Our assessment of three now final National Environmental Standards

The first four National Environmental Standards each commenced effect on 21 August 2026.

We have reviewed three of the final standards. While some improvements have been made since the final drafts were released for consultation, we found that the standards for Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES) and Environmental Offsets fall well short of what is needed to deliver real protection. In addition, the Data and Information Standard won’t address the lack of transparency and public access to data used in decision-making.

Read on for our detailed analysis, including what changed after the public consultations and issues that we raised in our submissions but remain unaddressed. We are still waiting to see a draft standard for First Nations Engagement.

Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES) Standard

Changes that have been made following public consultation

Objectives for habitat have been improved but still don’t address populations

The MNES Standard's objective for threatened species, ecological communities and migratory species now clarifies that it covers protection, conservation and restoration of all habitat, not just critical habitat.

These changes have not adequately addressed our concern that there is no reference to maintaining populations of threatened species. As noted in our January and May 2026 submissions, projects may have significant impacts on species populations through direct mortality, without significant impacts on habitat.

While the objective includes that “protection, conservation, restoration and recovery actions support the viability of threatened species in the wild”, this is too narrow to consider impacts on specific populations and does not seem to apply to decisions to approve new activities.

Deemed to comply principles

The final MNES and Offset Standards provide that decisions will satisfy the Standard if they comply with high-level Principles. They do not have to meet specified minimum levels of protection. The Principles are process-based, including:

• “Having regard to” the mitigation hierarchy;
• “Having regard to” the context in which an impact may occur; and
• Supporting a proposal with appropriate information.

These principles do little to improve the process-based criteria and obligations that were already present in the Act itself. This is inconsistent with the key recommendation of the Samuel Review that national environmental standards articulate measurable outcomes for nature.

Requirement to avoid and mitigate has been tightened

The language in the avoid and mitigate steps of the mitigation hierarchy has been tightened - “should” has been replaced with “must” and "to the extent possible" has been replaced with "all reasonably practicable measures must".

However, this is undermined by the overarching requirement that “actions must be designed having regard to the mitigation hierarchy” rather than a more firm “must apply”.

The repair step has been elaborated on, but is still too vague to implement properly

The repair step has been expanded and refined. The original objective of repairing ”as close to its original condition as possible” has been changed to “as close as possible to the relevant impact site baseline for the protected matter”. This baseline relates to the impact site and must be measured prior to the impact occurring. The conditions under which repairing damage will be considered “viable” have been amended. In the May draft, repair was considered viable if it was timely, feasible and sustainable over the long term. Now the standard requires the damage to be temporary and occur over a short time frame, and that repairing the damage will reduce the impact on the protected matter. The original requirement that “repair activities are feasible and sustainable in the long term for the protected matter” has been replaced by “repairing the damage is feasible in the long term for the protected matter”, which is more confusing.

The challenge with the repair step is that many of the terms, including viability, feasibility, short- and long-term, are undefined. Moreover, there is a lack of guidance about measuring the baseline and determining how much repair is required to compensate for impacts before the residual impact requiring offset is determined. Determining if repair is ‘viable’ requires a transparent governance framework and methodologies comparable to the offset framework. Without clear rules there is a risk that proponents will claim that they have repaired impacts and therefore do not have any residual impacts left to offset. For instance, could it apply to rehabilitation of mining sites in Jarrah Forests by Alcoa that has been strongly criticised, or regeneration of native forests following logging that has a high failure rate? Over what time will the repair be measured? If “all reasonable practicable measures are taken to repair any damage” (as required by the standard) and the repair is found to fail, is the project proponent required to offset residual impacts?

Unaddressed issues from our submissions

Cumulative impacts are not adequately addressed

The standard does not adequately address cumulative impacts. They are only relevant for bioregional planning and strategic assessments. However, the bulk of impacts approved under the EPBC Act are individual project-level decisions. This is a critical deficiency and fails to remedy one of Graeme Samuel’s key concerns of the ‘death by a thousand cuts’. Consider the case of the Black-throated finch. This species was listed as vulnerable under the EPBC Act in 2000 and upgraded to endangered in 2005. Almost all of the 700+ referrals for development projects to clear finch habitats between 2000 and 2016 were approved without an assessment of the cumulative impact of those applications. For the long-term survival of species and ecosystems that are threatened with extinction, it is essential that we stop whittling away their remaining habitat project by project.

No requirement to be consistent with conservation planning instruments

There is no requirement for decisions to be consistent with conservation planning instruments, such as recovery plans, as recommended by the Samuel Review.

Application is limited to projects, not plans and policies

The standard is too narrowly focused on assessing projects rather than applying to plans and policies that relate to MNES as recommended by the Samuel Review. There is no other instrument that is as appropriate to set overall outcomes for protected matters that are not limited to project-by-project assessment. By limiting the standard to project assessment, there does not seem to be a mechanism for requiring the government to evaluate whether the plans, policies, decisions and approvals related to a protected matter, as a whole, are working to protect and recover MNES. For instance, many policy documents become ‘frozen in time’. The Australian National Audit Office noted that many Recovery Plans that were developed years ago and are well overdue for review. This is a missed opportunity to specify the thresholds or external events that would trigger a formal regulatory review of conservation planning documents or other regulatory instruments.

