Last week had more great news for tax-shy gas companies and more bad news for vulnerable Australian critters.

A small “variation to approval” notice went up on the Environment Department website, providing a great example of how governments sell out Australian species on the quiet, after making a big show of protecting them when the cameras were rolling.

In 2013, Coalition Environment Minister Greg Hunt approved Arrow Energy’s coal seam gas project, claiming that he had imposed “some of the strictest [environmental] conditions in Australian history”.

Hunt’s original approval limited Arrow to ‘disturbing’ a maximum of 167 hectares of South-eastern long-eared bat habitat and 66 hectares of Dunmall’s snake habitat. Here’s the original document:

Under new minister Murray Watt, those disturbance areas have just been expanded to 486ha and 300ha respectively:

This change shows how easily environmental protection can be wound back. No press release, no announcement, just a line on a website.

Even that line on a website isn’t very useful. The change published last week is described as “Delete condition 6 attached to the approval and substitute with the condition specified in the table below.” It takes quite a bit of searching to find out what has actually happened, far beyond what a member of the public should have to do.

At the very least, the Department should publish a plain-English explanation of what the change they’ve made is.

From the available documents, we know that the government has just made it easier for Arrow Energy to damage native habitat. We don’t know what, if anything, Arrow has promised the public in return.

Probably not much. Based on tax office data, Arrow Energy Holdings has never paid company tax, despite reporting $3.3 billion in revenue.