9. CONCLUSIONES
9.3 ESTILOS COMUNICATIVOS Y AMBIENTE LABORAL
Taking Stock: Second OECD Environmental Performance Review of Australia
As with the previous change of long-term government in 1996, the change of long-term government in 2007 coincided with the second OECD environmental performance review of Australia. The review again found that the lack of accurate and nationally consistent environmental information made it impossible to give a clear picture of Australia’s
environment.629 The OECD noted that overall, in the decade since its previous review, the provision of environmental information had expanded greatly, ‘often together with that of relevant social and economic data.’630 Nevertheless:
What seems lacking, however, is a consistent set of environmental data and a set of key
environmental indicators common to different reports. This frustrates many efforts to aggregate data at the Australian government and State/Territory levels, and thus to monitor policies’
effectiveness. In addition, because of inconsistencies in data collection from one report to the next, there is very little trend data available.
Concerning economic data on the environment (eg environmental expenditure, environmental employment, environment -related taxes, water prices), there is room for progress and for greater support of environmental policies. The latest estimates on environmental expenditure are ten years old, although some elements … are more recent … [A]s a result, it has become more difficult to analyse such factors as trends, application of the polluter-pays principle, leveraged effects and actual shifts in priorities. Further progress in these areas would be in line with the related OECD Council Recommendations.631
Although expressed in muted bureaucratic language, this is actually quite stiff criticism, in two respects. First, available data did not present a clear picture of the state of the
environment, or of environmental trends, because environmental data are not even
consistent, let alone comprehensive. Further, the lack of information meant that it was not possible to assess whether environmental policy had been integrated with economic policy, as the OECD had recommended (over many years and with the support of successive
629 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Performance Reviews: Australia (OECD 2007)
630 Ibid 231.
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Australian governments). There is also more than a hint in this language that the OECD suspected that if such information were available, it would reveal that the Australian government had failed to implement policy directions that it had supported.
In light of this less-than-desirable starting point, the main information initiatives during this period, the National Plan for Environmental Information (NPEI) and sustainability reporting appear to be very timely, but as will be seen below, once again implementation would fail to match aspiration.
Enhancing State of the Environment Reporting and its Policy Uses
As part of a response to issues identified in the 2006 SoE report, including the 5 year gap between these reports, the environment department decided to ‘develop an annual
publication to help maintain the public capacity for evidence-based debate about nationally significant environmental issues’.632 In 2008 Minister Garrett was briefed and was
supportive; the department published its intentions in its annual report and subsequently developed a draft publication covering 11 topics in 2009.633 Subsequently, the department decided to re-develop the proposed publication as a series of fact sheets,634 before deciding in 2010 that the range of statistics covered by the project ‘was much broader in scope than the department’s direct responsibilities. As a result, the department decided the risks associated with department publishing [the reports] outweighed the benefits …’ and transferred the material to the 2011 SoE Committee.635 The problem was too big to solve within one portfolio and existing resources.
National Plan for Environmental Information
The 2020 Summit convened by Prime Minister Rudd in 2007 to help shape the nation’s long-term future recommended (among many other things) that Australia implement a set
632 Department of the Environment Water, Heritage and Arts, ‘Key Environmental Statistics: hand-over to the 2011 SoE Committee’ Departmental Briefing, 10 September 2010 (Department of the Environment Water, Heritage and Arts Department file 2010/02680).
633 Department of the Environment Water, Heritage and Arts, Annual Report 2008–09 (DEWHA 2009), 225; Department of the Environment Water, Heritage and Arts ‘Key Environmental Statistics’ (Draft agenda paper for Senior Executive Managers Meeting 17 May 2010) (marked ‘not used’), (Department of the Environment Water, Heritage and Arts file 2010/02680).
634 Ibid.
635 Department of the Environment Water, Heritage and Arts, ‘Key Environmental Statistics’, above n 633; Department of the Environment Water, Heritage and Arts ‘Key Environmental Statistics’ (Draft agenda paper for Senior Executive Managers Meeting 17 May 2010) above n 633.
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of national environmental accounts and integrate these into a comprehensive national accounts system, so as to ‘internalise the values from society and the environment’.636 The Government’s response was to agree in principle, noting that it had already committed to a new National Water Account and revisions to the National Carbon Accounting
System, and was ‘looking into the establishment of a broader set of national environmental accounts’ which in turn would involve considering existing accounting mechanisms such as carbon accounting.637 The Department however proposed to the Minister a broader
national environmental information agenda. This agenda covered the roles and responsibilities of various governments and agencies in an overall ‘system’; improved collection of and access to data; and statistical reports and products, ‘such as national environmental accounts and State of the Environment reports.’638 The rationale for this broader approach was that, despite significant improvement in some areas, important data gaps remained; there continued to be a lack of coherence in collecting activity and:
In many areas we also lack the time series and sophisticated models to help us determine the effectiveness of past interventions or consider the likely effectiveness of possible interventions.639
The department advised that further cooperative work with states lacked impetus, ownership of cross-portfolio or cross-jurisdictional information, or agreement on information requirements and drivers, ‘and a consequent lack of clear objectives for an improved environmental information capacity.’640 In other words, there was no clear goal and no clear plan or commitment to remedy basic deficiencies in the system. Internal briefing notes for a subsequent discussion with the Minister advised senior officials that ‘it
636 Australia 2020 Summit Steering Committee, Australia 2020 Summit: Final Report (PM&C 2008) 1; Australian Government, Responding to the Australia 2020 Summit (Australian Government, 2009) 75. Associated
recommendations were to give environmental indicators the same status as economic indicators (including ‘showing trends in the ecological footprint’); and to undertake the valuation of environmental and social measures at the same level as economic measures, ‘ensuring differentiation between “dollarisation” and valuing’. Note that the State of the Environment Report 2006 and the 2007 OECD Performance Review had also recommended accounts; the Hawke Review would also do so in 2010.
