The Australian government recently shelved key environmental protection commitments indefinitely, including the establishment of an environmental protection agency, and a robust accounting of the nation's ecological health via an environmental information authority. The latest suspension was announced by the Prime Minister just ahead of a federal election. Australia initially proposed these "nature positive" reforms in 2022 and hosted the first Global Nature Positive Summit in 2024 to great fanfare, but has not implemented any substantial domestic legislation to overhaul its old environmental laws.

Joining the podcast to explain this situation is Adam Morton, the environment editor at The Guardian Australia. In this podcast conversation, Morton details what the Australian government promised, what it reneged on, the potential global influence of its backtracking, and why the nation's environment will continue to degrade without intervention.

"I think that the message internationally from this term in parliament has been that the resources sector is winning, and environmental protection is losing out. Now, that's a very simple dichotomy, and it doesn't have to be one or the other, but on every front at the moment, that's how it feels in Australia. That applies to fossil fuel extraction. It applies to native forestry [and] logging, which still continues in a significant amount," Morton says.

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Image Credit: A koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) in Queensland, Australia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

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Timecodes

(00:00) Australia breaks a key promise

(07:30) What does 'Nature Positive' mean?

(16:39) Koala protection sidelined

(20:53) How to 'right' the 'wrongs'

(28:30) Credits