One of Australia’s only legal practitioners with an understanding of Australia’s regional forestry agreements has spent weeks telling anyone who will listen that Australia’s Environment Protection Reform Bill is heading for the courts — and he is not short of evidence to back it up.
The Sydney-based legal practitioner told a Senate committee last Friday that the cessation of RFA exemptions on 1 July 2027 would leave forestry operators in “literally no man’s land.” With not one of the ten RFAs across New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, and Tasmania replaced — and less than 16 months until the clock runs out — Coppock warned that forestry was heading into what he called “a maelstrom of legal nonsense.”
But there is a flip side to Coppock’s warning — and it may be the most important thing the Senate committee heard all day. Buried inside his evidence to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee was not just a diagnosis of what is wrong with the Environment Protection Reform Bill, but a prescription for how to fix it. And the remedy, he says, is already written into Australian law.
‘Compliance Only. Nothing Else.’
The central problem with the Reform Bill, according to Coppock, is the one thing it conspicuously leaves out: the real world. “The legislation is built around decision-making — start with the law, then work to standards,” he told Senators, speaking on behalf of Timber NSW. “But it does not deal with the commercial and economic realities of forestry.”
The reform package, as drafted, is a compliance instrument. It tells operators what they must not do. What it fails to do is set any standard for good environmental business practice, or create any mechanism to reward operators who continuously strive to meet that standard.
In an industry where human activity meets a living, variable, and scientifically contested natural environment, Coppock argues that a blunt compliance tool is not just inadequate — it is a direct pipeline to the Federal Court. “Where you land in the area of timber is in a highly contestable area of science,” he said. “And that’s where you end up in lawfare — where you have arguments over scientific papers.”
In other words, without a protective standard baked into the legislation, every harvesting decision becomes a potential courtroom battle. The Environmental Defenders Office, or any well-resourced advocacy group, would have an open door to challenge operations on the basis of contested environmental data — with operators left to defend themselves against a law that offers them no commonsense safe harbour.
The WHS Model — and the Business Judgement Rule
Coppock pointed the committee to two established legislative models that already provide a workable framework.
The first is work health and safety legislation, which has been refined across every Australian jurisdiction over more than two decades. Rather than being a purely punitive compliance model, WHS law requires businesses to take positive steps to demonstrate that they operated to the best-known standard at the time. If an incident occurs despite those efforts, the business can show it acted in accordance with what was “reasonably practicable.” That single concept transforms a black-and-white contravention into a contested set of facts.
The second model is the business judgment rule, already embedded in the Corporations Act 2001. The rule recognises that directors and officers make decisions in an environment of uncertainty, with incomplete information, and in a constantly shifting context. Provided they act in good faith, on an informed basis, and in the rational belief that their decision serves the organisation’s interests, they are shielded from personal liability even if the outcome is unfavourable.
“If you do the best job you can in front of you,” Coppock told Senators, “at least you can say you did the best you can.”
The parallel to forestry is direct. A harvesting operator working through contested environmental science, subject to seasonal variability, and dependent on data that may be disputed by any number of experts, should have the same capacity to demonstrate diligence. Without it, the legislation creates what Coppock describes as a “best of luck” standard — where compliance is measured against outcomes, not effort.
Getting the Supply Chain into the Room
Coppock raised a second structural problem that goes beyond the compliance framework itself. When litigation is brought against a forestry operation — whether over species impact, harvesting volumes, or habitat corridors — the downstream businesses that depend on that timber have no standing to participate. A sawmill, a manufacturer, a housing supply chain: none of them can act as defendants. None of them can put evidence before the Court.
The fix, according to Coppock, is a statutory right for supply chain businesses to apply to participate as amicus curiae — friends of the court. It would not open the floodgates of litigation. Participation as amicus curiae remains entirely at the court’s discretion. But it would ensure that the economic and commercial consequences of a decision are visible to the judge making it.
Wood Central understands that this specific proposal — a statutory amicus curiae right for supply chain businesses — has already been submitted to Minister Watt by Timber NSW.
What the Senate Must Now Do
With the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee due to hand down its report by 24 March, the window for amendments is narrowing fast. The Environment Protection Reform Bill has already passed Parliament. What remains is the subordinate architecture: the National Environmental Standards, the assessment pathways, and the compliance framework that will govern operations once the RFA exemptions sunset in July 2027.
Coppock’s argument is that two targeted inclusions — a business judgement-style standard and a supply chain amicus curiae right — would dramatically reduce the litigation exposure the reformed EPBC will otherwise create.
“There is a very good system under the RFAs,” he told the committee. “They weren’t invented yesterday; they’ve been around for a very long time. The Full Federal Court has a very solid judgment which sets out the precedent on why they work.”
The question is whether the new framework, when it replaces them, will be built with the same care or whether the industry will be left, as Coppock put it, in no man’s land.
- Stuart Coppock appeared before the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee on Friday, 28 February, giving evidence on the Environment Protection Reform Bill on behalf of Timber NSW. Wood Central’s full coverage of his Senate testimony, including his warning on the constitutional fault line between state and federal jurisdiction, is available here: ‘Nothing to Replace RFAs’: Forestry Braces for Legal No Man’s Land.
