APPEA said that the Australian Government’s Interim Report on the Operation of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act reinforced a recent Productivity Commission report that the industry was “groaning under the dead weight of regulatory inefficiency”.
APPEA Chief Executive Belinda Robinson said that this was the second report in three months to find that “regulatory inefficiencies are costing the Australian economy without any policy benefit”.
The interim report found there is “no doubt that there is duplication in the regulation of upstream petroleum related activities insofar as they relate to management of impacts on the environment. There is a need to minimise this regulatory overburden for its own sake as well as in having regard to the Government’s policy of deregulation”.
Ms Robinson said that APPEA supported the report’s inclination to “resist the incorporation of a greenhouse gas trigger into the EPBC where there is a carbon pollution reduction scheme in place.
Article continues below…“APPEA will continue to engage constructively with this important review process and we look forward to the completion of the review, the release of the final report later this year and a timely program of implementation,” she said.
