An environmental impact statement is the heaviest form of environmental assessment a planning system asks a developer to produce, and in most Australian jurisdictions it is triggered by what the project is and where it sits rather than by anything you choose. Once it is triggered, it tends to become the single largest driver of how long approval takes and what the consultant budget runs to. The documents themselves are written by specialists, but the decisions that follow from them, whether to buy the site, what to pay for it, how long to hold it and whether to proceed at all, sit with you.
Two people hold most of the answers on a particular site. The planning consultant works out which assessment pathway the project falls into, whether a lighter document would satisfy the consent authority, and what the assessment requirements are likely to demand. The environmental consultant, usually an ecologist or a contaminated land specialist depending on the trigger, works out whether the impacts are the kind that can be avoided by redesign or only managed, and how long the field work takes. Both answers bear directly on what the land is worth, so most developers on a site with an environmental trigger engage them before exchange rather than after.
Everything below was current in September 2026. Assessment pathways in Australia have been reformed repeatedly over the last two years, and both the New South Wales major projects system and the Commonwealth environmental law are mid-transition as this is written. Each figure and rule links to the government page or the legislation it came from, and that link is where to confirm it on the day you need it.
What is an environmental impact statement, and when does a development need one?
An environmental impact statement is a formal assessment document that describes a project, predicts its significant effects on the environment, and sets out how those effects would be avoided, mitigated or managed. It is prepared by the proponent, not the assessing authority, against requirements the authority issues first. It is then exhibited publicly, submissions are made on it, the proponent responds, and the assessing authority writes its own report on the back of it.
Three things generally trigger one:
- The class of development. Some systems list the development types that always require one, such as the designated development list in New South Wales, so the trigger is objective and can be checked before purchase.
- A declaration or referral decision. In Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory, a minister, commission or authority decides whether the proposal is significant enough to warrant one, usually after a referral.
- A specific environmental value on or near the site. Threatened species habitat, a wetland of international significance, contaminated land, a heritage item or a waterway can pull an otherwise ordinary project into a heavier pathway.
For most residential and commercial development, the honest answer is that a full environmental impact statement is unlikely, and the relevant document is the lighter environmental assessment that accompanies a development application. The cases where it does bite are larger projects, projects in or near sensitive areas, and projects that happen to be on a statutory list.
How is an environmental impact statement different from a statement of environmental effects?
They sit at different levels of the same system, and the difference is scale rather than subject matter. In New South Wales, the Department of Planning describes the environmental assessment accompanying a development application as “typically a Statement of Environment Effects, or Environmental Impact Statement for higher-impact proposals”, with the level of documentation scaled to the development’s likely impacts.
A statement of environmental effects is generally a planning consultant’s document, written for a council, sized in the tens of pages, and produced in weeks. An environmental impact statement is a multi-disciplinary document, written against formal assessment requirements issued by a government department, sized in the hundreds of pages with technical appendices from specialist consultants, and produced over many months. The cost gap between the two tends to be an order of magnitude, and the programme gap is the part that usually matters more.
The practical consequence for a feasibility is that the two documents belong in different places in the cashflow. A statement of environmental effects sits inside the ordinary planning and consultant allowance. An environmental impact statement is its own cost line with its own duration, and it extends the period over which you are carrying land without income. The land holding costs guide covers what that carry actually consists of.
What triggers an environmental impact statement in New South Wales?
Two pathways in New South Wales require one: designated development, and state significant development.
Designated development
Designated development is described by the Department of Planning as “high-impact developments (for example if it is likely to generate pollution) or are located in or near an environmentally sensitive area”. The department’s examples include chemical factories, large marinas, quarries and sewerage treatment works, and the full list sits in Schedule 3 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2021 (NSW).
Three consequences follow from a project being designated development, and the third is the one that changes the risk profile of a site:
- The development application “must be accompanied by an environmental impact statement” prepared in accordance with the Planning Secretary’s requirements.
- The application requires public notification for at least 28 days.
- The development “can be the subject of a merits appeal to the NSW Land and Environment Court by objectors”.
That third point is worth sitting with. On ordinary local development, only the applicant can appeal the merits of a decision. On designated development, a third party who objected can take a granted consent to the Land and Environment Court and argue the merits again. A consent is therefore not the end of the programme risk, and any acquisition or funding milestone tied to “development consent” on a designated development site may be worth testing against that possibility.
