Is it time to embrace strategic assessments under the EPBC Act?

Australia’s environmental assessment and approval system is under increasing pressure. Community expectations have lifted and proponents are developing more complex projects and more of them. The demand on the system has resulted in proponents navigating lengthy assessments, high upfront costs and significant uncertainty. These challenges have the potential to not only impact project timelines and investment decisions, but also environmental outcomes and community trust.

Within this system, strategic assessments under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) were designed as an alternative pathway to address these challenges. Rather than assessing individual projects one by one, strategic assessments allow governments and proponents to assess the environmental impact of policies, plans and programs upfront, creating a framework for future approvals.

Theoretically, this should support better long-term planning, cumulative impact management and more timely and certain outcomes. However, in practice strategic assessments have been used sparingly over the last decade. 

Having worked with proponents with complex approval challenges, I am often asked whether a strategic assessment under the EPBC Act could offer a better approval pathway. That question usually prompts a careful analysis of trade‑offs: overall timeframes, upfront effort and cost, environmental outcomes, project certainty and social licence. Historically, when we’ve worked through the details, the answer has often been that strategic assessments simply didn’t stack up.

That hesitation is understandable. Proponents are forced to continue undertaking multiple standalone environmental assessment, which is not a great outcome for them, the already strained assessment system or the community.  

Why strategic assessments haven’t been widely used

In my experience, three key issues consistently hold proponents back from undertaking a strategic assessment:

1. Significant upfront time, effort and cost involved
2. Uncertainty about whether subsequent project approvals will be faster or simpler
3. Lack of flexibility once a program or plan is approved.

That final point was clearly identified in the 2020 Samuel Review, the second independent review of the EPBC Act. Once a strategic assessment program was endorsed, it couldn’t be changed. Part 10 approvals were effectively frozen in time, even though most long-term projects need to adapt as information, policy and the environmental context changes.

For many proponents, that rigidity outweighs any potential benefits.

What’s changed?

Late last year, amendments to the EPBC Act were passed. Much of the focus of the changes was on improving internal processes. While the changes are welcome, they won’t fundamentally alter the broader assessment landscape.

Where things do look different though is Part 10 strategic assessments.

Under Tranche 1 of the reforms, conditions attached to a strategic assessment can now be varied, revoked or supplemented over time. It’s a relatively simple change, but one that changes how strategic assessments can be approached.

Why flexibility matters

Previously, a huge amount of effort went into trying to anticipate every possible future scenario before a program could be endorsed. That often meant longer timeframes, higher costs and still no guarantee the outcome would remain workable over the life of a project.

The ability to adjust conditions over time changes that dynamic. It gives proponents, regulators and the community greater confidence that programs can respond to new information and changing circumstances, without needing to start again.

In practical terms, this can support:

• More proportionate upfront assessments
• Conditions that focus on environmental outcomes rather than procedural certainty
• Programs that remain fit for purpose over the long term.

It doesn’t remove complexity, but it does make strategic assessments a more realistic option than they have been in the past. 

Of course, strategic assessments still won’t suit every program or plan. The changes mean that for proponents managing complex, long-term development pathways for a number of distinct spatial or temporal components, it may be worth revisiting the question and taking a fresh look at what is now possible. 

The changes aren’t a silver bullet for projects that are already under timeline pressure, and they are poorly suited for projects that don’t have clear funding commitments to the upfront assessment work required.

Strategic assessments are a long-term investment with the potential for long-term benefits. For long-term projects, they offer the clearest pathway for engaging multiple stakeholders. This is particularly relevant for the contribution to support regional-scale offset frameworks. 

What proponents should do next

GHD is currently involved in delivering strategic assessments across Australia for a range of industries. While it is still early days, these reforms have already shifted client conversations. What we haven’t seen yet is substantial interest by linear infrastructure proponents. Road, rail and transmission line programs are ideally suited to the long-term planning benefits that strategic assessments may be able to provide. Even major desalination projects that require progressive upgrade of transmission networks and water pipeline infrastructure may benefit from considering strategic assessments. 

The real test will be how these changes are delivered. If these changes are realised, we can apply the strategic assessment process to the nation-building projects and programs it was designed to support.