Federal government accused of watering down draft MNES standard under EPBC Act reforms.

Overview

The Federal Government released a new draft of the National Environmental Standards for Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES) in early May 2026, as part of its continuing effort to reform the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). The release was intended to represent a significant step forward in modernising Australia’s national environmental approval framework, following years of criticism that the EPBC Act was too slow, too complex, and too ineffective at actually protecting the environment. Instead, the draft has triggered an immediate and forceful backlash from some of Australia’s most prominent environmental organisations.

The Wilderness Society, WWF-Australia, and the Biodiversity Council have each publicly condemned the draft standard, arguing it retreats from the central recommendation of the 2020 Independent Review of the EPBC Act conducted by Professor Graeme Samuel. That review explicitly called for the introduction of legally enforceable, outcome-based National Environmental Standards that would set measurable benchmarks for environmental protection. The critics argue the latest draft replaces those measurable outcomes with vague, process-oriented principles, allowing developers to secure approvals by demonstrating they have followed the right procedural steps rather than by proving their project will not cause net harm to threatened species and ecological communities. The Wilderness Society’s Melanie Audrey described the draft as “riddled with weak language, loopholes and fails to set clear red lines to protect nature.”

For environmental consultants, developers, lawyers, and planning authorities, the implications are considerable. The draft signals a potential return to a compliance model where procedural box-ticking, rather than demonstrable environmental performance, becomes the primary pathway to approval. At the same time, the Federal Government has announced $45 million in funding to accelerate bilateral assessment agreements with states and territories, meaning the interaction between federal MNES requirements and state planning frameworks will intensify over the next several years. The combination of weaker federal standards and faster bilateral agreement pathways will change how major project environmental assessments are scoped, conducted, and reviewed across Australia.

Key details of the draft MNES standard and the criticism it has attracted

The MNES standard sits at the heart of the EPBC Act reform programme. Under the current EPBC Act framework, nine Matters of National Environmental Significance trigger the requirement for federal assessment and approval, including listed threatened species and ecological communities, migratory species, Ramsar wetlands, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, Commonwealth marine areas, and nuclear actions. The proposed National Environmental Standards were intended to define, in concrete and enforceable terms, what level of protection must be achieved for each of these matters when a controlled action is assessed and approved.

The 2020 Samuel Review found that the EPBC Act was “not fit for purpose” and recommended a fundamental redesign centred on outcome-based standards. Professor Samuel’s model envisaged standards that would specify measurable environmental outcomes a proponent must achieve or avoid, creating clear, legally binding thresholds rather than prescribing assessment processes. Under that model, a development affecting listed threatened species habitat would need to demonstrate it would not cause the species’ conservation status to worsen, backed by quantitative data and independent audit. The critics’ core argument is that the current draft has abandoned this model in favour of a principles-based approach that restores ministerial and departmental discretion and reduces accountability for project-level environmental outcomes.

The Biodiversity Council has pointed to population trend data as context for why the weakening of standards matters. Australia’s populations of threatened species have declined by an average of 50 per cent over the past two decades, a statistic that underpins the argument that existing regulatory settings have not delivered adequate protection, and that any further relaxation of the proposed reforms represents a step in the wrong direction. Australia already holds the record for the highest rate of mammal extinction in the world, and ongoing land clearing for development remains one of the primary drivers of biodiversity loss in Queensland, New South Wales, and Western Australia.

The $45 million funding package for bilateral assessment agreements introduces a separate but connected layer of complexity. Bilateral agreements under the EPBC Act allow state and territory assessment processes to substitute for the federal assessment process, meaning a project assessed under a state planning framework meeting agreed standards does not require a separate federal assessment. Accelerating these agreements will increase the volume of major projects assessed entirely within state frameworks, which raises serious questions about whether state-level assessment processes are equipped to deliver the environmental protection outcomes that were supposed to be codified in the federal MNES standards.

Australian context: EPBC Act reform, state bilateral agreements, and contaminated land implications

Australia’s environmental approval framework operates as a layered system, where federal EPBC Act requirements sit above and interact with state and territory environmental planning legislation. In Queensland, the Environment Protection Act 1994 and the Planning Act 2016 govern most project-level environmental approvals, while in New South Wales, the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (EP and A Act) and the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 carry the equivalent function.

References and related sources

• Primary source: www.theguardian.com
• EPBC Act

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This is an iEnvi Machete news summary. Prepared by iEnvi to summarise the source article for contaminated land, groundwater, remediation, approvals and site risk professionals.

Published: 02 May 2026

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