Urban Development Institute of Australia NSW (UDIA) is concerned at the passage of the amended Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Biodiversity Offsets Scheme) Bill 2024 by the NSW Parliament today. The NSW Government has missed a valuable opportunity to make much-needed improvements to a biodiversity system that doesn’t deliver for the environment and is a fundamental barrier to delivering housing across the state.
This legislation was introduced by NSW Government to “fix the biodiversity offsets scheme” under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 (BC Act). Regrettably, it does the opposite: rather than fix a broken scheme, this Bill is likely to add further hurdles and ambiguity to an already overly complex and uncertain biodiversity approval system and make it harder to deliver new housing, jobs and infrastructure in NSW.
“Parliament has missed the mark with this Bill, it is weak on the environment and fails on housing supply. It’s a missed opportunity to get the balance and certainty we all need to move forward,” said Stuart Ayres, CEO UDIA NSW.
UDIA offered constructive recommendations that would improve the workability of the Bill, but only one of these was adopted.
Unfortunately, the NSW Government opted to concede to the Greens and agree to amendments that are anti-housing in order to get the Bill through, rather than work with our Members who offered practical amendments to improve the Bill.
The scheme is not working to deliver good outcomes, either for biodiversity or development. Since the implementation of the BC Act in 2017, more than 60% of the planned housing pipeline in our regions, and around 25% of new housing across the state, is delayed because of issues navigating the scheme.
“it’s unfortunate that the Labor Government talks about increasing housing supply, but in this case, acts in exactly the opposite way,” said Stuart Ayres.
UDIA had serious concerns with today’s Bill from the start, when it was introduced in August without sufficient consultation with stakeholders. We believed the proposed Bill would further undermine the ability to deliver housing, at a time when the NSW Government is seeking to deliver more houses under the five-year National Housing Accord, than we have ever delivered in NSW history.
“Without accompanying regulations, departments and councils have no way of implementing this Act. We should now expect a period of confusion, where both the environment and housing supply are the losers,” said Stuart Ayres.
UDIA is committed to working with the NSW Government and the wider Parliament as the updated regulations are drafted and we will continue strongly advocating for our goal to make the biodiversity approval system in NSW more efficient, simple and clearer when protecting biodiversity and delivering the housing, jobs and infrastructure our state needs.
Access UDIA’s submission here.
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Media Enquiries: Deanna Lane, Director of Media & Communications
UDIA NSW and National dlane@udiansw.com.au 0416 295 898