State significant development
State significant development takes the consent decision away from the council, and an environmental impact statement is part of the pathway. The sequence runs: request assessment requirements, prepare the statement, exhibit the application, respond to submissions, assessment, determination.
The requirements the statement has to answer are the Planning Secretary’s environmental assessment requirements, and there are now two kinds. Industry-specific requirements are issued without a scoping report for eligible projects, which the department describes as projects that are wholly permissible, do not meet designated development thresholds and are not concept applications. Where a project is eligible, the department states it will issue those requirements within 7 days. Project-specific requirements need a scoping report first, and the Planning Secretary issues them within 28 days of the scoping report being published.
Two timing rules attach to those requirements and are easy to lose track of on a long-dated site:
- They expire if the environmental impact statement is not submitted within two years of issue.
- The Planning Secretary may extend the expiry by up to two years on request.
The department also states that applicants should begin consulting public authorities at least 6 weeks before submitting the statement, and that the statement must be reviewed by a Registered Environmental Assessment Practitioner, a certification held through the Certified Environmental Practitioner Scheme or the Planning Institute of Australia. That review is a mandatory requirement for state significant development and state significant infrastructure, so practitioner availability is a real scheduling input, not an administrative footnote.
Once lodged, the application and the statement are exhibited for “at least 28 days, unless otherwise specified by the Department’s Community Participation Plan”.
What is still changing in the New South Wales system?
The Rapid Assessment Framework is the department’s programme for preparing industry-wide assessment requirements up front, so that project-specific requirements are reserved for projects with greater environmental risk. The department notes that the process is under review as part of the Planning System Reform Act 2025 (NSW). On a site you are assessing now, that means the pathway your consultant scoped twelve months ago may not be the pathway that applies when you lodge, and confirming the current position with the department before committing to a programme is the practical response.
What triggers an environment effects statement in Victoria?
Victoria calls the document an environment effects statement, and the trigger is a ministerial decision rather than a list. Under the Environment Effects Act 1978 (Vic), a project is referred to the Minister for Planning, who then decides whether an environment effects statement is needed, is not needed, or is not needed provided specified conditions are met. Planning Victoria states that decision is typically made within 20 business days of referral.
A referral can come from the proponent, from any statutory decision maker who has to decide something about the project, and the Minister may direct that a project be referred. The guidance is that referral should happen “as soon as sufficient information is available to identify the potential for significant environmental effects”, which in practice puts the decision earlier in the programme than most developers expect.
The referral criteria in the eighth edition of the Ministerial guidelines for assessment of environmental effects (2023) are unusually specific, and several are checkable against a site before purchase. A project warrants referral where there is potential for:
- “removal, destruction or lopping of 10 hectares or more of native vegetation” that includes endangered, vulnerable or rare ecological vegetation classes, unless authorised under an approved forest or fire protection plan
- “clearing of an area determined as ‘critical habitat’ under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988”
- loss of a significant proportion, which the guidelines put at 1 per cent or greater, of known remaining habitat or population of a threatened species within Victoria
- “long-term change to the ecological character of a wetland” listed under the Ramsar Convention or in A Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia
- “extensive or major effects on the use and environmental values of water resources”
- “extensive or major effects to human health or the environment, or displacement of residents, from pollution or waste”
- greenhouse gas emissions “exceeding 200,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per annum (direct and indirect)”
The 10 hectare native vegetation criterion is the one that most often catches a greenfield residential proponent, and it is a site characteristic, not a design choice, so it can be assessed at due diligence.
Where the Minister decides a statement is required, Planning Victoria’s published process runs through scoping with at least 15 business days of public comment, preparation, public review of 20 to 30 business days with the possibility of an inquiry, and a ministerial assessment of around 25 business days after the inquiry reports. Those are sequential, and none of them include the proponent’s own technical work. Victoria also operates a lighter environment report pathway for projects with fewer effects, and the fast-tracked planning pathway covered in the Development Facilitation Program guide is a separate question from whether environmental assessment is triggered.
What do the other states and territories require?
The document has a different name and a different trigger in each jurisdiction, but the shape is consistent: a referral or declaration, requirements issued by the assessing body, a proponent-prepared document, public exhibition, and a report that informs the decision rather than being the decision.
Queensland
Queensland runs two separate environmental impact statement processes.
