Samantha Hepburn is a Professor in the Law School at Deakin University and Director of EMI Partners. Samantha is one of Australia's preeminent legal scholars whose research involves the examination of a range of different energy, natural resource, property and land law issues. Her career highlights for 2015 include the publication of her book with Cambridge University Press, Mining and Energy Law, working with the Victorian Auditor General to prepare the terms of reference paper for the Victorian Parliamentary Commission into Unconventional Gas, and being a keynote presenter at the 2015 Sydney ATSE Unconventional Gas Conference and the 2015 Sydney Carbon Abatement Conference.The Federal Government wants to repeal Section 487(2) of the Environmental Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth)(EPBC) and rely on the common law provisions that govern standing to seek judicial review of a decision under the Act. Section 487(2) is the representative standing provision in our national environmental legislation. It provides environmental and conservation groups with the ability to seek review of decisions made under the EPBC Act without having to establish that their private interests have been directly affected. In this respect, the provision is known as the 'representative standing' provision. The direct effect of the amendment will be, henceforth, to prevent environmental and conservation groups from having any capacity to seek judicial reviewbecause they will not have standing. This, in turn, will reduce the incidence of judicial oversight of decisions made under the EPBC Act.
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