The Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment has built a new EPBC Act Business Portal for submitting EPBC referrals which is expected to go live on Thursday 7 April 2022.
The new portal design has included extensive stakeholder consultation with proponents, consultants, and industry experts to make your referral submittal process more intuitive and user friendly.
Please note that existing draft referrals in Online Services WILL NOT be migrated to the new system.
In addition, for approximately five (5) days before the new portal goes lives, Online Services EPBC referral appplications are now read only in My Applications and you will not be able to submit a referral during this period. This applies to new referrals, re-submissions and those that are in draft at the freeze date. You will only be able to submit a referral in the new EPBC Act Business Portal once it goes live.
Please take one of the following actions:
- Wait and submit using the new EPBC Act Business portal when it becomes live
At COB on 29 March 2022, Online Services was changed to have EPBC applications read-only. Whilst you will still be able to log in to view and copy information from a pdf of your draft referral, this will be for a limited time only and you will not be able to submit this referral via Online Services.
Once you are ready to submit your referral, and the new EPBC Act Business Portal is live, you will have to register for the new system and manually re-enter this information.
As the layout of the new EPBC Act Business Portal looks different to Online Services and some of the questions have been worded differently to simplify the referral process, a number of tools are available to aid the transition: Assistance will be available to complete referrals using the new portal. Support materials will be available and you can contact the Referrals Gateway at epbc.referrals@awe.gov.aufor further help.
OR
- A blank template of all questions in the current referral form. The form itself will not be accepted as an application but it may aid the assembly of information needed to complete and submit the application online.
- A comparison document that maps the questions asked between the old format and the new format.
- Delete your draft application
If you have a draft in the system that you no longer wish to submit, it would be appreciated if you could log in and delete it from the system. After the new EPBC Act Business Portal becomes live, the department will no longer be monitoring Online Services projects and these drafts will be permanently lost once Online Services is eventually decommissioned.
Information and assistance
For more information on the project and details of an upcoming webinar on the EPBC Act Business Portal and new Referral Form, see A new way of lodging EPBC Act referrals coming in 2022.
Should you require assistance during this transition, you can contact the Referrals Gateway at epbc.referrals@awe.gov.au.