The first sits under the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld) and is administered by the Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation. The Queensland Government states that a proponent completes a statement under that Act where they have volunteered to do so, or where the department has decided the project will be assessed that way, and that this pathway is generally used for mining, petroleum and gas projects.
The second sits under the State Development and Public Works Organisation Act 1971 (Qld) and is run by the Coordinator-General. A proponent may apply for a “coordinated project” declaration where the project meets criteria including complex approval requirements, significant environmental effects, or strategic significance to a locality, region or the state. Once declared, the project requires an environmental impact statement or an impact assessment report, other approval processes are suspended during the assessment, and the public, councils and state agencies are invited to comment on the draft.
The output of the coordinated project process is worth understanding precisely, because it is not what it looks like. The Coordinator-General’s report “will recommend approval (with conditions) or rejection of the project”, and the Queensland Government is explicit that this report is “not an approval in itself”. The conditions only acquire legal force when they are attached to approvals granted under other legislation. A developer reading a favourable Coordinator-General’s report still has the underlying approvals to obtain.
South Australia
South Australia’s heaviest pathway is impact assessed development under the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act 2016 (SA). PlanSA describes it as being for major projects declared by the Minister for Planning as being of economic, social or environmental importance to the state, where the ordinary Planning and Design Code pathway cannot adequately address the project’s potential impacts.
An environmental impact statement is mandatory for all impact assessed development. The status can arise either by ministerial declaration, which the proponent can initiate, or by regulation. The State Planning Commission determines the Assessment Requirements the statement must respond to, public consultation runs for a minimum of 30 business days, the applicant responds to submissions, the Commission prepares an Assessment Report, and the Minister decides. Where Commonwealth matters are engaged, the process can run as a bilateral assessment.
Western Australia
Western Australia separates environmental assessment from planning approval more sharply than the eastern states. Under Part IV of the Environmental Protection Act 1986 (WA), a proponent refers an environmentally significant proposal to the Environmental Protection Authority under section 38. The Authority then decides whether the proposal requires formal environmental impact assessment and, if so, at what level.
Where the Authority assesses, the proponent prepares environmental review documentation describing the proposal, its potential impacts and the proposed management measures. The Authority reports with recommendations to the Minister for Environment, publishes its findings, and a public appeal period follows. The Minister then decides whether the proposal may proceed and on what conditions. The sequencing point for a developer is that this runs alongside, and can outlast, the planning approval for the same project.
Tasmania
Tasmania’s equivalent of a major project pathway is a Project of State Significance under the State Policies and Projects Act 1993 (Tas). The declaration route is unusually formal: a minister recommends to the Governor that a project be declared, and the declaration order “must be approved by both houses of Parliament before it comes into operation”.
A project must demonstrate at least two of seven criteria, which include significant capital investment, significant contribution to state economic development, significant consequential economic impacts, significant potential contribution to Australia’s balance of payments, significant environmental impact, complex technical processes and engineering designs, and significant infrastructure requirements. The Tasmanian Planning Commission then conducts what the state describes as a “fully integrated assessment”, covering environmental, social, economic and community issues in one process, with guidelines issued to the proponent, public exhibition, possible hearings, and a final report with recommendations to the Minister.
Tasmania also runs a Major Projects pathway assessed by an independent panel assembled by the Commission, and a Major Infrastructure Projects pathway under the Major Infrastructure Development Approvals Act 1999 (Tas). For most private development, the relevant question in Tasmania is which of those three, if any, the project falls into, and for the great majority the answer is none of them.
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory has the most legible trigger of any jurisdiction, because it is partly a schedule. Under section 105 of the Planning Act 2023 (ACT), an environmental impact statement is required for proposals listed in schedule 1 of the Planning (General) Regulation 2023 (ACT), for proposals the Planning Minister declares likely to have a significant adverse environmental impact, for bilateral processes with the Commonwealth, and where the Minister responsible for the Public Health Act 1997 (ACT) requires it on public health grounds.
The process runs in three stages. A scoping application produces a scoping document setting out what the statement must address. The draft statement must be lodged within 18 months of receiving the scoping document, and goes through public notification for at least 30 working days. A revised statement then addresses what came up in consultation, after which the Minister decides, within 15 days, whether to take no action or to establish an inquiry panel.