637 Ibid.
638 Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Assistant Secretary, Environmental Research and Information, ‘National Environmental Information Agenda’, Brief B08/2050, 8 August 2008 (Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts file 2008/12653).
639 Ibid. 640 Ibid.
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would be difficult to implement National Environmental Accounts without an improvement in basic environmental data.’641
The department subsequently recommended to the Minister that he take to Cabinet a proposal for a National Plan for Environmental Information (NPEI), with four key elements: a set of national environmental information products, including environmental accounts and outlooks, along with national data standards and datasets; new institutional arrangements in the form of a statutory role for BoM as the custodian of a comprehensive environmental data system and coordinator with other government initiatives and agencies, and with states; an investment program to fund data products and reduce data gaps; and a phased implementation strategy to build capacity over time.642 The policy logic was one of better understanding developments (through accounting, which looks back) and trends (through outlook reporting, which looks forward), supported by investment in data and made effective through institutional reform.
The Government subsequently announced the NPEI in the 2010 Budget. Cabinet papers relating to this proposal are not available until 2030, but the NPEI as announced was much more limited than the department’s initial proposal, with key components of what is better described as an initiative rather than a plan, because there was no plan as such, and
components of the initiative were qualified with words such as ‘commence’.643 Significant effort was directed to reforming governmental structures and processes, the centrepiece being a commitment to establish BoM by law as the authority for environmental
information. Other substantive elements were to review data and ‘begin building priority
641 Department of the Environment Water, Heritage and Arts, ‘Meeting with Minister Peter Garrett to discuss AG initiatives and progress on the national environmental information agenda, Thursday 4 September 2008’, undated ‘discussion notes’ (Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts file 2008/12653). 642 Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Assistant Secretary, Environment Resources and Information Branch, ‘Progress on a Set of National Environmental Accounts’ Brief B09/1882, 15 July 2009 (Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts file 2008/12653). Under s 6 of the Meteorology Act 1955 (Cth),
(1) The functions of the Bureau [of Meteorology] are:
(a) the taking and recording of meteorological observations and other observations required for the purposes of meteorology; and
(b) the forecasting of weather and of the state of the atmosphere.
Meteorology is not defined in the Act but according to the Oxford English Dictionary is ‘the branch of science that deals with atmospheric phenomena and processes, esp. with a view to forecasting the weather.’ There must be some doubt as to whether the Bureau of Meteorology has the power to perform functions in relation to environmental data other than for purposes connected with atmospheric phenomena and weather
forecasting. The Bureau’s water functions are conferred under the Water Act 2007 (Cth), s 120.
643 See Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, and Bureau of Meteorology, The
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national environmental datasets and the infrastructure to deliver them’.644 This
infrastructure would include national environmental information standards; stage one of an integrated Environmental Information System to collate, manage and provide public access to national environmental datasets; and a commitment to ‘commencing
development of a framework to deliver national environmental accounts’.645 Significantly, although the government had undertaken discussions with states concerning the National Environment Information System (NEIS), including ‘completing a stocktake and
assessment of environmental information initiatives’ across all jurisdictions, the
Commonwealth ultimately went it alone, undertaking its own review of environmental information activity across the Australian government.646
Independent Review of Australian Government Environmental Information Activity
One commitment under the NPEI was to review Australian Government environmental information activity. This review (the Morton Tinney Review) identified, and made
recommendations in response to, a range of cultural, structural, funding, technical and legal obstacles to effective and efficient use of the environmental information base across the Australian Government.647 From a policy perspective, the most significant finding and recommendation was that structural barriers to collaboration and coordination made the role of a central coordinating authority ‘crucial’ and that the Government should ‘consider the merits of, in the longer term, transferring the central coordinating authority function to a separate statutory body’ as had been established for health statistics under the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Act 1987 (Cth).648The government did not respond to the
review, with the department later advising a parliamentary committee that the report had simply ‘helped shape’ its approach.649
644 Ibid.
645 Ibid.
646 See Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Annual Report 2008–09, above n 633, 224–225; and Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Annual Report 2009–10 (DEWHA 2010) 279. The annual reports make no further mention of this initiative.
647 Steve Morton and Anthea Tinney, Independent Review of Australian Government Environmental Information
Activity: Final Report (DSEWPaC 2012) viii. 648 Ibid, 22, section 3.2.2, dot point 6.
649 Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, Parliament of Australia, ‘Answers to questions on notice: Environment’ portfolio, Budget Estimates 2015–16 (May 2015), Question No 67,
<http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Senate_Estimates/ecctte/estimates/bud1516/environme nt/index> (viewed 29 June 2016).
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Accounting and its Domestic Application
With apparent independence from this course of policy development, the ABS continued to develop environmental accounting at a slow but steady pace, publishing sectoral accounts, including on water and waste,650 while also moving into experimental land accounts, starting with an account for Victoria in 2012.651 No doubt anticipating the adoption of the SEEA as an international standard, in 2010 ABS published a paper on linking the environment and economy through environmental-economic accounting.652The story was one of a litany of problems with environmental information (see Box 4.3). The ABS’ solution to this problem was to map out a forward program of work in producing a greater range of sectoral environmental-economic accounts on a regular basis, arguing that ‘the ultimate result of this work will be a more informed user community, and a stronger basis for socio-economic and environmental policy formulation in Australia.’653 But note that at this point, with the adoption of the SEEA approaching, the ABS were still
canvassing both the organisation of information around environmental media or domains rather than systemic units such as ecosystems, along with the analysis of issues according to the DPISR model (see Box 4.3).