law. That is, without even being assessed for its impact by the very law meant to protect nature.
This is largely because our nature laws are barely enforced and peppered with loopholes that let the bulldozers loose without consequences.
More than 390,000 hectares of koala habitat have been cut down by the native forest logging industry to make products like woodchips and pallets. Unbelievably, this industry is exempt from Australia’s nature protection law.
Of the koala habitat flattened since 2011, around 1.6 million hectares were bulldozed to make way for agriculture, particularly in Queensland. That’s an area 22 times the size of Singapore gone.
While most farmers and landholders value and protect trees on their properties, a small number exploit loopholes in our nature laws and continue to bulldoze vast areas of the bush without consequence. These loopholes must be closed.
Bulldozed koala habitat in Mt Hallen, Southeast Queensland. Image: ACF
Case study 2: The Great Barrier Reef needs trees in the ground
The Great Barrier Reef is famous around the world for its brightly-coloured corals, turtles, groupers and clown fish. It is also an economic powerhouse. In 2024, the reef brought in a whopping 2.2 million visitors and each year it supports over 60,000 Queensland jobs and injects $6.4 billion to the economy.
Many people are aware of the impact of burning fossil fuels on coral, but lesser-known is the role Queensland’s forests play in protecting the Great Barrier Reef.
Trees capture and store carbon, and it’s estimated that Australia’s native forests lock up a staggering 20 million tons of climate and ocean-warming carbon. In Queensland in 2022-2023 alone, more than 330,000 hectares of forests and woodlands were destroyed.
Bulldozing these forests doesn’t only worsen climate damage. Without trees in the ground, soil and sediments run off into the ocean where they smother corals and seagrasses. Alarmingly, nearly half of this destruction occurred within the areas that drain into the Great Barrier Reef.
Even worse, 86% of this destruction was for pasture (mainly for beef), which means that when these trees are bulldozed, it’s not only sediment that ends up on the Great Barrier Reef, but also pesticides and phosphorous from fertilisers.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority identifies water quality as one of the most significant threats to the reef and has named the improvement of water entering the Marine Park as “critical and urgent”.
Everything is connected. The Great Barrier Reef and all who rely on it need nature laws that keep forests standing.
2. Set clear, strong rules for nature protection
Whalers Way, located at the southern end of South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula is known as an “explorer’s playground”, and is home to the endangered Eyre Peninsula southern-emu wren - a tiny bird unique to this area.
While perfectly adapted to its dense, low coastal scrub habitat, the wren is a poor flier that moves around the landscape more like a mouse than a bird. So, when patches of its home are bulldozed, it has a major impact on the bird’s ability to mate and survive. So much of the emu-wren’s home has already been destroyed and fragmented that the Federal Government identifies all remaining habitat as critical to the survival of the species.
And yet, in October 2024, the Federal Government used Australia’s nature laws to approve a private company called Southern Launch to bulldoze nearly 24 hectares of the wren’s critical remaining coastal scrubland home at Whalers Way to make way for a rocket launching facility.
It’s hard to believe that the same laws that give a species its protected status can be used to approve bulldozing of habitat deemed ‘critical’ for it to survive. But that is currently the case.
The Albanese Government must create strong and upfront rules that protect habitat that are critical to the survival of Australia’s threatened plants, animals, places and ecosystems.
Not only will strong rules result in better protections, they will clearly tell everyone what’s in and what’s out. That means quick ‘nos’ for projects that propose to bulldoze remaining habitat for species like the emu-wren and faster ‘yes’s’ for the good ones in the right places.
Endangered Southern emu-wren. Image: Martin Pelanek/Shutterstock
3. Establish an independent Environment Protection Agency
Case study 1: Toondah Harbour should never have been fair game for developers.
Toondah Harbour is a critical wetland in Queensland that was long the focus of a proposed luxury development.
Following years of community pressure from groups including ACF Bayside, the Toondah Alliance and Birdlife Australia, the Albanese Government announced its planned decision to reject Walker Corporation’s proposal to build thousands of luxury apartments.
The now Environment Minister Murray Watt’s reaction? “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
He was right. But this battle wasn’t won because of a fair and just system. It took 5+ years and thousands of people spending their time, money and energy. They should not have had to do this.
As part of the Moreton Bay Marine Park, Toondah Harbour is home to internationally significant wetlands that are protected under the RAMSAR convention – a global treaty to halt the worldwide destruction of wetlands. It’s so important that the then Federal Environment Minister, Josh Frydenberg, was advised on multiple occasions by his department that Walker Corporation’s proposal should be rejected because of the damage it would do.
Despite this, Minister Frydenberg rejected the advice and sent the project to the next stage of assessment. And after lobbying by the developer, he even proposed removing protections from a portion of the internationally significant wetlands.
Political intervention like this has no place in decision making. Community members should never have had to spend so many years standing up against a project that should never have happened.
This is precisely why Australia needs a national an independent Environment Protection Agency that stops free passes and bases decisions on evidence, not lobbying.
Toondah Harbour wetland. Image: Nikki Michail
4.Consider climate harm in all decisions
Case study: Western Australians need nature to be protected from coal and gas
The extension of Woodside’s North-West Shelf gas factory is devastating for nature, climate and people. Not only does the project put the fossil fuel giant a step closer to drilling 50 gas wells around Western Australia’s Scott Reef, a critical spot for endangered species like pygmy blue whales and green turtles, it also locks in decades of climate pollution.
This comes at a time when Western Australia’s World Heritage-listed Ningaloo Reef has just experienced its worst bleaching event on record.
The high rates of coral death associated with this ‘underwater wildfire’ don't just spell disaster for the wildlife that call the reef home, but also for the people who make their living from the reef.
The community in Exmouth and Coral Bay rely directly on the health of Ningaloo Reef. Their boating, diving, accommodation and hospitality businesses serve 280,000 tourists every year. A report compiled by Deloitte Access Economics estimates that the Ningaloo coast contributes around $110 million in value to Western Australia’s economy, with tourism accounting for over 90% of it.
The climate and nature crises are interlinked, and Australia needs laws that will help protect places like Ningaloo and give local communities and industries a fighting chance.
With the Albanese Government currently rewriting Australia’s national nature laws, this is once in a generation opportunity must be met with 21st century thinking that recognises climate change. The new system must ensure that all project proposals are considered for the impact their climate harm will have on nature.
Now, you know that we need national laws that:
End deforestation
Set strong rules
Create an independent referee
Consider climate harm in all decisions
It's time to tell the Albanese Government! Please sign the open letter to Labor: Fix Australia’s nature laws!