The territory also has an off-ramp worth knowing about. An environmental significance opinion can remove the need for a statement in some circumstances, and there is a separate exemption process under section 211 of the Planning Act 2023 (ACT). Whether either is realistically available on a given site is a question for a planning consultant with recent territory experience, because the answer turns on how the relevant entity has been exercising the discretion.
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory assesses under the Environment Protection Act 2019 (NT) and the Environment Protection Regulations 2020 (NT), which replaced the Environmental Assessment Act 1982 (NT) on 28 June 2020. Proponents must refer a proposal where it has the potential to have a significant impact on the environment, and the Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority decides whether assessment is required. The Authority then assesses and makes recommendations to the Minister on whether the impacts are acceptable.
When does the Commonwealth also have to be involved?
The Commonwealth comes in on top of the state process, not instead of it, and it does so through the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth). Nine matters of national environmental significance are protected: world heritage properties, national heritage places, wetlands listed under the Ramsar Convention, listed threatened species and ecological communities, listed migratory species, Commonwealth marine areas, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, nuclear actions, and water resources in relation to coal seam gas and large coal mining development. Actions on Commonwealth land, or by Commonwealth agencies, are also caught.
An action likely to have a significant impact on one of those matters is referred, and a decision follows on whether it is a “controlled action”. The Department states that decision is made within 20 business days, plus any time added where further information is requested. If the action is controlled, assessment and approval are required before it can start.
Where assessment is required, the Department publishes six methods, in ascending order of burden: assessment on referral information, assessment on preliminary documentation, assessment by public environment report, assessment by environmental impact statement, assessment by public inquiry, and assessment under a bilateral or accredited process with a state or territory. The published timeframes include up to 20 business days to develop the guidelines for a public environment report or an environmental impact statement, 40 business days for assessment of preliminary documentation, up to 40 business days for the formal assessment of a public environment report or environmental impact statement, and public comment periods of at least 10 to at least 20 business days depending on the method.
Two points matter more than the individual numbers. The first is that the Commonwealth process runs in parallel with the state process and is not shortened by it, unless a bilateral agreement applies, in which case the state assessment can do the work for both. The second is that the listed timeframes are the regulator’s clock, not the project’s: they exclude the proponent’s own technical work, which is usually where the months actually go.
The Commonwealth layer is also the part of the system in the most active transition. The Environment Protection Reform Act 2025 (Cth) amends the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) along with several other environmental statutes, and commences in stages. Its Schedule 2 carries consequential and transitional provisions for the National Environmental Protection Agency Act 2025 (Cth). For a project being scoped now, the practical response may be to treat the Commonwealth pathway as a moving target and to check the current compilation on the register rather than a secondary summary, because which agency decides, and under which provisions, has been changing during 2026.
Does New Zealand have an equivalent?
New Zealand asks for an assessment of environmental effects rather than an environmental impact statement, and it asks for one on every resource consent application rather than only on major projects. The requirement sits in the Resource Management Act 1991 (NZ), and Auckland Council describes the document as “a written statement which identifies the effects of your proposed activity or activities on the environment”.
The expected contents are recognisable to anyone who has prepared a statement of environmental effects in Australia: a description of the proposal, the site and the surrounds, the reason consent is required, how the proposal sits against the relevant plan’s objectives and policies, the effects on the environment and on people, the conditions proposed to address those effects, and any specialist reports. The depth scales with the proposal, and councils are explicit that complex projects warrant an expert-prepared assessment.
Two features make the New Zealand position different in practice. The assessment is a gateway to the application being accepted rather than a separate statutory process, and the notification decision that follows is where the programme risk sits. The resource consent guide covers that in detail, and because the resource management system is in the middle of legislative reform, the reform guide is where to check what has changed before relying on the framework.
What does an environmental impact statement do to a development programme?
It extends it at the front, where extension is most expensive, because the land is already owned or under contract and nothing is being built.
The published regulator timeframes are the smaller part. Adding up the New South Wales state significant development numbers gives 28 days for project-specific assessment requirements after the scoping report is published, at least 28 days of exhibition, and then assessment and determination. That is a few months of official clock. The proponent’s own work, sitting between those steps, is generally where a year goes:
- Scoping and the scoping report, which requires enough design resolution to describe the project and its alternatives.
