Australia’s old environment laws were a box-ticking exercise. Sadly, the new ones could be too

By Justine Bell-James, Professor, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland

For a quarter century, Australia’s environment laws were widely regarded as not fit for purpose. In 2020, a scathing review by Professor Graeme Samuel found the Environment Protection and Biodiversity (EPBC) Act was ineffective and unfit for future environmental challenges.

On the last Parliamentary sitting day of 2025, Labor passed its long-awaited reforms to Australia’s nature laws following a deal with the Greens. According to Environment Minister Murray Watt, these reforms…

Read complete article

~	AI is making journalistic language more repetitive and predictable – and it’s a problem for all of us

~	Who were the American mothers to France’s orphaned children during the First World War?

~	Europe needs 10 million homes and net-zero buildings by 2040. Here are four ways it could happen

~	Tuvalu aims to become a ‘Digital Nation’ amid rising sea levels

~	What ‘biodegradable’ packaging really means – and 3 key questions to ask about it

~	Central Africa’s wild meat dilemma: why outright bans threaten food security for millions

~	Sri Lanka: Malaiyaha Tamil workers in private tea estates suffer serious labour abuses – new report

~	Scientists have scrapped the worst-case climate scenario – because action is making a difference

~	Guide to the classics: Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World pioneered speculative fiction, 400 years ago

~	Deep-rooted inequalities are driving the latest diphtheria outbreak. But we can fix them