Climate Politics

Australia Passes Landmark Law Overhauling Nature Protection

Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

Photographer: Hilary Wardhaugh/Bloomberg

Australia passed a landmark bill to overhaul the nation’s environmental laws after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government struck a deal with the left-wing minority Greens party.

Both houses of the country’s parliament passed the legislation, Environment Minister Murray Watt said in Canberra. It amends the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, a framework widely viewed by industry and environmental advocates as outdated and in need of reform. Past efforts to update the laws, the most recent earlier this year, had foundered.