- Baseline field work. This is the item that resists compression. Ecological surveys for threatened species are typically tied to seasonal detection windows, so missing a survey season can add a full year rather than a few weeks. Groundwater monitoring, noise monitoring and traffic counts have their own minimum durations.
- Technical studies and modelling, which cannot start until the baseline work is in and cannot finish until the design stops moving.
- The statement itself, its integration, and in New South Wales the mandatory practitioner review.
- Response to submissions, which on a contested project can be a substantial document in its own right and can trigger design changes that feed back into the technical studies.
Two sequencing traps show up repeatedly. The first is design churn: every change to the scheme after the technical studies begin risks invalidating work already done, so the point at which the design is frozen for assessment purposes tends to be much earlier than developers expect. The second is the gap between the assessment requirements being issued and the statement being lodged. In New South Wales those requirements lapse after two years, extendable by up to two years, which sets a practical ceiling on how long a scheme can sit part-assessed while a capital raise or a joint venture is negotiated.
What does an environmental impact statement do to a feasibility?
It shows up in three places, and the largest is usually not the consultant fee.
- Direct assessment cost, being the specialist studies, the statement, the practitioner review, and the application fees.
- Land holding cost over a longer pre-construction period, being interest on land, rates and other outgoings.
- Escalation, because a construction start pushed twelve months to the right meets construction pricing twelve months further along.
A simplified worked example shows the relative sizes. Take a project with a gross realisation value of $30,000,000, development costs other than land of $18,000,000, land at $6,000,000, and finance and holding costs of $1,200,000 over a programme that assumes a twelve month pre-construction period. Total development cost is $25,200,000, profit is $4,800,000, and the margin on total development cost is 19.05 per cent.
Now assume the site turns out to carry an environmental trigger, the project is assessed by environmental impact statement, and the pre-construction period runs to twenty-four months rather than twelve. The changed inputs are these, and everything else is held constant:
- Additional specialist studies and the statement itself: $350,000
- Additional land holding outgoings over the extra twelve months: $90,000
- Additional interest on land at an assumed 8 per cent on $6,000,000: $480,000
- Construction escalation at an assumed 4 per cent on $18,000,000: $720,000
The additional cost is $1,640,000. Total development cost becomes $26,840,000, and with revenue unchanged at $30,000,000, profit falls to $3,160,000 and the margin on total development cost falls to 11.77 per cent. The assessment cost is not the largest of the four lines, and the time-driven items are roughly four fifths of the damage.
The same arithmetic run backwards gives the land value question, which is the one that usually matters at acquisition. Holding the original 19.05 per cent margin on total development cost, and with costs other than land now $20,840,000 (being $18,000,000 of development costs, $720,000 of escalation, $350,000 of assessment cost and $1,770,000 of finance and holding), the land figure that reproduces that margin against $30,000,000 of revenue is about $4,360,000. Checking it: $4,360,000 plus $20,840,000 is $25,200,000 of total cost, profit is $4,800,000, and the margin is 19.05 per cent. The interest line is held at the original land price, so the residual is slightly conservative. On these assumptions, the environmental trigger is worth roughly $1,640,000 off what the site can bear, which is close to 27 per cent of the original land price.
Those are illustrative figures, and the escalation and interest assumptions are the ones most worth replacing with your own. The structural point survives whatever numbers are used: an assessment trigger is a land price question before it is a consultant budget question, and the margin on cost and margin on revenue guide covers why the same project reports differently depending on which denominator the funder uses.
There is also a structural response, which is separate from pricing the risk into the land. Where the assessment pathway is uncertain at the point of negotiation, the mechanism that keeps the land off the balance sheet while the pathway is resolved is the option or the conditional contract, and the trade-offs in those are covered in the put and call options guide. Whether the vendor will wear a condition of that length, and what it costs to buy the time, is the commercial question that follows.
What are the traps developers actually hit?
Discovering the trigger after exchange. Most of the triggers above are properties of the site rather than the scheme: hectares of native vegetation, a species record, proximity to a sensitive area, an item on a schedule. They are checkable during due diligence, and the cost of checking tends to be trivial against the cost of being wrong. A contract that becomes unconditional before the pathway is confirmed carries the whole of that risk.
Assuming the state process covers the Commonwealth. Unless a bilateral agreement applies, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) runs its own referral and assessment, on its own clock, and a state approval does not authorise an action that needs Commonwealth approval.
