It's a piece of federal legislation that caused an acrimonious split among Australia's environment groups. The controversy continues with the release this week of a report questioning whether federal environment protection laws are being reliably enforced or delivering conservation value for money.
On June 23, 1999, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act Australia's first comprehensive national environment protection law was passed in the Senate. But only after the Howard government secured the Democrats' support and guillotined further debate on the new national environment laws.
Greens leader Senator Bob Brown delivered an impassioned speech, quoting a letter from poet Judith Wright that denigrated the new law as ''a foolish and unpredictable thing''. He denounced the Democrats as ''yabbering poodles'' who had betrayed ''the grand forests right around this country'' to secure ''a place at the table of power''.
Opposition to the Act, chiefly from the Greens, Greenpeace, the Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation, hinged on three issues it did not regulate land clearing, tighten controls on forestry management or include any reference to climate change.
The Howard government's environment minister Senator Robert Hill told the Senate that land clearing which remains the single biggest threat to Australia's diminishing biodiversity was not included ''because in our view the primary responsibility on issues of natural resource management, such as land clearing, does and should remain with the states''.
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