Environment funding slashed by third since Coalition took office

Spending on environment department programs, monitoring and staff has been slashed by nearly a third since the Coalition won the election in 2013, with deeper cuts promised into next decade.

While the federal budget has expanded by $36bn since Tony Abbott took office, funding for the environment has been cut by nearly half a billion dollars, an analysis by two conservation groups found.

By 2020-21, the final year of the forward estimates period in May’s budget papers, the Turnbull government plans to have reduced environment spending to less than 60% of 2013-14 figure.

Among the programs hardest hit are those designed to maintain biodiversity by protecting shrinking animal and plant populations and ecosystems. Their funding is to be cut in half across the eight years.

The cuts are planned to continue despite the government’s five-yearly State of the Environment report finding in March there was insufficient public support for environmental management and restoration programs. The report found climate change was altering the structure and function of natural ecosystems, and parts of Australia’s natural estate were in poor or deteriorating condition.

Areas under pressure include the heavily populated coast, some urban growth corridors and land-use zones where grazing and invasive species are threatening biodiversity.

The budget analysis was set out in a submission to government by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and WWF Australia. ACF economist Matt Rose said it suggested the Coalition placed little value on environmental protection.

“The government has no idea how important the environment is to the wellbeing of Australia, the Australian people, the economy and our sense of who we are,” he said.

Rose said while government ministers in some portfolios built influence by arguing for greater resources for their department, allowing them to deliver positive outcomes, the opposite had been true for environment minister Josh Frydenberg and his immediate predecessor, Greg Hunt.

“We should judge any environment minister, from any political party, on whether the health of the environment is better when they left the portfolio than when they were appointed,” he said.

“We’re seeing rising carbon emissions, we’re seeing unprecedented land-clearing, we’re seeing threatened species declining with many on track to go extinct, and we’re seeing less funding for people to get out there and build fences, do weeding and re-vegetate landscapes.”

Frydenberg responded that, on a per capita basis, Australia’s emissions were at their lowest level in 27 years due to a “strong suite of policies”. This included reducing potent hydrofluorocarbons, the Emissions Reduction Fund that pays businesses and farmers to make carbon dioxide cuts, a renewable energy target and a national energy efficiency plan.

He listed several environmental programs the government had funded: a $2bn Great Barrier Reef 2050 plan; the introduction of a national threatened species strategy overseen by a dedicated commissioner; an Antarctic program with a secure future that included new facilities on Macquarie Island and a replacement icebreaker.

‘We have … maintained environmental standards while reducing red tape with a one-stop shop for environmental assessments,” the minister said.

According to the analysis, environment department spending will be 0.16% of the total budget by 2020-21.

The biggest cut in recent years was to a $946m biodiversity fund – a grant program funded by carbon price revenue introduced by Labor in 2011 to “maintain ecosystem function and increase ecosystem resilience to climate change”. Then prime minister Kevin Rudd slashed it by $213m in July 2013 and the Coalition shut it later that year. Only about a third of the initial promised sum was spent.

In 2014-15, the Coalition also cut $471m over four years from the long-running Landcare program, which funds work on local projects tackling land degradation. Most of that money was to be redirected to environmental works by Abbott’s $525m green army, made up of young volunteers and the unemployed, until it was announced last year that program would also be shut down.

About $225m of green army funding was reclaimed as a budget saving, and $100m went back to Landcare under a deal with the Greens in return for their support for a backpacker tax.

Landcare has taken a 33% annual funding cut. It once received $1bn over four years. From 2019, it will get the same sum over six years.

The environment group analysis does not include funding for climate change and energy programs because they were in a different department under the Abbott government but have subsequently been brought under Frydenberg’s environment and energy umbrella. And it does not include work by the states or federal government agencies, including Parks Australia and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.

The two environmental groups called for a significant boost in environmental investment in the 2018-19 budget. They called for a new $1.1bn environment fund to boost threatened species recovery, support the expansion and management of protected areas and improve Great Barrier Reef water quality.

Other suggestions included an independent statutory authority to enforce national environmental laws and expanded scientific research into long-term bushfire mitigation strategies.