An audit into the country’s environmental offsets system has found that approximately one in seven projects are in breach of their approval conditions, while one in four projects reportedly fail to secure enough credits to offset environmental damages.

Commissioned by Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek, the audit, which commenced in June last year, surveyed 222 national projects. Organisations are allowed to offset damage in one area by paying to protect the environment in another, but can only be utilised if damage to the site in question cannot be avoided.

“It’s completely unacceptable that around one in seven developments could be in breach of their offset conditions,” Plibersek says in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald.

“When developers agree to offset the environmental impacts of their projects, they are making a legally enforceable commitment to protect nature. If they break that promise, they will face the full force of the law.

“I commissioned this audit after hearing very concerning stories of offsets projects being bulldozed and degradation of habitat that should have been providing homes for threatened species. But now, for the first time, we have the compliance data and we are cracking down.”

Infringement notices and fines have been issued to five entities in the wake of the audit, while 13 projects have been told they must now alter their operation in order to become compliant.

To mitigate further breaches in future, a dedicated audit team will be integrated into the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, while the proposed establishment of the independent agencies Environment Protection Agency (EPA) and Environment Information Australia (EIA) is due to be introduced to the House of Representatives in the coming weeks.

If the bill is approved, it will have certain implications for the built environment, with the agencies to be given new powers and penalties to regulate projects subject to environmental conditions. The updates have been made after the conclusion of Graeme Samuel AC’s review into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). Samuel is of the opinion that the laws are outdated and are in need of updating.

The projects audited and reviewed include a number of large-scale built environment developments. The Federal Government says that the compliance campaign is ongoing.