Repair Our Environment

Design rationale

Clearing and fragmentation of native vegetation remain a widespread and deteriorating pressure on Australian biodiversity. Restoring damaged ecosystems cannot compensate efficiently for continuing to remove established habitat elsewhere.

National environmental law already regulates clearing where it significantly affects nationally protected environmental matters, and recent reforms have narrowed exemptions for clearing long-undisturbed vegetation. From July 2027, native forestry in Regional Forest Agreement areas will also become subject to the same national environmental requirements as other industries.

This reform would take the remaining step from assessing whether major native-vegetation loss may proceed to establishing that commercial native logging and broadscale conversion of native vegetation are generally not permitted.

Native forest harvesting

Commercial harvesting would end in native forests regardless of whether the land remains classified as forest afterwards.

This would not prevent timber being recovered incidentally from ecological thinning, safety work, cultural land management, or other permitted activities whose purpose is managing the ecosystem rather than producing commercial timber.

Plantation forestry would remain unaffected. Victoria and Western Australia have already ended commercial logging in state-owned native forests, with Western Australia retaining ecological thinning and shifting future timber supply towards plantations.

Broadscale land clearing

The prohibition would apply where native vegetation is cleared at scale to establish or expand another land use, including agriculture, urban development, resource projects, or other commercial activity.

It would not turn ordinary management of already developed land into prohibited clearing. Routine maintenance, weed control, existing firebreaks, individual hazardous trees, fences, and similar activities would remain outside the broadscale conversion rule where they do not substantially remove an established native ecosystem.

The rule would apply to the ecological effect of the clearing rather than depend only on how a state or territory classifies the land.

Limited exemptions

Removal of native vegetation would remain permissible for ecological management, public safety, cultural land management, and essential public infrastructure.

These exemptions would be interpreted according to their purpose. The infrastructure exemption would apply only where the infrastructure is necessary and no practicable alternative location, route, or design avoids the clearing.

Higher costs or commercial convenience alone would not justify clearing native vegetation. Clearing would need to be minimised for essential works, not treated as an ordinary development option when practical alternatives exist.

Residual risks

Distinguishing legitimate ecological management from disguised commercial harvesting will sometimes require judgement, particularly where permitted vegetation removal produces timber with substantial commercial value.

Ending domestic native-forest harvesting could increase demand for imported timber, shifting some environmental pressure overseas where logging remains legal but environmental protections are weaker.

References

Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water — Forests |
Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water — Stronger environmental protection and restoration |
National Environmental Protection Agency — Reforms to land clearing exemptions |
Australia State of the Environment — Biodiversity: Industry pressures |
Western Australian Government — Commercial native logging ends in Western Australia

Design rationale

Restoring ecosystems can create substantial public benefits, including biodiversity, habitat connectivity, healthier soils, cleaner water, and greater ecological resilience, while much of the cost and foregone alternative land use is carried by the landholder.

The Nature Repair Market already provides a national framework for recognising verified biodiversity outcomes. We would build on that system rather than create another environmental market, expanding the range of ecological improvements that can qualify while establishing a dependable source of demand alongside voluntary private investment.

Nature-repair methods

Nature Repair methods would progressively cover restoration, enhancement, and protection where ecological outcomes can be measured with sufficient integrity.

Methods would assess ecological improvement rather than prescribe a preferred restoration technique. Depending on the landscape, effective repair could involve revegetation, assisted regeneration, soil rehabilitation, erosion control, habitat reconstruction, changed grazing or fire management, invasive-species control, or combinations of interventions.

This would allow the Nature Repair Market to reward improvements across a wider range of damaged and partially intact ecosystems as suitable methods are developed, rather than remaining limited to only replanting native forest and woodland on land that has been cleared and no longer has native forest cover.

Reliable demand

Federal biodiversity-restoration spending would be able to purchase verified Nature Repair outcomes competitively where an applicable method can represent the environmental objective being funded.

Purchases would consider ecological benefit, durability, cost, location, habitat connectivity, and relevant conservation priorities rather than treating biodiversity outcomes as interchangeable units.

Government purchasing would provide anchor demand alongside businesses, conservation organisations, philanthropy, and other buyers. Nature Repair outcomes purchased as additional environmental investment would not be used to excuse or offset unrelated environmental damage.

