Labor is promising to scrap the Coalition's biodiversity offset program that allows miners to compensate for habitat destruction often far from the mine, a pledge welcomed by conservation groups.
The current Biodiversity Policy for Major Projects introduced last year by the Baird government is allowing an "unjustified loss of habitat and wildlife", Labor said in a statement.
A revised policy under Labor would limit offsets to "like-for-like" land "within a reasonable geographic proximity" of the area being cleared. Outcomes would avoid so-called net-loss outcomes, and recognise that some lands are of too valuable to be disturbed, Labor said in a statement.
"The Liberals' biodiversity policy is a huge step backwards – it's on the path of giving developers free reign to clear native wildlife and trees with no regard for conservation," Linda Burney, Deputy Opposition leader, said. "We don't have to choose between a strong economy and a healthy environment – Labor has shown we can do both."
The new policy would reject the use of mine rehabilitation as an offset strategy where it fails to satisfy "like-for-like" habitat replacement and reduces overall biodiversity, a Labor spokeswoman said.
James Trezise, Healthy Ecosystems Policy Coordinator at the Australian Conservation Foundation, welcomed Labor's commitment to repealing the major projects offsets policy, claiming it "did not even meet the national standards under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act".
"Additional measures should be added to ensure that offsets are a measure of last resort and that, when they are implemented, they deliver conservation gains before nature is lost or cleared," Mr Trezise said.
"The science is becoming more refined and we are learning that there are lots of situations where offsets are not appropriate, yet they are implemented for almost all approvals," he said. "Scientific certainty of outcomes should be a prerequisite for the use of offsets as we run a real risk of offsetting species to extinction."
Kate Smolski, chief executive of the NSW Nature Conservation Council, said the Baird government's policy was "deeply flawed", allowing miners to pay to destroy nature.
"An offsets system will only have credibility and public support if it requires like-for-like offsets and designates no-go zones that are off limits to coal and gas companies," Ms Smolski said.
"Some areas are simply too precious to be destroyed for dollars," she said.
Labor said its offsets policy would be based on "principles identified by The International Council on Mining and Minerals and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature".
