Does the Business Council of Australia really believe that one of the most urgent priorities for governments should be slashing the ability of Australians to protect wildlife and nature in court? One can only assume so, because that is a proposition that the BCA wants the Council of Australian Governments to focus on in December.
In the BCA’s view, you should only be allowed to go to court to protect one of our natural wonders if you live on top of it or near it. The formal recommendation contained in the its report released last week is that standing for judicial review “should be limited to proponents and persons directly affected by a project”.
Bad luck if you live in Brisbane but care about the Great Barrier Reef. Get lost if you care about the central highlands forests but live in Melbourne. That is the BCA position.
The idea that only people who live near the reef or any of our other natural wonders should be allowed to protect them is nonsensical and undemocratic. All Australians should be able to have our day in court to protect our country’s natural places and wildlife. Our environment is part of our national heritage – it is our shared responsibility and belongs to us all.
It is particularly perverse that at a time when our wildlife and wild places are under unprecedented threat that the Business Council of Australia wants to increase their vulnerability.
Almost a quarter of the coral on the Great Barrier Reef was killed by last summer’s great bleaching caused by global warming. At the time of the great bleaching – when our reef needed all the help it could get – the BCA said nothing, looked the other way and just kept on humming. Now the BCA has gone one step worse – agitating for our wounded reef to have even less protection.
The BCA report even goes so far as to identify the Carmichael coalmine – which would be a disaster for the reef – as one of the major projects in the pipeline that justifies its absurd proposal.
It is just weeks since United Nations special rapporteur Michel Forst visited Australia and was “astonished” by the Australian government’s hostility to civil society including defenders of the environment, which he observed was being fanned by certain “media and business actors”.
Bernard Keane notes that the BCA has “routinely adopted extreme economic positions repudiated by the majority of voters”. In this case, polling demonstrates that there is broad-based backing for people to be able to use the courts to protect nature – entirely contrary to the BCA’s preferred outcome.
More recently Keane wrote that the BCA has “reached a point of such irrelevance that even its Liberal allies publicly ridicule it”. It is as if the BCA has decided to cast itself as the pantomime villain of Australian public life – half sinister, half subject to open mockery.
So who decides on the BCA’s priorities? According to the BCA’s website, “members determine” the work program and policy positions of the organisation. The membership list of the BCA makes for an interesting read. Fossil fuel companies including Chevron, BP and Shell clearly don’t care about our Great Barrier Reef, or nature at large – or the future of human civilisation for that matter – because if they did they wouldn’t still be exploring for the fossil fuels that are the biggest driver of global warming.
But do law firms such as Minter Ellison or Corrs Chambers Westgarth who are also members of the BCA want our wildlife and wild places to have less protection? What about the McKinsey consultancy or Virgin airlines or Australia Post? What about a business like Unilever that invests heavily in differentiating itself from the competition on the basis of superior corporate values?
Every member of the BCA must take responsibility for the vandalistic agenda of their peak body. Every one of these businesses is taking on unnecessary reputational risk as a consequence of their membership of the BCA because of the extreme positions being taken by the organisation.
Rather than having legal protection cut even further, Australia actually needs stronger environmental laws. It is scandalous that there is no effective legal remedy to stop fossil fuel companies from damaging our Great Barrier Reef. It is appalling that we have no national air pollution laws. We lack a legal framework to guarantee that Australia will meet our internationally agreed climate change obligations and to stop digging up the coal, oil and gas that is driving global warming
But unless there is an overdue change of direction, don’t expect the BCA to be bothered by any of that any time soon.