This paper highlights the Federal Government's intention to enshrine Nature Positive principles into our domestic legal system. Nature Positive includes a voluntary commitment to protect and conserve 30 per cent of Australia's land and oceans by 2030 - a commitment proposed by international conservation groups but not rising from any international agreement. The commitment arises from a series of international ‘agreements’ that stopped short of being treaties, much as the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015 stopped short of being a binding treaty.

In Australia, the Nature Positive laws have been presented by the Government as a response to the review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) but the phrase 'Nature Positive' appears nowhere in the EPBC final report. The authors argue the laws represent a hijacking of the Act's intention – to identify room for improvement and streamline the already complex approval process for new investments in Australia – towards other objectives. 

There are two principal concerns with the Nature Positive laws that are expressed in this paper. 

• The arbitrary nature of the goals and the negative effect on property rights and economic growth they will have, and
• The lack of governance around the process by which the government has made commitments to international bodies to achieve these goals without the explicit participation of the parliament and/or the broader community.