No monitoring, evaluation, reporting and improvement requirements

The standard does not include monitoring, evaluation, reporting and improvement requirements as recommended by the Samuel Review. Without adequate monitoring, it is not possible to rigorously demonstrate adherence to standards or whether outcomes are being met.

Offsets Standard

Changes that have been made following public consultation

Security has been further weakened

The final standard only requires offset activities to be securely protected for the ‘applicable maintenance period’, not in perpetuity. Once the maintenance period has ended, then there is nothing to stop the offset site being developed, or used to compensate for impacts from a different development. This is in sharp contrast to offset sites in Victoria and New South Wales which are secured permanently and it is also a regression from the current EPBC Act offsets policy.

The final standard includes a note that ‘purchasing land’ is an example of ‘providing legal protection’ for an offset site. Merely purchasing land, without in any way changing its formal protection status, does not secure the site. To constitute a form of legal protection, purchasing the site must be combined with some other form of legal restriction on the use of that land, such as a covenant or, in some cases, contractual undertakings.

The final standard includes a requirement that ‘appropriate evidence’ is used to determine that the offset activity will be securely protected. The appropriate evidence is standardised across the principles in the standard and includes: 1) evidence from a suitably qualified expert, or 2) existing peer-reviewed science, or 3) data provided to Environment Information Australia or 4) data obtained from the management of another offset activity. However, these are generally inappropriate. The question of whether an offset will be securely protected is a legal one, and cannot be answered by ecological or management expertise alone. Evidence from a suitably qualified legal expert is the only relevant criterion here.

Like-for-Like for Ramsar wetlands has been weakened

The final standard includes a new provision specifically related to Ramsar wetlands that was not subject to public consultation. To understand the implications, it is important to understand some basic elements of the Ramsar Convention.

Under the Ramsar Convention, ecological character is the combination of the ecosystem components, processes, benefits and services that characterise the wetland at a given point in time. These components include: the physical form of the wetland, the physical and chemical properties of its soil and water, and the plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms that inhabit it. As a party to the Ramsar Convention, the Australian Government is expected to manage Australia’s Ramsar sites to maintain their ecological character. If the ecological character changes or is likely to change, then it should take action to address it.

The new provision in the Standard allows damage to one component of the ecological character of a Ramsar wetland to be compensated by offset activities directed to a different component. In practice this could mean a proponent could develop a site so that there was less water flowing into it affecting the fish and birds, but this impact could be ‘offset’ by revegetating the wetlands.

Accreditation

The final version of the MNES and Offsets Standards provide that approvals granted under state or territory frameworks are deemed to be consistent with the new Standard if they follow requirements that are “equivalent in effect” to the new standards. No criteria are specified for determining whether a particular regime is equivalent in effect: decision-makers must subjectively determine this question.

The Offsets Standard also provides that an offset activity comprising the payment of money into an offset fund will be consistent with the principles specified in the standard provided the fund has to be spent on an activity consistent with the Principles. It does not require that the payment be required as part of a regime that meets those principles. This could be read to endorse a state or territory framework outside of the usual accreditation process. The Standard should clarify that any reference to a state or territory framework is a reference to an accredited framework.

Unaddressed issues from our submissions

Net gain remains effectively still undefined

There is still no definition of ‘net gain’ provided through the standards or the broader framework. The Offset Standard defines ‘required net gain’ as “the net gain for the protected matter within the meaning of section 527K of the Act.” However, 527K doesn’t relate to an outcome in the ‘real world’ but rather satisfying conditions of the approval. The determination of whether a particular offset is sufficiently large to at least compensate for impacts (i.e. ‘achieves a net gain’) is up to the Minister. The baseline against which gains will be measured remains unclear. Until the baseline and definition of net gain are clarified such that can be used at the level of a project approval, it will not be possible to determine whether the primary objective of the standard is met, that is that offsets adequately compensate for residual significant impacts of an action to deliver net gain.

Feasibility

The final standard retains the lower evidentiary requirement of ‘evidence from a suitably qualified expert’. This enables expert judgement from environmental consultants who may lack the knowledge and skills to determine if the values being impacted can realistically be replaced, restored or compensated for and whether the offset activity is capable of being delivered.

Climate change and cumulative impacts still not expressly required to be considered

No explicit requirement has been inserted into the Standards to weigh climate-change scenarios or cumulative impacts when considering the context relevant to a proposed activity, due to amendments to Principle 2 of the MNES Standard.

Data and information Standard

Unaddressed issues from our submissions

Transparency

The standard fails to address the lack of transparency and public access to data used in regulatory decision-making, planning and environmental programs.

Prioritizing Robust Data Sources

Many potential sources of information exist to inform regulatory and other forms of decision making, some of which will be more rigorously or reliably collected than others. The final standard does not establish any ranking or hierarchy of data to ensure that peer-reviewed and/or Indigenous Knowledges hold primacy of less reliable sources of data and information.

Application is limited to projects, not plans and policies

As per the MNES standard, the final data and information standard is too narrowly focussed on assessing projects rather than applying to plans, policies and programs. By limiting the standard to project assessment, there does not seem to be a mechanism for requiring the government to evaluate whether the plans, policies, decisions and approvals related to a protected matter, as a whole, are working to protect and recover MNES.