Interaction with other environmental markets

A project may produce more than one genuine environmental benefit. Biodiversity improvement, carbon sequestration, water-quality improvement, and other outcomes should remain separately measured and valued where separate markets or funding mechanisms exist.

Receiving value for one outcome would not prevent a project receiving value for another distinct outcome, provided the same environmental benefit is not counted twice.

Biochar as a restoration tool

Suitable biochar can contribute to ecological restoration where it improves degraded soil, water or nutrient retention, vegetation establishment, or other measurable aspects of ecosystem condition.

Nature Repair support would reward the resulting ecological improvement rather than the use of biochar itself. Any durable atmospheric carbon stored in the biochar would remain separately accounted for through the carbon-removal framework.

Residual risks

Biodiversity is inherently location-specific, so different ecological outcomes cannot be reduced perfectly to a single comparable measure. Some judgement will remain when buyers compare otherwise valid projects.

References

Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water — Nature Repair Market | Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water — Methods for the Nature Repair Market | Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water — Biodiversity Assessment Instrument | Clean Energy Regulator — Biodiversity certificates | Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water — Australian Bushland Program

Design rationale

Nature Repair projects can restore landscapes that were degraded without ever having been fully cleared, including remnant vegetation, damaged riparian corridors, fragmented habitat, and other partially functioning ecosystems.

Selling a biodiversity certificate typically generates a one-off payment, but does not provide an ongoing stream of returns simply for maintaining the repaired ecosystem. Its long-term protection may therefore still depend on public funding, volunteer management, or regulatory protections.

Existing planting-based carbon-credit methods are poorly suited to some of these landscapes because eligibility is generally established before restoration begins and may depend on the land having previously been cleared. Prospective carbon crediting would allow continued sequestration by these recovering ecosystems to generate income without retrospectively crediting earlier restoration.

Protection from competing land uses

As an exception to normal carbon-credit eligibility, Nature Repair projects could enter later where repaired land is exposed to a credible economic incentive for clearing, conversion, or other use that would substantially compromise the recovering ecosystem.

This could include development around expanding towns, conversion to more intensive agriculture, infrastructure or resource development, or other commercially valuable land uses. The competing use would need to be credible rather than hypothetical, supported by circumstances such as surrounding land-use change, planning or zoning settings, development pressure, land values, or existing rights or approvals.

Existing statutory, contractual, or Nature Repair protections would not automatically remove eligibility. Such protections can remain dependent on continuing policy, administration, funding, or land management, while carbon income creates an additional economic interest in maintaining the restored ecosystem.

Entry and carbon accounting

A registered Nature Repair project could begin earning carbon credits after restoration has begun where:

1. the repaired land faces a credible competing land use that would materially threaten the restored ecosystem; and
2. continued protection and management materially strengthen the ecosystem against that pressure; and
3. the ecosystem remains capable of additional net carbon sequestration.

The carbon stock present at entry would establish the starting baseline. Carbon already stored, earlier sequestration, and carbon merely retained by preventing clearing or degradation would not generate credits.

Only additional net atmospheric carbon stored from that point onwards could be credited, subject to the measurement, verification, and permanence requirements applying to other sequestration methods.

Protection therefore establishes eligibility for the pathway; additional sequestration determines the credits issued.

Interaction with Nature Repair

Nature Repair creates a single biodiversity certificate from the project's ecological outcome, while carbon crediting can issue additional credits over time as further atmospheric carbon is stored.

The late-entry pathway would allow a recovering Nature Repair project to supplement that one-off biodiversity value with ongoing carbon-credit income while the ecosystem continues accumulating carbon.

The two returns would remain tied to different outcomes. Nature Repair would reward the project's ecological and biodiversity improvement, while carbon credits would be issued only for additional atmospheric carbon stored after entry.

Residual risks

Changes in carbon stocks within existing, heterogeneous vegetation can be harder to measure precisely than growth in newly established plantings. Applicable methods may therefore require conservative crediting where uncertainty cannot be eliminated.

