Missed Opportunities and Broken Promises: Wilderness Society Responds to 2026 Budget

The Wilderness Society has responded to last night’s 2026 Federal Budget, warning that key environmental and climate decisions risk undermining nature protection, locking in fossil fuel dependence, and weakening long-term conservation outcomes across Australia.

The organisation says the budget highlights ongoing policy contradictions, including continued support for native forest logging frameworks, missed opportunities to introduce fossil fuel taxation reform, and reduced investment in the protection of World Heritage-listed ecosystems.

The Wilderness Society says these decisions demonstrate nature protection and climate action are being deprioritised in favour of fast-tracking development and resource extraction.

Melanie Audrey, Biodiversity Policy & Campaign Manager, Wilderness Society said:

“Rather than strengthening protections for native forests, the budget continues Regional Forest Agreements under a new regulatory framework. This includes $28.0 million over two years from 2026–27 for the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to work with impacted states to develop landscape-scale approval pathways, allowing existing forestry operations to continue under reformed environmental laws. Scientists and conservation groups had been calling for stronger reform than this continuation of existing arrangements.

“The government’s own budget papers show hundreds of millions being extracted from the climate, environment and water portfolio, including cuts to biodiversity science. At a time of accelerating extinction, nature should be getting stronger protection - not less. You can't protect what you're defunding."

Fern Cadman, Fossil Fuel Industry Campaigner, Wilderness Society said:

“Never before has there been such public and political support for taxing the gas industry. Yet Albanese has squibbed the opportunity in this year’s federal budget showing just how deep the gas industry has its claws in Labor politicians right around the country.

“Failure to introduce a 25% gas export levy is a missed opportunity to raise funds to support everyday people and this country’s transition away from expensive, polluting and unreliable fossil fuels.

“The Wilderness Society is reassured to see continued operation of a Decommissioning Directorate to focus on the oil and gas industry’s $60 billion clean up task, including funding for policy work (Budget Paper No.2, page 67). However, a key omission from this year's budget is the failure to introduce a requirement for oil and gas companies to pay upfront clean up bonds to ensure their legacy of toxic infrastructure is not left abandoned in Australia’s oceans. Without locked-in money from the companies, we simply can’t trust the cost won’t fall to taxpayers.

“Now, while companies make exorbitant war profits, there’s no excuse not to be taxing the industry and ensuring it is putting aside clean up money to protect the environment and taxpayers.”

Alice Hardinge, Tasmanian Campaigns Manager said:

“Cuts to World Heritage funding in the federal budget would have very real and immediate consequences for the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. This is not a landscape that can be effectively “left to its own devices” without sustained investment, its ecological and cultural integrity depends on active management.

“There are implications for scientific research and cultural heritage protection. Long-term ecological studies, Indigenous heritage management, and track and infrastructure maintenance all rely on stable funding streams. Any contraction in support risks undermining decades of conservation work that underpins the area’s World Heritage values under the standards of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre.”

ENDS