10.2 - The right information is not available to inform decisions made under the EPBC Act

To deliver ecologically sustainable development (ESD), decision-makers must weigh up information on the long-term environmental, economic, cultural and social impacts and benefits of their decisions.

The current focus of the EPBC Act is on western environmental science. There are currently clear structures and avenues for western scientific advice on the environment to be provided and considered. For example, the Act establishes the Threatened Species Scientific Committee for threatened species and communities listing advice and the Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development (IESC) for advice on the water impacts of these types of proposals. There is no corresponding avenue or expectation for Indigenous environmental knowledge, or economic or social information, to be explicitly included or considered in statutory processes. Decision-makers must weigh competing factors, yet the information they rely on to do so is not comprehensive or transparent.

The information base for development assessment decisions is heavily skewed to environmental information collected by the proponent. As discussed in Chapter 4, there is no requirement for the proponent to give comprehensive information on social, economic or cultural impacts, or for the assessment process to examine the veracity of that information. The avenues to seek expert advice (beyond that provided by the IESC) in the development assessment process are limited and rarely used in practice.

10.2.2 - There are some fundamental information gaps

The lack of distribution, condition and trend data for terrestrial biodiversity is a key information gap and a barrier to successful environmental management (TSSC 2020). Even if more proponent and research data can be shared and made accessible, systematic monitoring over a long enough time frame is needed to detect changes in the environment.

Systematic monitoring enables short-term project information to be put in the context of trends in condition, extent or abundance to support a meaningful understanding of development impact at the local scale, or the impact of government recovery and conservation activities. The collection of this type of information is a responsibility of governments, not individual projects.

Currently, this core information is often not collected or not authoritative. In recent decades the rate of collection of field data has declined, as shown by the 90% reduction in annual rate of records contributed to the Australasian Virtual Herbarium (Gallagher 2020). For example, at least one-quarter of all threatened vertebrate fauna species and almost three-quarters of threatened ecological communities are currently not monitored at all. The monitoring programs that do exist are generally under-resourced, poorly designed, do not make their data easily accessible, or lack coordination (Legge et al. 2018). Although new technologies mean that an incredible amount of information can be gathered remotely, these data still need to be verified with on-ground measurements.

10.2.3 - Cumulative impacts and future threats are not well considered

Environmental science and management have traditionally aimed to understand past environmental conditions, how and why conditions have changed, and what needs to be done to return the environment to some arbitrary past state.

As highlighted in Chapter 1, a key shortcoming of the EPBC Act is the focus on project-by-project decisions. These decisions are largely based on project-centric information, which is collected and collated for the purposes of conducting an environmental impact assessment. With limited exceptions (Box 33), the cumulative impacts of decisions on the landscape are not well considered. This is a key shortcoming of the Act.

In a changing climate, the past is no longer a useful guide to the future. Key threats to the environment, including biosecurity incursions and altered fire regimes, will be compounded by climate change. Although considering cumulative impacts is important now, this will become increasingly important as the predicted widespread and substantial changes to the environment manifest.

There will always be inherent uncertainty about how future pressures will affect the environment, but it is possible to better understand different future scenarios to help inform decisions. There is a clear need to enhance capability to consider a dynamic environment and a changing future.

The recommended reforms, including the setting of National Environmental Standards and the making of regional and strategic national plans, will enable cumulative impacts to be better considered over long time frames. A substantially improved information base and a broader suite of information tools, including the capacity to model the outcomes of alternative scenarios, will provide greater precision and efficiency.

10.2.4 - Advances in modelling capability are not being used

New information tools are needed. Despite being proven and long used in many areas of environmental management (such as climate modelling, fisheries, management of the Great Barrier Reef and for water resources), the modelling capability to predict the impacts of threats and management actions on land-based biodiversity is still relatively immature in Australia.

New technologies and increased computing power are fundamentally shifting the questions that environmental science can address using existing data sources. The technologies to analyse and gain insights from diverse and very large datasets are not broadly used, but these insights are essential to develop and refine predictive models. This contrasts to other areas of national policy, such as the economy and health, where predictive modelling is a mainstream and widespread tool used to inform decision-making. There are examples of how models are being used to solve complex environmental problems (Box 34). This approach could be used more broadly.