References

Clean Energy Regulator — Reforestation by environmental or mallee plantings FullCAM method 2024 | Clean Energy Regulator — Newness, regulatory additionality and government program requirements | Clean Energy Regulator — Biodiversity certificates | Clean Energy Regulator — Replanting native forest and woodland ecosystems method | Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water — Nature Repair Market

Design rationale

Responsibility for Murray-Darling water is currently divided between institutions. The MDBA manages Basin planning and parts of river operations, the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder separately manages federal environmental water, and state agencies administer allocations, metering, and most enforcement against individual water users. The Inspector-General of Water Compliance independently oversees compliance with the Basin Plan and water resource plans.

This divides responsibility for planning, environmental water, and actual water use even though they form parts of the same Basin-wide system.

The reform would consolidate operational responsibility in the MDBA while separating the two functions that benefit from independence: scientific determination of environmental needs would sit with CSIRO, and scrutiny of the MDBA would remain with the Inspector-General.

Binding environmental water needs

The CSIRO would independently determine and update the water needed to sustain the Basin's rivers, wetlands, floodplains, and other water-dependent ecosystems, using the best available hydrological and ecological science while allowing requirements to vary with conditions across the Basin.

Those requirements would bind the MDBA's allocation and river-management decisions. The MDBA could allocate water for irrigation, industry, and other consumptive uses only after the requirements are met.

Consolidated Basin management

The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder's functions and water holdings would be brought into the MDBA, allowing Basin planning, environmental water management, and consumptive water management to operate within the same institution.

The MDBA would also become responsible for Basin-wide water accounting, monitoring, and enforcement of individual extraction rules, replacing separate state enforcement systems within the Basin.

This would establish one operational authority responsible for whether water is available, how it is managed, and whether individual users remain within their lawful allocations.

Water for new irrigated uses

The MDBA could restrict the use of Basin water for new irrigated developments where their water demand, drought resilience, or effects on the wider water system make them unsuitable for reliable supply.

These restrictions would apply to access to Basin water rather than what landowners may grow or develop. A landowner could proceed with an otherwise lawful development, but doing so would not create any entitlement to Basin water or justify preferential treatment during future shortages.

Any water taken outside the project's lawful entitlement would remain subject to the normal Basin-wide enforcement and penalty regime.

Enforcement and independent oversight

The MDBA would receive secure base funding and directly investigate and enforce individual extraction offences across the Basin.

Financial penalties would be retained for Basin purposes, allowing successful enforcement to increase the resources available for monitoring, metering, investigation, legal action, and other water-management functions.

The Inspector-General of Water Compliance would remain institutionally separate. Rather than duplicating frontline enforcement, it would independently audit whether the MDBA is accurately accounting for water, meeting the environmental requirements determined by CSIRO, enforcing extraction rules consistently, and properly exercising its powers.

Reinvesting Basin revenue

The consolidated MDBA would retain income generated through environmental water management, building on the existing ability to trade Commonwealth environmental water where doing so improves environmental outcomes.

Revenue retained from water management and enforcement would remain available for Basin functions. Surplus funds could be reinvested in environmental water and restoration of riparian areas, wetlands, floodplains, and other water-dependent ecosystems.

Where these projects qualify for Nature Repair certificates or subsequently generate eligible carbon credits, those proceeds could also be retained and reinvested in further Basin management and restoration.

This allows successful water management, enforcement, and ecological repair to progressively increase the resources available for further Basin recovery.

Residual risks

Future rainfall, runoff, and ecological responses cannot be forecast perfectly, particularly as the climate changes. Even with regular scientific updates, binding environmental water requirements may temporarily over- or underestimate the needs of particular parts of the Basin.

References

CSIRO — Murray-Darling Basin Sustainable Yields |
Murray-Darling Basin Authority — 2026 Basin Plan Review: What we heard |
Inspector-General of Water Compliance — How we work |
Inspector-General of Water Compliance — Annual Report 2024–25 |
Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water — Commonwealth environmental water trading framework |
Water Act 2007

Design rationale

Australia already uses national taskforces, coordinators, strategies, and jointly funded programs to manage major invasive species. The arrangements differ substantially between threats, while much on-ground control remains divided between governments, land managers, and individual projects.

The National Fire Ant Eradication Program demonstrates a stronger model: governments jointly fund a dedicated program pursuing one invasive species across the whole affected area. This approach would be formalised and extended to other major invasive species, giving governments access to shared specialist agencies instead of requiring separate state-by-state control systems.

