Could the quest for ‘single touch’ environmental approvals spread a dangerous feral species?
By Peter Burnett
The Government is intent on pushing through its partial agenda on environmental reform — it’s so called ‘single touch’ approvals approach — even at the expense of pre-empting the current independent review of the EPBC Act. To do that it’ll need to buy a few votes from the Senate cross benches.
In anticipation of a Parliamentary debate I’ve been digging through some recent legislative history and I’ve started to hear a loud buzzing noise. There’s a bumblebee in this equation and if we’re not careful it may soon be pollinating a weed near you.
Before I reveal the bumblebee, some background.
The buzz of ‘green tape’
As most of our readers will know (because we’ve discussed it from many angles), Professor Graeme Samuel is conducting a 10-year review of the EPBC (Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation) Act and has released an Interim Report. He has recommended a new approach to environmental protection based on National Environmental Standards (which would be interim in the first instance).
One of the drivers for EPBC reform is duplication and overlap between Commonwealth and State environmental impact assessment (EIA) systems. This problem is real enough, although the Government is one-eyed about it, framing the issue pejoratively as ‘green tape’ and talking little of anything else in the environmental reform space beyond its response to this issue, ‘single touch approval’.
‘Single touch approval’ is the Government’s new name for the failed ‘one stop shop’ initiative.
The Government is so focused on this issue that it will be introducing hastily-drafted legislation, probably this week, to hand over most Commonwealth EIA decision-making authority to the States.
It says that this accreditation will be based on Professor Samuel’s Interim Standards, even though they do not exist yet.
In the meantime, Professor Samuel continues with his review. He has formed a Consultative Group to help develop an interim set of Standards. The Group consists mostly of major stakeholders such as the Business Council of Australia and Australian Conservation Foundation, but it also includes a couple of individuals (including me).
Enter the bumblebee
Apart from EIA, the EPBC Act also plays a significant part in dealing with landscape-scale threats, including weeds and pests.
One of the Threat Abatement Plans made under the Act deals with gamba grass and four other invasive grasses in Northern Australia. Ironically, many of these grasses were deliberately introduced as improved pasture plants that then escaped to become major environmental threats.
The EPBC Act also makes it an offence to possess a exotic plants or animals that are not on the Live Import List. This offence applies even to feral species that have become established here.
One such species is the large earth bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), which apparently was smuggled into Tasmania from New Zealand in the 1990s and has since become established there. (At this time, the bumblebee is not found on the mainland). The likely reason for smuggling is that the bumblebee is a very efficient crop pollinator and could be a boon to horticulture, including tomato-growing.
Several applications have been made by the horticulture industry to include the bumblebee on the Live Import List and so allow its use as a pollinator, but each application has been rejected because of the biosecurity risks, which include out-competing native bees and, through their efficiency as pollinators, exacerbating the impacts of weeds.
Could a bumblebee buy a vote?
Why am I linking weeds and feral animals with environmental review and reform? Well, as I write, the Commonwealth’s urgent Bill has yet to see the light of day. However, rumour has it that it will draw heavily on the Abbott Government’s ‘one-stop-shop’ EPBC Amendment Bill, which was introduced in 2014 and was allowed to lapse in 2016 after it became clear that it would not pass the Senate.
I went back over that 2014 Bill. Initially, I was puzzled by blandly described amendments in the proposed Bill that would allow people to apply for permission to possess live specimens of feral animals. These seemed to have no connection to the one-stop-shop reforms.
Further research revealed that this amendment was proposed by the Government to secure the support of Independent Senator Jacqui Lambie. The amendments would allow a two year ‘trial’ in Tasmania of the pollination of greenhouse-grown tomatoes by bumblebees.
Given previous assessments that this would pose unacceptable risks to biosecurity, I was shocked that Senator Lambie would seek, or worse, that the Government would agree to, such an amendment. It was only by luck that the ‘trial’ did not proceed because of opposition to the Bill on other grounds.
But some bad ideas just will not die. I was shocked again to find that even though the Bill had lapsed, the bumblebee proposal was later considered by a Senate Committee, which supported the idea unanimously! Even Senator Whish-Wilson of The Greens supported it!
The shock of the bumblebee
I also discovered that I was not the only one shocked. The Invasive Species Council, a non-profit advocacy group, published an article in the Feral Herald (best newsletter name ever!) expressing their shock that the warnings from the CSIRO and the Environment Department, together with opposition from the Honeybee Industry Council, the South Australian Government (plus bans in NSW and Victoria) and the Council itself, were not enough to deter the Committee from supporting the plan.
I’m raising all this because, once again, the Government are likely to need Senator Lambie’s support to secure passage of their hasty reforms. Given this, and the Government’s subsequent endorsement in 2019 of the Committee recommendations, I expect they will include it in their ‘single touch approval’ Bill.
As the Invasive Species Council has pointed out, legalising the use of feral bumblebees in Tasmania will create a perverse incentive for someone to smuggle them to the mainland.
A cost-benefit analysis taking this into account would find the small benefits in Tasmania to be vastly outweighed by the likely costs nationwide.
The contested arena of environmental reform is already littered with complexity, ideological conflict and vested interests. In case there was any doubt, now we can add irrationality to the list. And irresponsibility.
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