Treating the assessment document as the approval. The Queensland position is the clearest illustration, where the Coordinator-General’s report is expressly not an approval and its conditions take effect only through approvals granted under other legislation. The general point holds everywhere: the statement informs a decision, it is not the decision, and the conditions that come out the other side can change the project’s economics after the assessment cost has been spent.
Ignoring third party appeal exposure. On designated development in New South Wales, objectors have merits appeal rights to the Land and Environment Court. A consent on such a site is not the same risk event as a consent on ordinary local development, and treating them identically in a funding milestone or a sunset date may be optimistic.
Letting the assessment requirements lapse. Two years passes quickly on a site that is waiting for a capital partner. In New South Wales the requirements expire if the statement is not submitted in that window, and while an extension of up to two years may be granted on request, the extension is a request rather than an entitlement.
Freezing the design too late. Technical studies assess a scheme. Changing the scheme after they are under way can mean paying for them twice, and the second round rarely fits back into the original programme.
Scoping the studies to the minimum. A statement that answers the assessment requirements narrowly can survive exhibition and still fail at the submissions stage, where an agency or an objector raises something the scope did not cover. The remedy at that point is additional work under time pressure, which is the most expensive way to buy it.
What to ask your planning consultant, your environmental consultant and your planning lawyer
These are the questions that decide the topic on a specific site, and they sit with the people who can answer them on your facts.
Your planning consultant
- Which assessment pathway does this project fall into as the system stands today, and how confident are you given the reforms currently in train?
- Is there a lighter document that the consent authority would accept, and what would have to change about the scheme for that to be true?
- If assessment requirements are issued, what is your estimate of the elapsed time from that point to lodgement on this scheme, and what drives the estimate?
- What is the realistic exhibition and submissions risk here, and who is likely to object?
- What would a response to submissions look like if the worst credible objection is made, and how long would it take?
Your environmental consultant
- Which triggers apply on this site, and are they properties of the site or of the scheme?
- Which baseline surveys are tied to seasonal windows, when do those windows open and close, and what is the consequence of missing the next one?
- Can any of the triggered impacts be avoided by redesign rather than mitigated, and what would that cost in yield?
- What is the field work programme, and which parts of it cannot be compressed by spending more?
- If a Commonwealth matter of national environmental significance is in play, what is your view on whether the impact is significant, and what is the basis for that view?
Your planning lawyer
- Does this project need Commonwealth referral as well as state assessment, and is a bilateral agreement available?
- What appeal rights do third parties have against a consent on this pathway, and what is the practical exposure?
- How should the acquisition contract handle the risk that the pathway turns out to be heavier than assumed, and what conditions and timeframes would support that?
- If the assessment requirements lapse, what actually happens to the work already done?
- Which conditions commonly attached to approvals of this type would materially change the project’s economics, and which are negotiable?
Where to check the figures
Every number in this guide comes from a government or legislative source, and all of them can change. The links below are where to confirm the current position rather than relying on this page.
- New South Wales designated development, environmental impact statement requirement, notification and appeal rights: NSW Department of Planning, local development
- New South Wales assessment requirements, issue times and expiry: NSW Planning Portal, Planning Secretary’s environmental assessment requirements
- New South Wales statement preparation, consultation lead time and practitioner review: NSW Planning Portal, prepare an environmental impact statement and Registered Environmental Assessment Practitioner scheme
- New South Wales exhibition period: NSW Planning Portal, exhibit the application
- Victorian process and timeframes: Planning Victoria, environment effects statements
- Victorian referral criteria: Ministerial guidelines, determining the need for a referral
- Queensland pathways: Queensland Government, types of environmental impact statement and Business Queensland, coordinated projects
- South Australia: PlanSA, impact assessed development
- Western Australia: Western Australian Government, Environmental Protection Authority environmental impact assessment
- Tasmania: Planning in Tasmania, projects of state significance and Environment Protection Authority Tasmania, major developments and projects
- Australian Capital Territory: ACT Planning, environmental impact statement
- Northern Territory: Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority, environmental impact assessment
- Commonwealth referral, protected matters and decision timeframe: Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, referrals and assessments and assessment methods
- Commonwealth reform status: Environment Protection Reform Act 2025 on the Federal Register of Legislation and the compilation history of the principal Act
- New Zealand: Auckland Council, assessment of environmental effects