Species-specific agencies

Dedicated agencies would be established for invasive species that require sustained control across multiple jurisdictions or land tenures. Closely related invasive species could share an agency where their surveillance, control, biosecurity, and operational requirements substantially overlap.

Each agency would concentrate the specialist surveillance, control, research, data, and operational expertise shared across the threats it manages, while maintaining separate programs where differences in biology, distribution, or management needs require them.

Program objectives would depend on what is realistically achievable: eradication where the species can still be eliminated, containment where further spread can be stopped, and sustained suppression where eradication is no longer practical.

Existing national plans, scientific work, and control programs would be incorporated into the relevant agency rather than duplicated alongside it.

Shared specialist capacity

Each species-specific agency would operate as a shared specialist service for its sponsoring governments. Rather than every jurisdiction needing to maintain separate expertise, surveillance systems, control programs, and operational capacity for the same invasive species, participating governments would jointly maintain one dedicated capability that can operate wherever it is needed.

Funding contributions could rise or fall with the scale of surveillance, treatment, containment, or suppression required within each jurisdiction.

Joint jurisdiction

The federal government and affected states and territories would sponsor each agency and recognise its authorised personnel under their respective biosecurity laws.

This would allow a control program to operate across the jurisdictions and land tenures covered by its sponsors rather than stopping at administrative boundaries. Government land would form part of the same control program as surrounding private land, while access to private property and biosecurity directions would operate through the ordinary statutory powers applying within each jurisdiction.

Governments outside the affected area could participate where preventing further spread provides a substantial benefit to their jurisdiction.

Shared funding

Participating governments would share the cost of each agency according to the control burden within their jurisdictions.

Funding arrangements could account for the extent and intensity of infestation, surveillance requirements, treatment costs, and the work needed to prevent spread rather than relying on population or land area alone.

This would allow funding shares to change as an invasion expands, contracts, or is eradicated from particular regions.

Landscape-scale control

This would allow species control to be planned around the geography of the invasion rather than individual properties or government boundaries.

This is particularly important where isolated treatment provides only temporary relief because surrounding populations repeatedly reinvade controlled land. Coordinated programs could instead treat adjoining private land, protected areas, public land, and other tenures as parts of the same control landscape.

Nature Repair projects and other restoration work could use these programs to control invasive pressures without having to establish separate species-management systems for each project.

Residual risks

Some invasive species still lack control methods that are effective and practical at landscape scale, limiting what coordinated agencies can achieve until better tools are developed.

Some control methods can affect non-target species or ecological relationships. Species-specific expertise and targeted control can reduce these effects, but cannot eliminate them in every circumstance.

References

Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry — Established pests and weeds |
Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry — Environment and Invasives Committee |
Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water — Feral Cat Taskforce |
Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry — Supporting Communities Manage Pest Animals and Weeds Program |
Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry — Pest animals in Australia |
National Fire Ant Eradication Program — Program activities

Design rationale

Australia already protects more than half of its marine area, but protection is unevenly distributed between marine ecosystems. Large remote marine parks can allow national percentage targets to be met while other marine regions remain comparatively exposed.

Requiring high protection within each marine bioregion would shift the target from protecting a percentage of Australia's total ocean area to protecting a representative share of the different ecosystems within it.

Protection across marine bioregions

At least 30% of each marine bioregion would be placed within highly protected no-take areas.

Marine park boundaries would continue to reflect ecological features rather than simply dividing each region geometrically. Protection could therefore concentrate on areas that best represent important habitats, ecological connections, breeding grounds, and other features within the bioregion while still meeting the minimum overall coverage.

Existing highly protected areas would count towards the requirement where they fall within the relevant bioregion.

Highly protected areas

The 30% requirement would apply to highly protected no-take zones rather than marine-park designation alone.

This would prevent the target being met through areas that remain open to substantial extractive activity while still allowing lower-protection marine-park zones to operate outside the minimum highly protected share.

References

Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water — Achieving 30 by 30 |
Biodiversity Council — Securing a Resilient Future for Australia's Oceans |
Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water — Australian Marine Park management plan review