The updated draft of the National Environmental Standard for Matters of National Environmental Significance (draft MNES Standard) has been released for public comment.  

See the consultation page here for more information and to read the updated documents, being the:  

Submissions are due by 11.59pm, 29 May 2026  

The MNES Standard is one of the most important of the National Environmental Standards recommended by Professor Graeme Samuel AC in his independent review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) (EPBC Act).  

This Standard is intended to lift environmental outcomes by providing clearer and outcomes-focused criteria that must be applied to decisions impacting all protected matter listed under the EPBC Act.   

Disappointingly, the updated draft MNES Standard is even weaker than the first draft released for public consultation in November 2025. As drafted, it will do very little to protect nature. 

Key concerns 

The Standard Objects and Outcomes have been made irrelevant  

The positive amendments made in this version are far outweighed by a new subsection that provides that activities can satisfy the whole Standard if they meet only the principles in the Standard (see clause 7 of the draft MNES Standard).  

This means that the more detailed outcomes and objectives set out in the Standard can be ignored if the high-level principles are met.  

Essentially, the test for determining whether an action will achieve the outcomes and objectives is simply whether the action is consistent with the Principles and not whether an action is consistent with or will achieve the outcomes or objectives.  

This weak Standard will apply to not only assessment of individual activities but also classes of actions, as well as on assessment of bilateral assessment and approval agreements, as well as any new NOPSEMA accreditation.  

Principles largely replicate existing requirements 

While the discretion for applying the principles has been reduced through stronger requirements (e.g., actions must be designed having regard to the mitigation hierarchy, rather than should be designed to do so), most of the principles cover matter that is already required in the reforms to the EPBC Act.  

This means that the Standards will not add any additional layer of environmental protection, as the government intended them to.  

The principles (with our commentary) are as follows:  

Principle 1: Actions appropriately apply the mitigation hierarchy.  

This is already a requirement under the new EPBC Act reforms. 

Principle 2: Actions appropriately consider adverse impacts to protected matters.  

While this Principle is helpful in providing more guidance around assessing the context that proposed impacts will occur within, we are concerned that revisions have resulted in half of the criteria only applying to landscape scale assessments rather than all criteria applying to all activities. Further, as previously submitted, the Standard should explicitly state what it means by “context”, refer to “cumulative impacts”, and should include the Notes in the body of the Principle itself. 

Principle 3: Actions with residual significant impacts to protected matters are compensated.  

This is already a requirement under the new EPBC Act reforms.  

Principle 4: Appropriate evidence, Indigenous engagement and consultation.  

This will likely also be provided for under the further Standards in the pipeline for Data and Information, First Nations engagement and Community consultation.  

These Principles are all process-focused considerations, rather than the outcomes-focused provisions that the Samuel Review recommended as being essential to ensure better environmental outcomes in federal environmental decision-making.  

Outcomes and objectives need further revision 

Some amendments to the Objectives and Outcomes have narrowed and weakened protections. For example: 

  • The redrafting of Objectives – Item 1 (Listed threatened species), Item 2 (Listed threatened ecological communities) and Item 3 (Listed migratory species) has significantly narrowed the scope of those objectives to capture only habitat that is irreplaceable and necessary for the species to remain viable in the wild. This is narrower than our previous interpretation of this objective, and unsupported. The qualifying words “where the habitat is irreplaceable and necessary for the community to remain viable in the wild” should be removed so that all habitat of a threatened species or ecological community, or migratory species, is protected, conserved and restored. This is consistent with the outcome to be achieved by the Standard being the “protection, conservation and, where appropriate, management, restoration and recovery of protected matters”. 
  • Objectives – Item 8 (Commonwealth marine areas) has been revised to apply to ‘a marine ecosystem’ rather Commonwealth marine areas. It is unclear practical implications this change may have.  
  • Changing “where necessary” to “where appropriate” in many of the Outcomes and Objectives has the potential for Outcomes and Objectives to be less strictly applied, where it is unclear by what is meant by “appropriate”. 

One notable improvement is revisions to Objectives – Item 9 (Protection of water resources from unconventional gas development and large coal mining development (frequently referred to as the ‘water trigger’): 

The latest draft ensures that water resources are protected and conserved for sites of local, regional and national ecological significance, rather than limited to sites of regional and national significance. This adopts a recommendation made by EDO. 

Further, we are pleased this Objective has been further expanded to protect and conserve “provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services provided by the water resource”. This change somewhat reflects EDO’s recommendations. 

Unfortunately, as outlined above, redrafting of the Standard to simply require consistency with the principles in order to meet the Standard essentially makes the Objectives and Outcomes redundant.   

Failure to address important gaps 

In addition to these concerning changes to the latest draft MNES Standard, EDO is also disappointed this latest draft fails to make other improvements to address gaps (as recommended in our previous submission). Failures include: 

No consideration of climate change impacts on MNES: There is no mention of climate change in the draft MNES Standard. It should explicitly require consideration of impacts on MNES under different climate scenarios, and the effectiveness of avoidance and mitigation measures under climate change scenarios. 

No monitoring and evaluation requirements: Again, this latest draft MNES Standard is silent on the need to provide for monitoring and evaluation of decision outcomes for MNES. Without requiring that research, monitoring and reporting is publicly published regularly, there will be no way to know if the Standard is being met or whether outcomes for MNES are being achieved. This is vital to ensure public trust that the Standards are working as they should: to protect the environment. 

