The Australian Panel of Experts on Environmental Law has developed recommendations for a new generation of federal environmental legislation that have heavily informed the work of the Places You Love Alliance. The APEEL Blueprint reflects international best practice and ensures effective and efficient protection and management of Australia’s environment.
Australia deserves a robust and integrated system of national environment laws. We need to protect our healthy natural ecosystems for future generations.
The inaugural meeting of the Expert Panel was held in November 2014. The Panel delivered its findings in mid-2017.
“We need a ‘next generation’ suite of environmental legislation that embraces emerging trends in environmental management, reflects international best practice and provides for a coordinated and effective approach to environmental regulation across the Australian continent.”
The Panel's work focussed on:
- Current Federal environmental law: An assessment of the coverage and effectiveness of current federal environmental legislation.
- Role of the Federal government: Identifying the appropriate role and level of involvement for the federal government in environmental matters, including by taking into account approaches and experiences of other Federal systems including the USA, Canada and EU.
- Collaborative approaches: Identifying the opportunities for cooperative approaches to environmental matters to be pursued by the federal government with the states and territories.
- Administrative architecture: Consideration of the design of appropriate institutional and administrative architecture for new federal environmental governance for Australia.
- New Legislative Frameworks: Designing the components of a ‘state of the art’ omnibus law (or package of laws) at the federal level intended to supersede the EPBC Act and other identified federal environmental legislation.
- Best practice approaches: Best practice approaches to environmental management and administration, democratic and participatory governance, enforcement strategies and the achievement of effectiveness and efficiency in the delivery of strong environmental outcomes.
Visit the Australian Panel of Experts on Environmental Law website to learn more about their work and technical papers or check out the overview papers below.
