The Biodiversity Council welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on the Draft National Environmental Standard (Data and Information) 2026.

The Biodiversity Council strongly supports the development of the four draft Standards developed to date, including the most recently released Draft Community Engagement and Data and Information Standards. However, we are disappointed that standards for First Nations Engagement and Regional Planning are yet to be developed and are not proposed for development in this first tranche.

The draft National Environmental Standard (Data and Information) is a critical piece of the environmental law reform package proposed by Professor Samuel’s decadal review of the EPBC Act. The Samuel Review focused heavily on the role of data and evidence in an improved regulatory regime that would provide greater quality of decision making and certainty to proponents and the environment.

The lack of quality, reliable and publicly available data on which to base regulatory decisions and environmental reporting is a key weakness in the current regulatory regime that undermines public trust in nature laws and the performance of governments as environmental managers and decision makers.

It is therefore critical that the draft standard for data and information underpins the evidence base for better and more transparent environmental decision making, and adds value to programs beyond regulatory approvals such as regional planning and State of the Environment reporting.

The data and information policy paper sets out promising principles around transparency, rigour, and reproducibility, but unfortunately, the standard as currently drafted falls short of mandating open, reliable, peer-reviewed and high quality data needed to drive better informed environmental decision making.

Our key concerns are:

• Lack of assurance around transparency and public access to data
• Lack of clear preference for peer-reviewed and/or Indigenous Knowledge-based survey and analysis methodologies to support decisions
• Lack of clear recognition of the role of Indigenous knowledges systems as a legitimate source of evidence to support decision making
• Principles override Objectives and Outcomes - creating a ‘process-based’ rather than ‘outcomes based’ standard
• The wording of the draft standard is too narrowly focussed on approvals rather than regulations, policies, programs, and plans

For more detail and recommendations, please read the full submission.