Concerningly, the changes made to the draft MNES Standard and failure to address gaps mean the bar has been set low for states, territories, and NOPSEMA, who may seek to have their frameworks accredited to take over federal EPBC Act assessment or approval.  

Hypothetical case studies  

What does this mean for individual project assessments?   

An application for unconventional gas and fracking activities in central Queensland could be referred for assessment and approval under the EPBC Act. The project is likely to have significant impacts on groundwater resources that are home to rare and threatened spring species (a threatened ecological community) reliant on the groundwater, as well as being significant to local First Nations, and depended on by local farmers in areas subject to consistent drought.   

While the Objectives of the draft MNES Standard require protection and conservation of the function and integrity of the water resource, its ecological components necessary to support a significant site, the reliability and supply of water and the cultural services provided by the water (Objective item 9) –  all of these important criteria can be ignored if the broad Principles of the draft MNES Standard are met. That is, all that the project needs to demonstrate is consistency with the Principles – not specifically that these objectives have been met.  

These Principles require the proponent and decision maker to:   

  • apply the mitigation hierarchy by avoiding the impacts, and if that’s not possible seeking to mitigate the impacts, and if that’s not possible, offsetting the impacts (via compensation in accordance with Principle 3);  
  • consider in general the context of the protected matter that may be impacted;  
  • provide for compensation (either an offset or a financial payment) to account for any significant residual impacts;  
  • use the best available data and undertaken appropriate consultation with First Nations and the general public.   

These are important Principles, but they are not focused on assisting the decision maker to know whether an impact to a protected matter should be allowed. Nor do they stipulate how stringent the proponent and decision-maker need to be in avoiding and mitigating the impacts, compared to simply allowing the development impacts to go ahead on the basis of offsets.   

A possible outcome for the application of this draft MNES Standard to this development is as follows:  

  • the gas company claims the development cannot be moved to a different site as the gas resources are mainly available at that site, and so the impacts therefore cannot be avoided or mitigated due to the inability to change their operations;   
  • the gas company provides their impact assessment using otherwise appropriate information and undertakes consultation with First Nations and the public;   
  • the context of the protected matter is considered, but then isn’t given much weight since the mitigation hierarchy as implemented has found it’s not possible to avoid the impacts and have the development go ahead;   
  • the gas company offsets residual significant impacts, including by paying money into the restoration contribution fund;   
  • the development and the impacts to the groundwater resources and the threatened spring communities is allowed to go ahead;  
  • the Objectives of the MNES Standard are not achieved. There is no application of the Objective requiring the protection and conservation of the function and integrity of the water resource, including its ecological components/functions/processes, reliability and supply of water to support critical human water needs, nor availability of the water to support First Nations cultural values – these issues are not considered in assessment.  

What does this mean for bilateral assessment and approval agreements?   

Under this new draft MNES Standard it is also possible for bilateral assessment and approval agreements to accredit state and territory laws (i.e., hand over federal powers to state and territory governments) by only meeting the Principles outlined above, rather than ensuring that Outcomes and Objectives are achieved.   

 This could mean that in seeking accreditation any framework would only need to demonstrate the following:   

  • incorporation of the mitigation hierarchy into their assessment framework, including an offsets framework that incorporates the option of paying money into a fund in addition to providing real offsets for each individual project;  
  • consideration of the context in which the impact might occur – which should really be being considered in environmental assessment if it is achieving its purpose;   
  • measures for compensating significant residual impacts, which could include offsets or payment into a fund;   
  • requirements that applications are supported by appropriate, suitable and best available data and information, and appropriate engagement occurs with First Nations and the general public.   

These are all important and helpful Principles for assessment frameworks to include, but they do little to ensure strengthened environmental assessment and consistency in decision-making.  

It is also unclear how they are contributing to the Outcomes and Objectives of the draft MNES Standard being achieved.   

These case studies demonstrate that the draft MNES Standard is not lifting the bar for environmental protection or guaranteeing that Outcomes and Objects will be achieved.  

It is likely that most state and territory frameworks will not need to significantly amend their frameworks to meet this Standard, and in fact some frameworks may be at risk of being weakened.  

For example, having already found through multiple independent reviews that the financial settlement of offsets is jeopardising the operation of their environmental approvals framework, the NSW Government is now moving to tighten this option.  

There is a question mark as to what amendments the NSW Government may need to make to its framework to be consistent with the draft MNES Standard.    

The federal government committed to strengthening Australia’s environment laws, and instead this updated draft Standard is sending us backwards and risking further environmental decline.  

We encourage submissions that point out this weak MNES Standard does little to strengthen our national environmental laws and is not supported. Australia’s environment and species need strong laws across the country, to curb the extinction crisis and to ensure Australia’s species and ecosystems that we all depend on and love can continue to flourish.  

Make a submission by 29 May 2026: by taking the survey or uploading your submission on the department’s website.  

Next steps: 

Once consultation finishes, the minister may make the Standard if he is satisfied it:  

  • promotes the objects of the EPBC Act; and  
  • is not inconsistent with Australia’s obligations under international agreements specified in the EPBC Act. 

The finalised Standard must then be tabled as a disallowable instrument in federal parliament.