Using artificial intelligence to speed up environmental approvals risks entrenching flawed laws, poor data and declining biodiversity outcomes.

Australia is again being promised a technological shortcut to a complex policy problem. This time, it is the suggestion that artificial intelligence could be used to speed up environmental approvals under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

The argument is superficially appealing. Environmental assessments are often slow, data-intensive, and contested. If AI could streamline those processes, reduce delays, and cut costs, why wouldn’t we use it?

Because the problem is not the speed of the system. It is the quality of the foundations on which it rests.

Proposals to embed AI into environmental decision-making risk repeating a familiar pattern in public administration: using automation to paper over deeper structural weaknesses. Australia does not need to speculate about how that can end. The Robodebt scheme demonstrated what happens when flawed data and automated processes replace expert judgement – errors are not only made, they are replicated at scale.

Environmental approvals under the EPBC Act........

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