AREEA welcomes the Western Australian Labor party’s confirmation that if it wins government it will not transfer environmental approval powers from the Environment Minister to the State Administrative Tribunal.
In a statement, the Labor Party noted its position would “avoid the onerous path of allowing WA’s environmental approvals being subjected to court-style decision making.”
Further, Labor said its policies would enable ‘triple-bottom-line’ decision making to be integral to environmental approvals processes – essentially balancing jobs, development and the environment.
AREEA’s principal economic and industry policy adviser, Tristan Menalda, welcomed the policy.
“This is an important announcement by state Labor, given Australia already has longer approval times for large projects than Canada, the UK and New Zealand, with processes often taking up to two years to produce and 18 months to assess,” Mr Menalda said.
“WA has more than $54 billion worth of potential major resource and energy projects gathering dust while awaiting final approval to be either constructed or scrapped, according to statistics from the Office of the Chief Economist.
“This is an opportunity that WA should capitalise on, particularly at a time when the national economy is contracting and unemployment is rising.
“In order for Australia to get its fair share in the next wave of resource activity, Australia (and the states) need to sensibly, sustainably and intelligently reform our resource and energy approval framework(s).
“Failure to do so will come in the form of lost resource and energy investment, reduced jobs and lesser taxes which governments redistribute back into our schools, hospitals and community infrastructure.”
AREEA has been lobbying for a “one-stop-shop” for project approvals, which includes environmental approvals. This was also one of AREEA’s recommendations in its recent submission to the periodic inquiry of Australia’s productivity performance.
For any information about this policy development, contact AREEA’s Principal Economic and Industry Policy Adviser, Tristan Menalda via [email protected]
