The Woodside decision and what it reveals about Australia’s environment law
The federal government’s 74‑page statement of reasons for approving a 40‑year life extension of the Woodside‑operated North West Shelf gas plant offers a revealing snapshot of how Australia’s environment law is applied in practice. The document shows that the environment department accepted warnings that acidic pollutants nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide from the plant could damage Murujuga’s ancient Indigenous rock art, some sites older than 50,000 years and possibly the oldest known depiction of a human face.
The minister, with the support of departmental advice, began from a position that there would be a meaningful cut in pollution, but the final decision relaxed that posture after private negotiations with the company. Woodside did not publicly appeal Watt’s initial stance; instead, it engaged in private discussions over the conditions. The result was a shift from an outright restriction to a package of progressive targets that would stretch over decades.
In the end, Watt required a decline in acidic pollution, but with a staged timetable: a 60% reduction by 2030 and a 90% reduction by 2061. The minister acknowledged that the staged approach increased the short‑term risk to Murujuga’s heritage, but argued the broader social and economic factors justified the plan. This sequence illustrates a broader pattern critics have cited for years: under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act EPBC Act, project approvals are often the central objective, with environmental and cultural protections treated as secondary considerations to be negotiated rather than guaranteed.
The act’s real function in a project‑driven system
Environmental and First Nations’ protections are weighed within a framework designed to facilitate development. The final conditions come after private bargaining and are not necessarily enforceable in a uniform, transparent way across projects. Watt’s approach was to consult the proponent during decision‑making, which some argue is normal in Australia’s system but raises questions about whether genuine safeguards are being hardwired into approvals rather than negotiated after a project is deemed acceptable.
Australia’s 2021 state of the environment report adds urgency to this debate. It found that the country’s wild places, its cultural heritage and a broad array of species were generally in poor or deteriorating health. If case‑by‑case bargaining is the rule for major developments, the cumulative damage to ecosystems and Indigenous heritage may continue to outpace improvements in climate and preservation protections.
Murujuga and the burden on cultural heritage
Murujuga is a vast cultural landscape off the coast of Western Australia that contains rock art thought to be tens of thousands of years old. The possibility that emissions from a long‑running gas plant could degrade this art underscores a tension at the heart of environmental policy: how to balance jobs and energy security with the protection of irreplaceable heritage. The report flags that future pollution could degrade the rock art, raising questions about monitoring programs and independent oversight of the art conservation effort across the Murujuga landscape.
Path forward: independent processes and stronger protections
Conservationists argue for stripping politics from development approvals and placing decisions in the hands of a genuinely independent Environment Protection Agency with enforceable standards. Watt has promised legislation by November to fix the law, but critics argue that broader institutional reforms are needed to ensure consistency, transparency and robust enforcement across all major projects. Some analyses suggest the final conditions could force older LNG production lines offline after 2030, representing a significant change in capacity that would affect both energy supply and regional employment.
Conclusion: a turning point or a lull before reform?
The Woodside case strengthens calls for structural reform to Australia’s environmental governance. It suggests the EPBC Act is functioning more as a gatekeeping mechanism than an independent protector of climate, biodiversity and Indigenous heritage. Whether reforms deliver genuine protections will depend on creating transparent, independent, and adequately resourced agencies, and on a sustained political commitment to climate and cultural preservation rather than project‑by‑project negotiations.
