This week, federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley introduced a bill to amend the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

The changes she's seeking to push through will put major fossil fuel projects on a fast-track to approval, and appear to be an attempt to clear the way for rapid expansion of polluting gas projects, rather than boost protection for our environment and wildlife.

This, coupled with changes to the national fund that is supposed to finance clean energy to enable it to fund polluting gas projects, introduced this week by Energy Minister Angus Taylor, makes this government's trajectory clear.

They're clearing the way for a gas-fired economic recovery, and manipulating our legal system to make it easier for the gas industry to push through major projects that will damage our climate and send Australia's greenhouse gas emissions soaring.

Everyone concerned with health, the climate and our environment should be worried.

The changes Minister Ley introduced to Parliament this week are being rushed through despite a review of our environmental laws being under way and not yet completed.

The interim report from the review process, released in July, has so far found that our legal protection for the environment is already failing, stating that "Australia's natural environment and iconic natural assets are in an overall state of decline and are under increasing threat. The current environmental trajectory is unsustainable."

The review of the act has concurred with the position of those concerned about the health of the natural environment for decades, and what comprehensive reviews of our environment and biodiversity have shown - that our track record and approach to protecting our magnificent environment is extremely poor.

Australia leads the world in the extinction of our unique animals. We have destroyed our iconic ecosystems like the Murray Darling Basin and the Great Barrier Reef, and our land clearing has led to the loss of most of the country's top soil.

Now as we have failed to tackle climate change, we are destroying millions of hectares of land and billions of animals with unprecedented mega bushfires.

We are destroying the very foundations for human health and wellbeing - access to clean air, soil and water.

These are the things that our environmental laws are designed to protect. The reason we want to protect them is not (entirely) because those creatures are cute and we like looking at trees - it's because our economy, society and population cannot exist without them.

READ MORE:

We cannot exist without healthy ecosystems, and that means at every level, from local ecosystems to our major river systems and forests and wetlands. You destroy species at any level and you disrupt the whole system.

Health representatives met with Ms Ley in June, following a letter from 180 health professionals and 19 health groups warning that failure to recognise the fundamental connection between human health and the natural world in the EPBC Act put us at risk of further public health crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic.

At that meeting, Ms Ley agreed that the EPBC Act in its current form is not working well and that human health should be considered in the reform process. That is not reflected in these amendments which, if successful, will likely undermine human health.

The current COVID-19 pandemic is a direct result of environmental harm. Land clearing and the destruction of ecosystems is disrupting the balance of the natural world.

We are encroaching on ecosystems, destroying habitat, and putting ourselves at risk as diseases jump from animals to humans. We need to get out of these places and ensure there are enough wild places, and enough wilderness, so other species and critical natural ecosystems can thrive.

And if we won't do it for the environment, let's at least do it for ourselves. Because our behaviour towards the environment, and the lack of legal protection for the very things that sustain us, put us at risk.