An impediment to the further uptake of new modelling and analytical approaches is a lack of the necessary staff expertise. The Department, and other agencies, have pockets of excellence in these areas. However, a broader uplift in skills is needed to make the most of emerging technologies and effectively translate analysis and science into decisions, including knowledge brokering. There is a tendency for data, digital and science skills to be viewed as niche, rather than skills that are relevant across the broader agency in many applications. Modelling efforts often lack the broader governance and long-term funding to support maintenance, communication, training and support for more general uptake.

The EPBC Act was developed in the last century, when the use of paper was standard and the internet was not yet central to the effective delivery of government services. The way the Act is administered has not kept pace with the rapid transformation in how government, business and people interact with technology. In essence, the Department uses systems that are insufficient to deliver its regulatory functions efficiently.

The online systems that support the EPBC Act are cumbersome, duplicative and slow. They do not meet expectations for an easy, tailored, digital experience. As discussed in Chapter 6, the Department’s systems for managing assessment documentation result in the need to manually handle files, leading to mistakes and delays. Interactions with proponents are not easily recorded, which results in duplication and a lack of structure.

There is no system for efficient case management and it is not easy for the Department, the proponent or the community to determine the status of a proposal in the assessment process or track a project after an approval has been granted. Departmental systems do not link with State and Territory systems and there is no single user portal.

The Department’s internal systems do not support simple extraction of information when making key decisions. Instead, systems rely on the informal transfer of information between staff. This can lead to duplicated information requests when staff change. Data exchange between systems is manual and often labour intensive. Underinvestment in information systems over many years has translated into fixes that rely on manual processes or upgrades of aging IT systems that are costly to maintain.

The EPBC Act requires archaic methods of communication, such as newspaper advertisements and publishing in the Government Notices Gazette. The focus on meeting statutory requirements often comes at the expense of efforts to use more modern forms of presenting and communicating information in an easily accessible way and supporting better engagement with the community in decision-making.

10.2.6 - The current information system will not allow the full benefits of EPBC Act reform to be realised

Good information on the environment and the outcomes from management interventions is a fundamental requirement for successful reform. Reforms recommended by this Review will increase demand for quality information, as better information will improve efficiency including for:

• the precision and refinement of the National Environmental Standards
• scrutiny of the adequacy of information available for decisions by the Ecologically Sustainable Development Committee
• the accreditation model
• regional planning
• the mechanisms to attract private sector investment in restoration
• the monitoring and evaluation framework for the EPBC Act.

As noted in Chapter 4, for business time is money. For approval processes, better information and systems could significantly reduce the time taken for decisions to be made and provide greater confidence in the outcome. There is a high cost to industry and government in relying on the existing data and information system. Some examples of the potential time and cost savings from improving the information system are shown in Box 35. Another benefit of improving the information system supporting the EPBC Act is improving the adequacy and transparency of the evidence underpinning advice and decisions (Chapter 4).

At present, the management of environmental information and the advice that draws on it falls well short of public expectation and government commitments for sharing, re-use and transparency. In 2015, the Commonwealth Government released the Public Data Policy Statement, which recognises that the data held by the Australian Government is a strategic national resource. The statement commits the Government ‘to optimise the use and reuse of public data; to release non-sensitive data as open by default; and to collaborate with the private and research sectors to extend the value of public data for the benefit of the Australian public’. The Australian Government is also committed to open government and engagement through the Open Government Partnership, with a set of actions around enhancing information access and public accountability, and the technology and innovation to support those aims. Consistent with these whole-of-government commitments, both the frameworks and data – and how these have been applied in the development of advice for decision-makers (for example, in making a National Environmental Standard, regional plan or decision on a development application) – should be publicly available information. The Government’s systems should have the capability to efficiently support the preparation, consideration and publication of this information.

The management of environmental information has failed to keep step with increasing recognition of the need for greater respect and awareness when dealing with Indigenous knowledge and data. The movement towards open data has often focused on the ‘FAIR’ principles – that data is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. This creates a tension for Indigenous Australians, who are increasingly asserting their right to have greater control over how their data and knowledge are used. To complement the FAIR principles, the Global Indigenous Data Alliance has developed the CARE principles for Indigenous data governance – collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility and ethics (GIDA 2019).