TheAuditor-General said the Department had comprehensively failed to implement the laws or to monitor its performance."The Department is not well positioned to measure its contribution to the objectives of the EPBC Act,"the Auditor-General said.
The Department's regulation is"not proportionate to environmental risk",project assessments are"not effective or efficient",approval conditions to manage projects'environmental damage are"not assessed with rigour,are non-compliant with procedural guidance and contain clerical or administrative errors",according to the Auditor-General.
The report found 79 per cent of approvals were non-compliant or contained errors and most decisions were not made within statutory time frames.
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Since the Act's introduction,Australia's list of nationally threatened species and ecosystems hasgrown by more than one-third – from 1483 to 1974. Among mammals alone,one to two species are being lost each decade.
About 8 million hectares of threatened species habitat was cleared between 2000 and 2017,and93 per cent of it was not assessed under the legislation despite the powers existing to do so,astudy by leading Australian ecologists found last year.
A recovery plan to help bring koala populations back to healthis five years overdue,despite warnings from experts that new research shows the species faces fresh challenges to cling on to its remnant habitat.