CIAN HUSSEY: Albanese should take note after Golden State’s green dream became a nightmare

California prides itself on being one of the “global leaders” when it comes to all things green. Not content with the goal of net zero emissions by 2050 which we are constantly told is what “the science says” we all have to achieve to prevent the world from ending, California has a plan for net zero by 2045.

But even in the Golden State, the green dream inevitably encounters reality. It has mostly gone under the radar in Australia, but earlier this month California’s State legislature passed two bills rolling back the State’s landmark environment protection law.

The California Environmental Quality Act, the CEQA, had become the plaything of activists and those opposed to development. This has contributed to the rapid rise in housing costs in the State, as development became tied up in expensive, time-consuming, and sometimes vexatious, legal challenges. The new bills seek to overcome this by exempting high-density projects from the act, making it easier to change zoning provisions and allow for more development, and by speeding up legal review processes.

These changes to CEQA are no doubt sensible. They also demonstrate the fallacy that green policies are an unmitigated benefit to the community. In reality, the costs of such green policies are high, and they often fall heaviest on the least fortunate among us.

As The New York Times reported: “(State Governor Gavin) Newsom is nearing the end of his second and final term in office having made little progress on housing and homelessness, which were central to his first campaign in 2018. He has been skewered for the prevalence of homeless encampments throughout California and for a dip in population, driven in part by people seeking lower-priced homes in other States.”

It is in this willingness to acknowledge when the costs of a green policy have gone too far that there is a lesson for Australia.

Just like Australia’s main environment law — the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act — CEQA was first introduced by a centre-right government, but over time it expanded to the point where it became unwieldy, tying up many projects that it should probably never have applied to, and offering an opportunity for radical activists to prevent the projects and development they don’t like.

An Institute of Public Affairs analysis, submitted to the 2020 review of Australia’s environment laws, found that the number of regulations contained in the EPBC Act and its subsidiary legislation had grown by 445 per cent since it was first introduced. Astonishingly, the act is so complex that readers are more likely to encounter new words and concepts reading the EPBC Act than they are reading the original plays of Shakespeare.

Instead of seeking to simplify this costly and confusing Act, the Albanese Government appears set to proceed with a very different kind of reform.

At some point this year the Federal Government is expected to unveil the next steps in what they have called their Nature Positive laws. Draft versions of the Nature Positive program were exposed by The Nightly as including such anti-common sense provisions as a 40km/h speed limit in WA’s vast Pilbara region, and a requirement for every project to have a net positive effect on the environment (or otherwise to pay a fee to the government and subsidise other green projects favoured by politicians, which a cynic might say sounds like a pay-to-play arrangement for the wealthiest project proponents).

Some disingenuously argue that Federal environment law only affects large scale projects such as big mine sites, or that only those who seek to harm the environment have anything to fear. In fact, everything from housing developments to regional road upgrades are caught up in the laws, increasing the cost of applying for and getting approvals before a shovel or excavator is even on site.

In a 2020 submission to government, the Urban Development Institute of Australia argued that “the EPBC Act is inconsistent, complex and often acts as a substantial barrier to residential land release and housing development”. It identified the complexity and inefficiency of environmental approvals as “the largest single impediment arising from the Federal legislative and regulatory system”.

At a time when housing costs are sky high and rising, investment is anaemic, and many young and working-class people think that the current system doesn’t offer them a positive vision for the future, it would be better for the Albanese Government to engage in a California-inspired cutting back of environmental laws.

In the wake of the CEQA changes, the head of the Terner Centre for Housing Innovation at the University of California wanted other jurisdictions to learn a clear lesson from the State’s experience: “If they can do it in California, we can do it, too.”

Cian Hussey is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs and writes No Permanent Solutions on Substack.