JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The Australian mining industry voiced its disappointment at the Labor party’s plan to restore the federal government environmental approvals process, saying the opposition party’s environment policy, released earlier this week, will entrench duplication.

Labor had made a commitment to strengthen the federal government’s responsibility for environmental protection, reversing the Coalition government’s reforms aimed at giving state and territory governments more power to grant environmental approvals.

The streamlining of approvals approach was initiated by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard and developed by the Coalition government, aimed to better streamline Australia’s duplicative federal and state approach to environmental approval processes.

Expressing the industry’s disappointment at reversing efforts to streamline the process, Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) CEO Brendan Pearce said this week that duplicative approaches simply delayed projects at the expense of jobs and investment, without improving environmental outcomes.

Citing the Department of Environment, Pearce said that duplication cost businesses A$426-million a year. A one-year delay could reduce the net present value of a major mining project by up to 13% and cost up to A$1-million a day.

“The benefits of reform are substantial. Reducing Australia’s long and duplicative assessment and approvals processes for mining by one year, down from the present average of over three years, could improve Australia’s competitiveness, attract tens of billions of investment and [create] tens of thousands of jobs over the next decade,” he said in a statement.

Pearce stated that evidence in support of a more streamlined approach to environmental approvals had been consistent, listing at least three reviews of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which stated that duplicative processes could be reformed without weakening environmental protections.

The Hawke review of 2009 recommended that the commonwealth express “full faith [in] and accredit state systems that are proven to provide environmental outcomes”. The MCA CEO added that the Productivity Commission had also recommended in 2013 that a “one project, one assessment, one decision framework for environmental matters was the best way to address directly overlapping and duplicative processes”.

Meanwhile, the Labor party had vowed to explore options for an independent environment protection structure, which WWF Australia welcomed.

The Greens party welcomed Labor’s “move towards adopting the Greens’ long-held positions”, but said it wanted the party to commit to establishing an independent environmental watchdog, rather than just saying it would explore options.