The current rush by the Albanese government to ram laws through Parliament based on the contradictory aims of benefiting both big business and the environment has left no room to discuss what honest environmental protection means.

Resource extraction from nature causes environmental destruction and, while less is left of Earth’s natural ecosystem than ever before in human history, the rate of destruction of nature is increasing.

The amendments to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999) revealed by the Environment Minister Murray Watt last week won’t change that, precisely because those amendments were drafted to appease the Coalition and big business. The absurdity of Watt wanting the Greens to pass such amendments if the anti-environment forces back off is self-evident, though that’s not a new Labor tactic and now appears to be his main game.

Environment Justice Australia’s name says what it does. It has a team of lawyers dedicated to protecting Australia’s environment. EJA’s assessment is that the current reform package does have glimpses of good things, like a new national EPA (though it’s missing most of its teeth), stronger penalties for those who break the law, a definition of “unacceptable impact” and the promising possibility of environmental standards.

But these small steps forward are undermined by sweeping ministerial discretion over when and how to apply the rules. Plus it’s hard to see past the gaping holes: no requirement to assess or prevent climate harm to nature, logging and land clearing loopholes left wide open, discretionary ministerial powers at every turn, a “pay-to-destroy” offsets model that experts say is among the worst they’ve seen, plans to hand decision-making to states ill-equipped for the job and First Nations rights sidelined, with no Free, Prior and Informed Consent.

But what we hear from the Albanese government and big business is that we must be pragmatic, work within the bounds of the materialist (monetary profit) ethos and, shunning the honourable ideal of sustaining all life on our finite planet, get out of the way of growth economics.

Writing in the Guardian, Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London referred to a 2025 report largely overlooked by the Australian media and government: “A recent report by the UK Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and Exeter University forecasts that a 2 degree Celsius global temperature hike by 2050 would see a 25 per cent collapse in the global economy and 2 billion people dead. This is what the end game of a ‘pragmatic’ climate strategy looks like.”

There is little hope in this Trumpian, Albanesian world that the average global temperature won’t rise 2 degrees over past averages in the next 25 years.

The spectacle of Australia’s culpable National Party binning even the inadequate goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 highlights a representative democracy in Australia which has largely lost sight of future security, our basic human duty (as so eloquently outlined by President John F. Kennedy in 1962) to pass on this natural planet intact to our children, and a recognition that happiness in our own times comes from knowing that we have reasonably restrained our behaviour to guarantee their interests. Surely that parallels the aspiration of any responsible, caring parent.

The Greens, like Environment Justice Australia, are alarmed by the shortcomings of Watt’s legislation. There are two outstanding failures: no “climate trigger”, leaving him or any future minister little leverage to rein in that threat, and no provision to end the biggest cause of habitat destruction of rare and endangered species which is logging and clearing of the nation’s native forests and woodlands.

Labor’s taunt that the Greens should step in and accept laws designed for but rejected by the Liberals may suit the Business Council and Mining Industry Council but is fatuous and unedifying given the climate and extinction crises that are our generation’s responsibility to end, urgently.

There is a notable absurdity from big business in Watt’s proposals – the delegation of many Commonwealth powers to assess and protect the environment to state and territory governments. This runs in the face of decades of campaigning for uniform national laws when it comes to business administration. But the corporations know that provincial governments are easier to lobby or coerce into overlooking environmental protection. Even before tabling the new laws, Watt struck his first agreement to shed federal powers to the worst environmentally performed administration: Western Australia.

Albanese hand-picked Watt for the environment ministry with an obvious mission to avoid upsetting the corporate plunder of what’s left of the natural environment. Watt consequently set the low bar required for big business and the Liberals to agree. Now that’s failed, amending such an array of loophole-ridden provisions to the level of environmental protection the Greens could endorse looks like a tortuous path and, for Labor, punishing.

Albanese and Watt should get with the growing Australian desire for honest environmental protection (a majority of voters, especially Labor voters, want more action on climate change and ending native forest destruction) and start again.