Australia's Environment Protection Reform Act 2025: What Businesses Need To Know

The Australian Government has enforced the Environment Protection Reform Act 2025 (EPRA 2025), effective 1st December 2025. Most of the provisions of the EPRA 2025 will take effect immediately while others, such as the consequential amendments and transitional provisions for the National Environmental Protection Agency Act 2025 and the Head of Environment Information Australia will be rolled out in phases.

The EPRA 2025 marks a remarkable shift in how businesses in Australia will manage environmental approvals, compliance, risk and strategy. The EPRA 2025 is premised on three core pillars:

• stronger environmental protection and restoration
• more efficient and robust project approvals and
• greater accountability and transparency in environmental decision-making.

In this blog post we have discussed some of the key reforms under the EPRA 2025.

1. Stronger environmental protection and restoration

• The EPRA 2025 introduced significant amendments to the Environment Protection and Bio-diversity Conservation Act 1999, to allow the Minister to implement reforms to the environmental standards under it.
• The EPRA 2025 creates a strengthened statutory framework and defines "unacceptable impact[SV1] " i.e. "a significant impact that causes loss, damage or alteration to part or all of the world heritage values of a declared world heritage property, a significant impact that causes serious or irreversible damage to part or all of the national heritage values of the National Heritage place, a significant impact that (a) seriously impairs the ecological character of a declared Ramsar wetland; or (b) undermines the ability of the declared Ramsar wetland to continue to meet the criteria for which it was listed under the Ramsar Convention, a significant impact that seriously impairs the viability of the listed threatened species or causes serious damage to critical habitat of the listed threatened species where the habitat is irreplaceable and necessary for the listed threatened species to remain viable in the wild...". Projects with unacceptable impacts on nationally protected matters are prohibited.
• A new offsets regime introduces a "net gain" test for residual impacts and establishes a Restoration Contributions Holder, an independent statutory office responsible for managing restoration contributions paid by proponents. Projects having significant residual impacts on nationally protected matters need to pass the net gain test to obtain approval.
• The penalties for deliberate and severe breaches will be subject to higher penalties and new civil penalty categories and compliance tools such as Environment Protection Orders are introduced.

2. More efficient and robust project approvals

• Bilateral agreements with states and territories will be updated to remove duplication and streamline the approval process and assessment systems with federal oversight on matters of national environmental impact.
• EPRA 2025 introduced bio-regional plans in the Environment Protection and Bio-diversity Conservation Act 1999 to develop areas with lower environmental impacts, while protecting areas with higher ecological value. EPRA 2025 also restricts certain projects, such as fossil fuel action (coal and petroleum development projects) from using priority or fast-track pathways under these plans
• Consistence in environmental decision-making has been strengthened so that approvals are consistent with the improved environmental standards.

3. Greater accountability and transparency in environmental decision-making

• The EPRA 2025 has established Australia's first national, independent environmental protection agency known as National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA).
• NEPA is empowered to protect the Australian environment by issuing environmental protection orders, including the power to issue 'stop-work' orders but there is a limit on the term of environment protection orders to a maximum of 14 days, with only one further 14-day extension permitted.
• NEPA is empowered to conduct investigations and audits.
• Minister for the Environment has retained decision-making power on environmental assessments and approvals.
• EPRA 2025 establishes a statutory Head of Environment Information to supervise environmental data and reporting.
• EPRA 2025 also proposes improved engagement with First Nation people in decision-making.

EPRA 2025 also amends other laws relating to environment like the Airports Act 1996, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act 1981, Hazardous Waste (Regulation of Exports and Imports) Act 1989, Nature Repair Act 2023, Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006, Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Management Act 1989, Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas (Import Levy) Act 1995, Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas (Manufacture Levy) Act 1995, Product Emissions Standards Act 2017, Recycling and Waste Reduction Act 2020 and Underwater Cultural Heritage Act 2018. The amendments are bringing major development to environmental laws relying on the three core pillars as detailed above.

Core Compliance insight for businesses

• Project Pipeline Audit: Assess existing and proposed projects against concepts like unacceptable impact and the national environmental standards. Develop strategies to align your business plans with the new standards.
• Updated risk registers: Update risk registers to reflect stronger penalties and new assessment paths and enhanced enforcement powers of NEPA.
• Disclosure of emission data: Prepare your policies and procedures to disclose emissions and provide details on how to manage emissions in line with the Government's climate policies.
• Offsets strategy: Prepare policies and procedures including financial planning for participating in the restoration contributions system.

Compliance Roadmap

• Assessing and monitoring: With critical components of the regime (NES, offsets standards, bioregional plans) being released progressively, businesses must closely monitor rules and regulations that will tighten compliance obligations.

• NEPA enforcement: Strong civil penalties, audit and investigation powers require businesses to maintain audit logs, automated incident-report workflows and real-time corrective action tracking.

• Strategic offsets and Retribution Contributions planning: Have processes in place to forecast restoration contributions during project design.

• Enterprise-level compliance integration: Have a unified compliance hub to track compliance as environmental approvals will intersect with ESG disclosure frameworks and other allied legislations.

• Transition risk management: Key provisions will begin as notified or within 12 months, giving businesses time to conduct an audit for gap analysis.

Conclusion

EPRA 2025 intends to modernize the Environmental Protection and Bio-diversity Conservation Act 1999. EPRA 2025 increases transparency and strengthens environmental protection. It is at the cornerstone of environmental development in Australia by binding businesses to more stringent compliance obligations to ensure protection for Australia's unique ecosystem.

Businesses should closely monitor the phased release including national environmental standards, offset rules and NEPA guidance throughout 2026.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.